What are the necessary boot files? 4

[GoatyGoat]

I'm deleting everything on my C: Drive from Windows (my Windows XP Drive is E.

What files are the ones that MUST be kept, that are necessary for bootup?

I know "boot.ini" is one of them...but I have so much crap on this drive (from a 3 - year Win 98 installation) that there are about 50 files in the root C:. So which ones do I need to keep?

Thanks for any advise given.
(P.S. Don't tell me to format...I have reasons not to, which I am not going to go into )

 

[bcastner]

C:\NTLDR /Hidden
C:\NTDETECT.COM /Hidden
C:\BOOT.INI

If you have the Recovery Console installed:
C:\CMDCONS
If you use a SCSI disk, you also need the SCSI driver

C:\NTBOOTDD.SYS /Hidden

 

[gpalmer711]

The following are essential files for WIndows XP

Table A.2 Essential Startup Files

Ntldr Reads the Boot.ini file, presents the boot menu, and loads Ntoskrnl.exe, Bootvid.dll, Hal.dll, and boot-start device drivers.

Boot.ini Contains options for starting the version of Windows that Setup installs and any preexisting Windows installations.

Ntdetect.com After the boot selection is made, Ntldr loads and executes this 16-bit real-mode program to query the computer for basic device and configuration information. This information includes the following:

The time and date information stored in the system's CMOS (nonvolatile memory).

The types of buses (for example, ISA, PCI, EISA, Micro Channel Architecture [MCA]) on the system and identifiers for devices attached to the buses.

The number, size, and type of disk drives on the system.

The types of mouse input devices connected to the system.

The number and type of parallel ports configured on the system.

Pagefile.sys Contains memory data that Windows is unable to fit into physical RAM. During Startup, the virtual memory manager moves data in and out of the paging file to optimize the amount of physical memory available to the operating system and applications.

Ntbootdd.sys If either the boot or system drives are SCSI-based, Ntldr loads this file and uses it instead of the boot-code functions for disk access.


Greg Palmer

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Any feed back is appreciated.

 

[GoatyGoat]

Thanks a lot both of you