19 Jan
2005
19 Jan
'05
3:04 p.m.
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.