Re: Boot.ini question

Antoine Leca <root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
Gerhard Fiedler wrote

ntldr gets read from disk, loaded into memory and then run by the
BIOS. Since you seem to object to the common term "booting" for
this, I'll call this for the rest of the discussion "loading ntldr".
Since ntldr gets loaded by the BIOS, it only can be loaded by the
BIOS from drives the BIOS can boot from (sorry for this confusing
term <g>, but that's the one you were using).

Admitting this lemma...

What's a lemma ?

This would be the drives in the BIOS's "hard drive boot order" list.

... it does not match with what Tim was saying initially.

Yes it does.

ntldr may be able to load Windows from drives the BIOS can't boot from

What you seem to miss is that Tim's BIOS does not have such a concept.

Irrelevant to the whole point of the rdisk() parameter.

All that proves is that Tim's BIOS is a complete abortion
that utterly flouts the whole point of the rdisk() parameter.

Sure, one of my BIOS, and an awful large number of other BIOSes
out there as well, do have such drives; yet, there are other BIOSes
which allow to boot easily from any drive recognized by the BIOS (BAID),

Not when its a logical drive in an extended dos partition.

That was always one reason for the ntldr approach,
to allow booting of what the bios could not boot.

and furthermore it seems reasonable to envision this.

Irrelevant to whether it makes any sense at all for the rdisk()
parameter to be the entry in the hard drive boot order list.

That makes absolutely no sense whatever, if only because
the boot.ini needs to be edited when the order of the hard
drives in the hard drive boot order list is changed. It makes
a hell of a lot more sense for the rdisk() param to be the
physical order of the drives on the controller instead so that
the boot.ini doesnt need to be changed when the hard drive
boot order is changed, particularly when the order of the
drives below the entry at the top of the hard drive boot order
list are moved.

(that is, it can't load ntldr from them).

That's two different things. Being able to boot from
a harddisk is ordinarily reserved to the 80h drive;

No it isnt with modern bios.

being able to load Ntldr (into memory) is not so restricted.

Not clear what this is about, thats part of the boot.

Whether ntldr can load Windows from a drive has nothing
to do with whether the BIOS can load ntldr from that drive.

(Of course, due to entertraining confusion, one has to mentally
change "to load" to the more generally used "to boot" above).

This are two different processes -- one is controlled
by the BIOS, the other is controlled by ntldr.

Well, here you mean "to control" to designate the binary code
which is executing initially. I would reserve "to control" to designate
the small, configurable, part of the process; in the first case, we'll
find the "boot order" (whatever that means), and also the actual
MBR and secondary boot code; in the second case, Boot.ini.

What is important here is that both are not completely independant;
particularly, if you change the "boot order" (and hence the placement
of the Boot.ini file, Rod's main point, very true indeed), you could
also affect the interpretation of Boot.ini.
Which, ultimately, was Tim's point.

No it isnt. Tim claimed that the rdisk() parameter is ALWAYS
the entry in the hard drive boot list. That its just plain wrong,
and all he has proved is that it is with that complete abortion
of a bios he is using and there are damned good reasons for
not doing it like that. And its certainly not what MS intended
because none of the ARC path documention even mentions
the boot order list at all.


.

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