Vie said:
Now, if multi is the number of extra OS installed, disk is the number of
hard drives, rdisk is the number of RAID drives, and partition is the number
of the partition on the drive in question (assuming it's not binary
countered), why would it look to 2 different locations for the operating
system.
Nice guess but that isn't how it works. Most users will use the MULTI()
Syntax to boot their pre-Vista Windows NT type computers, the syntax is:
Multi(W)disk(X)rdisk(Y)partition(Z)\%systemroot%
(In the earlier Microsoft documentation the Multi ARC path is explained
and documented as multi(X)disk(Y)rdisk(Z)partition(W)\<winnt_dir>, thus
the Multi syntax is often described as the MULTI(X) Syntax, (instead of
MULTI(W)), this is a purely cosmetic detail that is only relevant to the
explanation of the syntax).
The following is from various Microsoft sources:
The multi() syntax indicates to Windows NT that it should rely on the
system BIOS to load system files. This means that NTLDR, the boot loader
for x86-based computers, will be using interrupt (INT) 13 BIOS calls to
find and load Ntoskrnl.exe and any other files it needs to get the
system running.
In the multi(X)disk(Y)rdisk(Z)partition(W)\%systemroot% syntax:
The X, Y, Z, and W parameters have the following meaning:
* X is the ordinal number of the adapter and should always be 0
(see the text below for the reason).
* Y is always 0 (zero) if the ARC path starts with MULTI(), because
MULTI() invokes the INT 13 call as described above and therefore does
not need the DISK() parameter information.
* Z is the ordinal for the disk on the adapter and is usually a
number between 0 and 3.
* W is the partition number. All partitions receive a number except
for type 5 (MS-DOS Extended) and type 0 (unused) partitions, with
primary partitions being numbered first and then logical drives. NOTE:
The first valid number for W is 1, as opposed to X, Y, and Z which start
at 0 (zero).
Theoretically, this syntax could be used to start Windows NT on any
drive in the system. However, this would require that all drives are
correctly identified through the standard INT 13 interface; since
support for this varies from disk controller to disk controller and most
system BIOS only identify a single disk controller through INT 13, in
practice it is only safe to use this syntax to start Windows NT from the
first two drives connected to the primary disk controller, or the first
four drives in the case of a dual-channel EIDE controller.
In a pure IDE system, the MULTI() syntax will work for up to the four
drives maximum on the primary and secondary channels of a dual-channel
controller.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102873
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...serv/reskit/prork/prbd_std_ccef.mspx?mfr=true
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751045.aspx
John
