Boot Disk Query

Hi,

I'm currently studying for 70-290 and I have a small query about boot
floppies.

The books that I have state that you can create a boot disk by simply quick
formatting a floppy and copying NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI.

I decided to test this on Virtual PC by creating a virtual floppy and doing
the above.

I deleted NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the C: drive of my server
and rebooted. Sure enough, I get 'NTLDR is missing, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to
restart'.

I put the virtual floppy into the server, and reboot. And the same thing
happens. Server will not boot. Booting directly from the floppy (i.e.
changing the boot order in the BIOS) has no effect because of course the
floppy has no boot record (the book quite clearly states that you just do a
normal format of the floppy, which of course doesn't write a boot sector).

The book quite clearly states that a floppy like this will enable you to
start 2003 server in the event that the boot record or the files that 2003
server uses to boot up become corrupted. I fail to see how this can work,
especially if the boot record on the server's hard disk becomes corrupted.

What am I doing wrong, and how can the startup disk work when the server's
boot record is corrupt and the boot floppy has no boot record?

Thanks to all in advance,

--
Chris M.

Chris M

Maybe this response your question
Creating a Boot Floppy
The ASR disk is not a bootable disk. If you want to make a floppy that you
can use to load the
OS when it won’t load off the hard disk, you’ll have to copy those files to
a floppy. That floppy will
not be machine-specific so long as all computers have the OS installed in
the same directory, so you
can keep it in your panic kit, and it’s filesystem-independent.
A boot floppy is useful in any of the following situations:
â—† Corrupted boot sector
â—† Corrupted master boot record (MBR)
â—† Boot virus infections that keep the machine from booting
â—† Missing or corrupt NTLDR or NTDetect.com
â—† Incorrect NTBootdd.sys driver
Oddly enough, although making an NT boot floppy has been common practice for
years, there’s
still no utility in the OS that you can employ to make one. (You can create
Setup disks from the
\bootdisk\makeboot command on the installation CD, but that’s not the same
thing. Those are Setup
disks, this is a boot floppy, like a DOS boot floppy with autoexec.bat and
config.sys on it.) The
Windows NT floppy disk must include the files NTLDR, NTDetect.com, boot.ini,
and the correct
device driver for your hard drive.
Creating a Boot Floppy from the CD
If you don’t have another Server 2003 box around but do have the
installation CD, then you can get
the files you need. Copy the NTDetect.com and NTLDR files from the i386
folder on the CD-ROM
to the new disk. Rename the NTLDR file to setupldr.bin.
The next step is to create the boot.ini file that the OS uses to determine
which operating system
it should load and where that operating system is located. boot.ini files
are just text files. For
example, the following works for a single partition IDE drive with Server
2003 installed under
\winnt; the exact value in the [operating systems] section depends upon the
configuration of
the Windows NT System you want to boot:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
Default= multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt=�Serve r 2003 �
WINNT, in this case, is the name of the system root directory.
Tip If your computer boots from a SCSI hard drive, replace the multi(0) with
scsi(0). If you are using scsi(x)
in the boot.ini, copy the correct device driver for the SCSI controller in
use on the computer, and then rename it on
the floppy to NTBootdd.sys. If you are using multi(x) in boot.ini, you do
not need to do this.
"Chris M" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm currently studying for 70-290 and I have a small query about boot
> floppies.
>
> The books that I have state that you can create a boot disk by simply quick
> formatting a floppy and copying NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI.
>
> I decided to test this on Virtual PC by creating a virtual floppy and doing
> the above.
>
> I deleted NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the C: drive of my server
> and rebooted. Sure enough, I get 'NTLDR is missing, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to
> restart'.
>
> I put the virtual floppy into the server, and reboot. And the same thing
> happens. Server will not boot. Booting directly from the floppy (i.e.
> changing the boot order in the BIOS) has no effect because of course the
> floppy has no boot record (the book quite clearly states that you just do a
> normal format of the floppy, which of course doesn't write a boot sector).
>
> The book quite clearly states that a floppy like this will enable you to
> start 2003 server in the event that the boot record or the files that 2003
> server uses to boot up become corrupted. I fail to see how this can work,
> especially if the boot record on the server's hard disk becomes corrupted.
>
> What am I doing wrong, and how can the startup disk work when the server's
> boot record is corrupt and the boot floppy has no boot record?
>
> Thanks to all in advance,
>
> --
> Chris M.
>
>
>

=?Utf-8?B?a3VreQ==?=

In article <4249a32b$0$83068$>,
ial says...
> Subject: Boot Disk Query
> From: "Chris M" <>
> Newsgroups: microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcsa, microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcse, microsoft.public.windows.server.general
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently studying for 70-290 and I have a small query about boot
> floppies.
>
> The books that I have state that you can create a boot disk by simply quick
> formatting a floppy and copying NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI.
>

Not quite.

