°°° Astyannax °°° said:
Hi,
When starting my PC, this message appears :
*** The file Boot.ini is not valid
*** Starting on C:/windows...
Then, everithing seems OK
Searching on my PC, I only have this file :
boot.ini.backup in the directory C:/windows/pss
Is there a way to fix that ?
Thanks
Since you can still boot okay into Windows XP, run "msconfig.exe", go
under the Boot.ini tab, and use the option to check for valid paths.
Warning: There is a defect in this function. If you have the Recovery
Console installed, you'll get a false warning about an invalid OS path;
see
http://snipurl.com/9ild. Microsoft's dual/multibooting works
differently than boot managers. Boot managers sit the MBR's bootstrap
code area and that program lets you pick which partition to use for
loading an OS. Microsoft doesn't do that but instead leaves the
standard MBR bootstrap program in place (so it reads the partition table
to see which is the currently active-marked primary partition), lets it
load the partition's boot sector, and then loads NTLDR which will read
boot.ini. If the boot.ini points to an OS path then it continue the
boot process to load the OS files in that path. If the boot.ini points
to a file, it is supposed to be a substitute for the boot program in the
partition's boot sector. The Recovery Console uses a .dat file, MS-DOS
will have a bootsect.dos file, and other OS's might have some other file
specified in boot.ini. So NTLDR loads the boot program in the .dat file
specified by boot.ini and that OS loads. That's just my observation as
I haven't found good information on the mechanics of Microsoft's
dual-boot. Anyone have more details on how boot.ini is actually used
and how the .dat (or .dos) files get implemented in booting the
alternate OS (more than what
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=101787
describes)?
So anything that loads via boot.ini but uses a .dat file to supplant the
boot program in the partition's boot sector to load a different OS will
get reported as an invalid OS path by the msconfig utility.