Boot disk problems

[DRDAVIDBANNER]

Hi, not sure if this is the right forum but I couldn't realy find another that looked any more appropriate.

Here is the question

I have a boot disk, (in this case a ghost multicast boot disk) I want to make a copy of the disk, why is it if I use the "copy disk utillity" the new boot disk works fine, but if I copy the files from the origial disk to a directory on the C drive and then from the directory to the new disk, I get - NTDLR is missing

Thanks in advance

 

[jrbarnett]

That is because on the boot disk there are some hidden files, of which NTLDR is one, in a specific place on the disk to allow the BIOS to find the NT Loader (which is what NTLDR is).
When you copy files using explorer or the command prompt, you don't know exactly which sectors they are going to be placed on the disk. This is why any bootdisk should be copied using the "Copy Disk" option or some other direct imaging program (eg DOS DISKCOPY command).

Joh

 

[DRDAVIDBANNER]

Thanks for the speedy responce Joh,

Here is my problem. A colleague of mine has copied the contents of a boot disk to the network for me so that I can create one here, I need to take the files from the network and create a new boot disk with them. Is there anyway to place all the hidden files (ntdlr etc) onto a new disk ready for me to simply place the files from the network onto and get a working boot disk?

Thanks

 

[jrbarnett]

Put a blank floppy in the drive, go to my computer, right click drive A:, choose Format and tick the "Copy System Files" option which will force Windows 2000 to copy its system files over there.

You can then copy the extra files from your colleague's disk on to the floppy in the extra space, but if you are prompted to overwrite anything, click "No"

John

 

[DRDAVIDBANNER]

I don't see the option to do that John? I don't remeber seeing it on other systems I have used either?. The only options I have in the format dialoge box are "quick format" and "enable compression"(greyed out)" ???

 

[DRDAVIDBANNER]

I found this which solved the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314079

It appears that the "copy system files" option is only available in win9x systems.

Thanks for the help