Added by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi, last edited by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi on Jan 15, 2008  (view change)

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About BOOT.INI

A file called BOOT.INI stores information regarding the physical location(s) of your various Windows NT-based installations. NTLDR accesses this file to get a list of the installed operating systems and display them in the on-screen boot menu for the end user to pick and OS to load into.

If you're getting a BOOT.INI-related error, then you need to create or update your BOOT.INI file to reflect the correct system information.

Location

BOOT.INI is stored on your boot partition, which normally contains other files like NTLDR, NTDETECT, and a BOOT folder.

A typical BOOT.INI file: 

 
[boot loader] 
timeout=30 
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS 
[operating systems] 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003" /fastdetect

[boot loader]

The section entitled [boot loader] contains the global NTLDR settings. These include timeout which defines how long NTLDR will wait for the end user to select an OS, and default which tells NTLDR what OS to boot into if the timeout value runs out.

[operating systems]

This section lists the operating systems installed on this physical machine. Each operating system has a line that describes its location in standard ARC path format.

  • multi(0): The adapter of the hard disk that Windows is on. Keep it set to 0.
  • disk(0): The physical disk number to load Windows from if multi is not used. Since we're using multi, keep this 0 as well.
  • rdisk(x): The physical disk number to load Windows from. rdisk() begins counting from 0, so the first drive on your system is rdisk(0), the second is rdisk(1), and so on and so forth.
  • partition(y): The number of the partition on the drive rdisk(x). partition(y) starts counting from 1, so the first partition is partition(1), the second is partition(2), etc. partition(y) counts primary partitions first then counts extended partitions.

Rebuilding BOOT.INI

There are multiple ways of re-creating BOOT.INI to get your system up and running once more:

Manually Creating/Updating BOOT.INI

Now that you've read all about the contents of BOOT.INI and what they mean in the section above, it shouldn't be too difficult to create a proper, working BOOT.INI that correctly points to the available Windows XP installations on your PC.

  1. If you don't have a file called BOOT.INI on your boot partition (usually C:), create a new file in notepad and save it to there, calling it "BOOT.INI" (with the quotes).
  2. Copy this to the notepad window: 
    [boot loader] 
timeout=30 
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS 
[operating systems] 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
  3. Update the rdisk(0) and partition(1) values to point to the correct disk and partition numbers. Refer to the information above for details on how this number is determined. Make this change to both ARC path lines – make sure they're both exactly the same.
  4. Save your changes to BOOT.INI and exit notepad.
  5. Reboot to test.

Automated Creation of BOOT.INI

If you have a Windows XP or Windows 2000 CD lying around, you can use it to automatically re-create your boot.ini file to point to the correct partitions.

  1. Insert your Windows 2000 or XP CD in the drive, and proceed to boot from it.
  2. When prompted to "Press 'R' to enter Recovery Console," do so.
  3. Once in the recovery console you may be asked for the Administrator password for security purposes. If you know it, enter it and hit <enter>. If you don't, use a Windows 2000 CD to bypass the prompt.
  4. Enter this in the console: 
    bootcfg /rebuild
exit
  5. The bootcfg command will search your hard drive for valid, available Windows NT-XP installations, and proceed to add each to boot.ini. You will be prompted to name each entry (give it any name you like) and provide load options (give it "/fastdetect" without the quotes).
  6. The exit command will quit the Recovery Console.
  7. Remove the 2000/XP CD from the drive and reboot.

Boot.ini has been recreated and should do the trick.

By Repair Installing (In-Place Upgrade) Windows XP

If you're not comfortable with the command-line, have no idea what order your partitions are in, and don't want to mess around with things that could quickly get ugly – don't worry, there's still hope for your BOOT.INI yet!

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