A programming challenge - NTLDR & NTDETECT.COM

[Rob Norton]

I'm continually having issues with "NTLDR not found" errors after doing
a Windows XP repair. That repair copies NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR onto my
drive and most times puts them beyond the limit that my bios can see. I
have to recover this by making multiple copies of these files until I
get ones in the right place on the disk (i.e. at the front).

It seems to me that it should be fairly simple to write a program to
locate what is stored in the first 292kb of the disk, move it elsewhere
and then move NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM into the free space. If someone is
capable of doing this, or knows of a program that already does this,
then please contribute. I'm sure the people who end up reformatting
their drive to re-install Windows just because one or two files are in
the wrong place would be eternally grateful.

 

[Dave Patrick]

Windows 2000/XP/2003 supports large system partitions because it has the
ability to use BIOS INT-13 extensions to boot the operating system on
partitions with more than 1,024 cylinders, or 7.8 GB in size. Make sure the
option isn't disabled in cmos setup.


--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| I'm continually having issues with "NTLDR not found" errors after doing
| a Windows XP repair. That repair copies NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR onto my
| drive and most times puts them beyond the limit that my bios can see. I
| have to recover this by making multiple copies of these files until I
| get ones in the right place on the disk (i.e. at the front).
|
| It seems to me that it should be fairly simple to write a program to
| locate what is stored in the first 292kb of the disk, move it elsewhere
| and then move NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM into the free space. If someone is
| capable of doing this, or knows of a program that already does this,
| then please contribute. I'm sure the people who end up reformatting
| their drive to re-install Windows just because one or two files are in
| the wrong place would be eternally grateful.