See http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;816793

BTW - this was the 4th entry from the top when searching
http://support.microsoft.com on "ntldr"

Ben Smith

Chris M wrote:

> I deleted NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the C: drive of my
> server and rebooted. Sure enough, I get 'NTLDR is missing, press
> Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart'.

Chris... please don't take this too personally, but...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH that's the best laugh I've had in a while.

Please explain why you deleted the files off of drive C:

=?Windows-1252?Q?Frisbee=AE?=

"Frisbee®" <> wrote in message
news:%...
>> I deleted NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the C: drive of my
>> server and rebooted. Sure enough, I get 'NTLDR is missing, press
>> Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart'.
>
> Chris... please don't take this too personally, but...
>
> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH that's the best laugh I've had in a while.
>
> Please explain why you deleted the files off of drive C:

Erm, cos it's running on Virtual PC, and I'm using it for testing and
learning, and restoring them using the recovery console takes all of about 5
minutes?

Please read my post fully before replying with some smart-ass comment. I
deleted them on purpose. You will see that I'm trying to test the boot disk
that *should* enable the server to boot in the absence of these files. And
it doesn't. And I'm trying to find out why.

*sigh* I could be so much more offensive, Frisbee, but I tend not to do that
kind of thing on usenet. I'll just have to settle with insulting your
reading and comprehension skills.

--
Chris.

Chris M

In news:4249b154$0$83058$,
Chris M <> rambled:
>
> *sigh* I could be so much more offensive, Frisbee, but I tend not to
> do that kind of thing on usenet. I'll just have to settle with
> insulting your reading and comprehension skills.

Nice play.

--

KB - MCNGP "silent thug" #26

Briscobar AT gmail DOT com

When a girl walks in with a itty bitty waist and a round thing in your
face, you get www.mcngp.com.

Briscobar

"Ben Smith" <> wrote in message
news: m...
>> The books that I have state that you can create a boot disk by simply
>> quick
>> formatting a floppy and copying NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI.
>>
>
> Not quite.
>
> See http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;816793

Thanks for the response Ben. I have read the link, but I must be missing
something. OK, the article says that I *might* have a NTBootdd.sys file, but
not necessarily. My server did not have an Ntbootdd.sys file.

The boot.ini file already points to the right place since it was copied
straight from the server I'm trying to boot.

I really cannot see what steps I've missed. Any pointers will be much
appreciated.

Thanks again,

--
Chris.

Chris M

> *sigh* I could be so much more offensive, Frisbee, but I tend not to
> do that kind of thing on usenet. I'll just have to settle with
> insulting your reading and comprehension skills.

Oh come on. Try being more offensive. It's been kinda dull around here
lately.
--
aka
Doom MCNGP #38
How in the hell did you get access to a computer?
www.mcngp.com invented the internet

CBIC

In article <4249b2ff$0$83052$>,
ial says...
> "Ben Smith" <> wrote in message
> news: m...
> >> The books that I have state that you can create a boot disk by simply
> >> quick
> >> formatting a floppy and copying NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI.
> >>
> >
> > Not quite.
> >
> > See http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;816793
>
> Thanks for the response Ben. I have read the link, but I must be missing
> something. OK, the article says that I *might* have a NTBootdd.sys file, but
> not necessarily. My server did not have an Ntbootdd.sys file.

This file is only present and used if you have a scsi controller.

>
> The boot.ini file already points to the right place since it was copied
> straight from the server I'm trying to boot.
>
> I really cannot see what steps I've missed. Any pointers will be much
> appreciated.

IIRC, you get a different error than NTLDR canoot be found if the
boot.ini is wrong.

> Thanks again,
>
>

Ben Smith

Chris M wrote:
> "Frisbee®" <> wrote in message
> news:%...
>>> I deleted NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the C: drive of my
>>> server and rebooted. Sure enough, I get 'NTLDR is missing, press
>>> Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart'.
>>
>> Chris... please don't take this too personally, but...
>>
>> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH that's the best laugh I've had in a while.
>>
>> Please explain why you deleted the files off of drive C:
>
> Erm, cos it's running on Virtual PC, and I'm using it for testing and
> learning, and restoring them using the recovery console takes all of
> about 5 minutes?
>
> Please read my post fully before replying with some smart-ass
> comment. I deleted them on purpose. You will see that I'm trying to
> test the boot disk that *should* enable the server to boot in the
> absence of these files. And it doesn't. And I'm trying to find out
> why.
>
> *sigh* I could be so much more offensive, Frisbee, but I tend not to
> do that kind of thing on usenet. I'll just have to settle with
> insulting your reading and comprehension skills.

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=?Windows-1252?Q?Frisbee=AE?=