Hi all. I was wondering if somebody could clarify for me the state of play with Windows booting. Do System Files still have to be on an Active Primary Partition? Do the boot files have to live there too? Basically whats possible and whats not. I'm afraid old books have confussed me a little :-(
Its jsut a combination of factors and my general ignorance of WIndows and how it runs. For example I have the impression that both system and boot files had to be on the same active partition. GReat....seems simple enough, but if thats still the case whats the point of using the ARC naming system to idnetify where the boot files are stored? Using ARC surley means that the boot files have complete portability not only within a drive but also within any HDD connected to the system! Similarly why do you need an active partion at all when the master file table is already pointing to the system files? Do the system files still have to live on the Primary Master HDD? Where do they live if you're using SATA drives? Channel 1 Master?!?! ??????
Doesn't the MBR tell the OS which drive to boot from? Thus allowing multiple installations of all OS's I have my primary OS (xp pro) on my only sata drive that is on actaully on sata channel 3 (gfx card blocks 1&2) And vista ultimate on IDE secondary.
In Windows the MBR tells the system which Partition it should look for BOOT.INI on ( and other files), which is what actually specifies another drive. LIke this the system files, used to direct the system to the actual boot files would have to be on a partition on the drive thats first in the BIOS boot menu, if you follow what I'm saying. The MBR can't tell the OS which drive to boot from because the OS isn't loaded yet.
The MBR has the information of the location of the boot loader. When the BIOS starts the computer, it looks in the MBR what it needs to do.
