The following shows a technique to create a quick boot disk which is convenient to start up a Windows NT/2000/XP system when it fails to enter the Windows environment because any of the master boot record (MBR), the boot sector, or the essential files in the root directory is missing or damaged.
The standard procedure for such an occasion is to use the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD). But it requires an in-depth understanding of the operating system environment. It is not for everybody. Besides, it is just too slow.

The diskette is a bootable diskette which does not rely on any file in the root directory of the C: drive.
The initial bootup menu reflects the contents of the BOOT.INI file which you can edit by NotePad. The following pages in Microsoft's web sites explains technical details of BOOT.INI.

• Contents of the boot.ini file
• Parameters for the boot.ini file

Here's a simple procedure to create a Quick Boot diskette for WinNT/2000/XP. It allows you to start up the Windows NT/2000/XP system with a minimum hassle in case of bootup trouble.

Assume that you are running a healthy WinNT/2000/XP system. Here's how to create the "Windows Quick Boot" diskette:

1. Open a DOS Box (Start > Run... > cmd).
2. FORMAT A:
3. XXCOPY16 C:\NTLDR A:\ /H
4. XXCOPY16 C:\NTDETECT.COM A:\ /H
5. XXCOPY16 C:\NTBOOTDD.SYS A:\
6. XXCOPY16 C:\BOOT.INI A:\

   Note: if you don't have XXCOPY16, use the standard ATTRIB and COPY command to copy the hidden files. XXCOPY16 is a 16-bit version of the XXCOPY freeware utility that is available at http://www.xxcopy.com.

   The three files listed above (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI) are all essential. Optionally, you may copy the following files if they are present in the root directory (needed only when you need to boot into Win9x/ME as a dual-boot system)

7. XXCOPY16 C:\BOOTSECT.DOS A:\ /H
8. XXCOPY16 C:\IO.SYS A:\ /H
9. XXCOPY16 C:\MSDOS.SYS A:\ /H
10. XXCOPY16 C:\CONFIG.SYS A:\ /H
11. XXCOPY16 C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT A:\ /H

    If you have a Recovery Console entry in the menu, add the following two files.

12. XXCOPY16 C:\CMDCONS\NTDETECT.COM A:\CMDCONS\ /H
13. XXCOPY16 C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT A:\CMDCONS\ /H

    If you use a SCSI disk, you also need the SCSI driver

14. XXCOPY16 C:\NTBOOTDD.SYS A:\ /H

Note: The BOOTSECT.DOS and \CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT are specific to the particlar hard disk's drive dimension and cannot be shared with other drive.
This dependency makes the WinXP Quick Boot Diskette specific to the drive. If you have nearly identical disk drives on a different machine, you may use one Win9X Quick Boot Diskette on multiple machines as long as the BOOT.INI configurations are made sharable.

If your system cannot boot up using the Quick Boot Diskette made by this technique, you still need to run the Emergency Repair Disk.

Tip To use your Windows 2000 startup disk as a template to make other startup disks for other servers, copy the startup disk and replace the Boot.ini on the copy with the Boot.ini on another server.