win & bootloaders

[Sharfuddin]

what are the names of bootloader does win98, win2k and xp installs in the MBR ???
I heard that in win 2k there is NTLDR, which is a bootloader, and resides in MBR of harddisk... is it true???

[Roger Faucher · Accepted solution]

NTLDR is a hidden, system file in the root directory of the boot partition. It does not however, exist in the MBR. The MBR is essentially a pointer to the location of the NTLDR (for NT, WIN2K, and WINXP). WIN9x and WINMe don't use the NTLDR file, instead they use a file named COMMAND.COM and two other files named CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT (just like DOS).

HTH

Roger

[Maaz]

it means that Windows(2k,xp etc) place/install nothing in MBR, as Linux place its bootloaders(grub, lilo) in MBR. ???

[Roger Faucher]

See if this helps:

http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

Roger

[Jon Finley]

With MS-DOS, the MBR pointer to IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS - They in turn then loaded COMMAND.COM as the command interpreter.

Win95/98 still use IO.SYS, but have changed MSDOS.SYS into a settings file, controlling what the OS loads at boot (GUI yes or no, smartdrive, network, etc). You can open MSDOS.SYS using notepad to look at but don't change the settings.

With NT/2000/XP, the MBR points to: NTLDR which in turn reads boot.ini, fires off, ntdetect and system32\ntoskrnl.exe - others follow from there.

Jon

[Roger Faucher]

Thanks Jon:

I felt like I was leaving something out. I just had another birthday celebration; maybe some more brain cells died. ;-)

Roger