[Thorn]

Originally Posted by Osiris

What about c:\boot.ini ?

If you want, you can rebuild it but since you arent having issues you might just want to leave it alone

I don't have a C: drive.

Yeah, I wasn't going to bother, I was just wondering if anyone knew how it could boot.

Originally Posted by MrCoffee

well, the boot.ini must be somewhere, I take it a search doesn't turn it up?

If I remember rightly the system partition is where windows boots from and where your boot files will be (ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini, etc.) generally speaking this is C: drive but it can be any primary partition.
The boot partition is the partition that windows is installed on, that is usually the same partition as the system partition but it doesn't have to be.

How many drives/partitions do you have?

Search produces nothing. I have ntdetect.com and ntldr right on the the D: drive, not in any subfolders, but no boot.ini.

2 drives, 2 partitions.

[Mak213]

Rebuild boot.ini

Rebuilding Boot.ini - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

[Thorn]

Originally Posted by Mak213

Rebuild boot.ini

Yes, thank you.


So, does anyone know the answer to my initial question of why it still boots?

[Mak213]

AGain it will look for the first open partition that has Windows files. Even without boot.ini all it needs is to find the Windows drive. The boot.ini is critical but even without it i have seen Widnows boot. I have had this happen to me several times when i have hide XP from Vista and vice versa.

All it does is a quick scan of the first drive first partition as i said. It may not be albeled as C but i can almost bet that it is still the same even if the letters are not.

[Thorn]

So, boot.ini is critical but not necesary? So what does it do?

[Mak213]

When you are at a command prompt back when Windows 95 and 98 was out did you have a boot.ini when you typwin in Windows and the GUI loaded? No. The kernel loads and then it loads up after that.

I do not know the exact details of what is happening but i know it can cause while the boot.ini info may not be present or recognized by Windows that does not mean that the Boot drive doesn have these files.

Do you have any other partitions? Like one that you had Vista on?

[Mak213]

Here is a full explination of how XP boots:

Understanding How Windows XP Starts

After the computer starts and hands off the process to the operating system, Windows XP continues to load in the following manner:

1.  The MBR is a small program typically found on the first sector of a hard drive. Because the MBR is so small, it cannot do much. In fact, the MBR that is used in Windows XP has only one function: it loads a program named NTLDR into memory.	

Tip 	

NTLDR is probably a name that you recognize. When a computer tries to start from a disk that is not bootable, but has been formatted with a file system that is compatible with Windows XP, you will often see the message "NTLDR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" (or something like it). If you see this message, Windows is telling you that either the disk that you are trying to start from is not a valid boot disk (maybe a floppy disk is still in the drive) or that the NTLDR file is invalid.


2.  NTLDR switches your computer to a flat memory model (thus bypassing the 640 KB memory restrictions placed on PCs) and then reads the contents of a file named BOOT.INI. The BOOT.INI file contains information on the different boot sectors that exist on your computer.

3.  If a computer has multiple bootable partitions, NTLDR uses the information in the BOOT.INI file to display a menu. That menu contains options on the various operating systems that you can load. If a computer has only one bootable partition, NTLDR bypasses the menu and loads Windows XP.

4.  Before Windows XP loads, NTLDR opens yet another program into memory named NTDETECT.COM. NTDETECT.COM performs a complete hardware test on your computer. After determining the hardware that is present, NTDETECT.COM gives that information back to NTLDR.

5.  NTLDR then attempts to load the version of Windows XP that you selected in Step 3 (if you selected one). It does this by finding the NTOSKRNL file in the System32 folder of your Windows XP directory. NTOSKRNL is the root program of the Windows operating system: the kernel. After the kernel is loaded into memory, NTLDR passes control of the boot process to the kernel and to another file named HAL.DLL. HAL.DLL controls Windows' famous hardware abstraction layer (HAL), which is the protective layer between Windows and a computer's hardware that enables such stability in the Windows XP environment.

6.  NTOSKRNL handles the rest of the boot process. First, it loads several low-level system drivers. Next, NTOSKRNL loads all the additional files that make up the core Windows XP operating system.

7.  Next, Windows verifies whether there is more than one hardware profile configured for the computer (see Chapter 6 for more information about hardware profiles). If there is more than one profile, Windows displays a menu from which to choose. If there is only one hardware profile, Windows bypasses the menu and loads the default profile.

8.  After Windows knows which hardware profile to use, Windows next loads all the device drivers for the hardware on your computer. By this time, you are looking at the Welcome To Windows XP boot screen.

9.  Finally, Windows starts any services that are scheduled to start automatically. While services are starting, Windows displays the logon screen.

So from what i am gathering about your setup is that it goes from NTLDR to NTDETECT and continues to load the Kernel and then Windows. It passes right over the boot.ini file.

[MrCoffee]

Well you learn something new every day, I always thought that boot.ini was a required part of the boot sequence but apparently its not.

NTLDR - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The article states that:

NTLDR requires, at the minimum, the following two files to be on the system volume:

NTLDR, which contains the main boot loader itself
boot.ini, which contains configuration options for a boot menu.

To load an NT-based OS, ntdetect.com must also be present. (Strictly speaking, only NTLDR is actually required. If boot.ini is missing, NTLDR will default to C:\Windows on the first partition of the first hard drive. Many desktops in the home are in this configuration and a missing boot.ini file will simply generate an error stating it is missing, then boot into Windows successfully.)

Originally Posted by Thorn

So, boot.ini is critical but not necesary? So what does it do?

From what I understand the boot.ini does three things, first it tells ntldr where the boot partition is, second, if there is more than one boot partition (multi boot system) it provides this information to ntldr which then presents it to the user as the boot menu; thirdly it allows you to boot an OS with various switches and options.
As it states above if the boot.ini is missing ntldr assumes that the boot partition is the same as the system partition and proceeds to load windows - of course if the boot partition isn't the same as the system partiton then its going to fall on its face.

[Mak213]

Well Mr. Coffee that bit i took was from a MCDST Book version 2008. (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician) which is what i am currently reading thru. That was taken from a part on boot troubleshooting. It was very interesting to read how boot.ini was not the most critical part.

[MrCoffee]

yes I remember reading about the process back when I took the MCDST (I finished in Feb last year), I never realised that windows would boot if the boot.ini was missing though; its handy to know that ntldr will use a default arc path if the boot.ini is missing.