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Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000

Professional" /fastdetect

Such a BOOT.INI would result in the boot menu that appears in Figure 14-50.

This crazy multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) is an example of the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) naming system. It’s a system that’s designed to enable your PC to boot Windows from any hard drive, including removable devices. Let’s take a quick peek at each ARC setting to see how it works.

Multi(x) is the number of the adapter and always starts with 0. The adapter is determined by the boot order you set in your CMOS setting. For example, if you have a single PATA controller and a SATA controller, and you set the system to boot first from the PATA, any drive on that controller will get the value multi(0) placed in its ARC format. Any SATA drive will get multi(1).

Disk(x) is only used for SCSI drives, but the value is required in the ARC format, so with ATA systems it’s always set to disk(0).

Figure 14-50 Boot loader in Windows 2000 with System Recovery Console

Rdisk(x) specifies the number of the disk on the adapter. On a PATA drive, the master is rdisk(0) and the slave is rdisk(1). On SATA drives, the order is usually based on the number of the SATA connection printed on the motherboard, though some systems allow you to change this in CMOS.

Partition(x) is the number of the partition or logical drive in an extended partition. The numbering starts at 1, so the first partition is partition(1), the second is partition(2), and so on.

The \WINDOWS is the name of the folder that holds the boot files. This is important to appreciate! The ARC format looks at the folder, so there’s no problem running different versions of Windows on a single partition. You can simply install them in different folders. Of course, you have other limitations, such as file system type, but in general, multibooting in Windows is pretty trivial. Better yet, this is all handled during the installation process.

ARC format can get far more complicated. SCSI drives get a slightly different ARC format. For example, if you installed Windows on a SCSI drive, you might see this ARC setting in your BOOT.INI:

scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)

If you want to boot to a SCSI drive, Windows adds a fourth file to your system files called NTBOOTDD.SYS. This file only exists if you want to boot to a SCSI drive. Most people don’t boot to a SCSI, so don’t worry if you don’t see this file with the other three system files.

On rare occasions, you might find yourself needing to edit the BOOT.INI file. Any text editor handily edits this file, but most of us prefer to edit BOOT.INI via the System Setup dialog box. In Windows 2000/XP, open the System applet from the Control Panel. Click the Advanced tab and then click the Startup and Recovery button. The BOOT.INI options show up at the top (Figure 14-51).

Figure 14-51 BOOT.INI

BOOT.INI has some interesting switches at the end of the ARC formats that give special instructions on how the operating system should boot. Sometimes Windows puts these in automatically, and sometimes you will add them manually for troubleshooting. Here are a few of the more common ones:

/BOOTLOG Tells Windows to create a log of the boot process and write it to a file called Ntbtlog.txt.

/CMDCONS Tells Windows to start the Recovery Console (see Chapter 15, “Working with the Command-Line Interface”).

/LASTKNOWNGOOD Tells Windows to boot the Last Known Good set of files (see Chapter 15, “Working with the Command-Line Interface”).

/NOEXECUTE Newer CPUs come with Data Execute Protection (DEP) to prevent unruly programs from causing system lockups. The setting for this, /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN, is the default on Windows systems.

NTDETECT.COM

If the NTLDR determines that you have chosen to start Windows 2000/XP, it boots the system into protected mode and then calls on NTDETECT.COM to detect the installed hardware on the system. NTLDR then refers to the BOOT.INI file to locate the Windows boot files.

Critical Boot Files

Naming