OT: Re: Creating an NTFS Boot disk (was Re: DOS feature on formatting disk)

[Fred Cisin]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Robert Feldman wrote:
> Microsoft does provide instructions on how to create a boot floppy for an
> NTFS system ("How to Create a Bootable Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition,"
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/119467), but it is an involved process.

Not very hard to do, but it will NOT boot if certain files on the hard
disk are corrupted (NTVDM.EXE)
As I said before, MICROS~1 is completely unclear on the concept of floppy
boot, since their boot floppies will NOT work unless certain files are
intact or missing.

> You're probably better off with one of the 3rd party utilities that has been
> mentioned by others.

NOBODY has mentioned ANY third party utilities that will WRITE an NTFS
partition.  NTFSDOS PRO will, but it is very expensive (the free one is
read-only)

Booting an alternate OS (Knoppix?) looks like the most promising.

Or removing the drive and installing it as second drive in a functional
machine.

> BTW, I located this KB article after someone I know thought he would be good
> and clean up his root folder by moving "unnecessary" files -- including
> ntldr -- to other folders. Next time he rebooted: surprise! no boot.

Their "boot disk" seems to work if files are MISSING, but not if they are
present (damaged)

I think that if I could ERASE the bad file, then I could boot and fix it.