Hi Everyone My first visit so I’m not sure if I've got the correct place for this but nothing else seemed to fit. I've got a question about a possible new feature in some bioses. I'm sure I read somewhere that some can now directly load the ntldr on the active primary partition on the boot drive if it fails to find a working MBR. I've been searching round for a couple of days now to confirm this but can't come up with anything. Starting to think I must have dreamt the whole thing. Anyone here heard of this and would it be possible? Thanks.
Hi aKHo, thanks for the welcome. I’m thinking now this thread should have went in the Bios Guide section, so please moderators move it if deemed appropriate. A few years ago if I had read my first post above I would not have had the slightest idea what ntldr was, so perhaps I should just explain a little. The ntldr file is the very first boot file of all WinNT OSes. The bios loads the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard drive, which then loads the PBR (Partition Boot Record) of the partition, which then loads ntldr, which then starts the boot process of the OS. Any problem with the MBR or PBR and you can’t boot Windows. I don’t know if the bios could read the partition table to locate the ntldr file and load it (don’t know if load is the right word) but if it could I do think that the ntldr could then boot the OS as long as the MBR and PBR was not totally trashed and still held the other details the OS needed to boot. After all ntldr can be run from a boot floppy, which then does not use the MBR or PBR (just the partition table) to find the next boot files in the process.
Hmm.. Frankly, I didn't hear anything about this. But that doesn't mean it can't exist. Still, a corrupted MBR can be corrected using the FIXMBR utility.
Thanks Adrian, if you have never heard of it I think I’ll go with the dream idea then. If I learn anything to the contrary I’ll certainly let you know. Not sure it would be a good idea however, especially if the bios threw up the legendary “NTLDR is Missing” error message. Most people would assume it had come from the PBR on the hard drive. If it could be done it would certainly get a lot of people out of trouble as how many average computer users have ever heard of even Fixmbr or Fixboot, let alone the Recovery Console or an XP boot floppy. (Fixboot rewrites the PBR).
fixmbr? how does that work? usually i use chkdsk to repair it. but normally doesn't work. mostly happens when i install something which gets corrupted halfway... mess up MBR! and ends up 2 hour reinstallation..
