[syslinux] memdisk and winxp boot disk

[H. Peter Anvin]

Roy Badami wrote:
> 
> If Giulio is describing the technique I'm familiar with from NT (and a
> cursory look at the microsoft web page suggests he is) then it's not
> actually a bootable NT floppy (I don't believe there's any documented
> way to build a bootable NT system on a floppy, though the NT installer
> *does* actually boot a minimal NT system from floppy.)
> 
> What we're talking about is a standard disaster recovery technique for
> NT and derivatives which can be used when the NT boot sector or boot
> loader is damaged.
> 
> What you do is you place the first stage boot loader (ie the boot
> sector and the files NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM) -- which would normally
> live on the hard disk -- on a floppy instead.  You also place a copy
> of the BOOT.INI file there; this tells the boot loader where to find
> the NT system partition (which even in a hard disk boot needn't be the
> same partition as the boot partition).
> 
> The kernel is *not* on the floppy, it is loaded perfectly normally
> from the hard disk partition referenced by the BOOT.INI file.
> 
> Normally, the boot loader uses INT 13 to load the NT kernel from hard
> disk, though it is possible (but extremely rare) in SCSI
> configurations to have the boot loader load an additional device
> driver file and then bootstrap the kernel by accessing the SCSI card
> directly.
> 
> The BOOT.INI file that Guilio is using instructs the boot loader to
> use the BIOS to load a kernel and other associated files from the
> \WINDOWS directory tree on the first partition of the first hard disk.
> 

I see.  Either way, there is nothing MEMDISK would have to do with 
anything then, since I gather he's using a floppy image.

	-hpa