Ntldr

NTLDR (NT Loader) is the boot loader for Windows NT, including its later versions (2000/XP/Longhorn). NTLDR can be run either from a floppy disk or a hard disk, but when run from a hard disk it requires the file system on the first partition to be FAT or NTFS. NT 5.0 or above supports FAT32, while older versions only support FAT12 or FAT16. It can either load an installation of Windows NT, the boot sector of another drive, or a boot sector stored on the drive where NTLDR is located. NTLDR requires two files to be on the first partition: NTLDR, which contains most of the boot loader itself, and boot.ini, which contains configuration options for a boot menu. Boot.ini uses Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) pathnames for locating installations of NT.

The following is an example NTLDR boot menu:

\r\nPlease select the operating system to start: \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n Microsoft Windows XP Professional\r\n \r\n Microsoft Windows 98 \r\n \r\nUse ↑ and ↓ to move the highlight to your choice. \r\nPress Enter to choose. \r\nSeconds until highlighted choice will be started automatically: 23 \r\n \r\nFor troubleshooting and startup options for Windows, press F8.\r\n

If the boot loader timeout option in boot.ini (see example below) is set to 0, the NTLDR boot menu does not appear.

Example boot.ini:


\r\n[boot loader]
\r\ntimeout=30
\r\ndefault=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\\WINDOWS
\r\n[operating systems]
\r\nmulti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
\r\nC:\\="Microsoft Windows 98"
\r\n