What Is a Boot Disk?

Startup Disk, also known as Emergency Startup Disk or Installation Startup Disk. It is a removable storage medium (u disk, compact disc, mobile hard disk, and early floppy disk) with special functions written into the operating system image file. It is mainly used to repair or reinstall the system when the operating system crashes.

The early boot disks were mainly optical disks or floppy disks. With the maturity of mobile storage technology, U disks and mobile hard disks have gradually appeared as boot disks. They have the characteristics of strong mobility and easy use.

Chinese name: Startup Disk

Foreign name: Startup Disk

Basic overview of startup disk

The boot disk is made in the operating system, and it only plays the role of "booting". For example, enter the BIOS, DOS interface, and the starting point of the hard disk of the operating system. This program takes up less space and can be copied and put in CD, mobile hard disk, U disk.

The boot disk is very important. When your system crashes and cannot boot, the boot disk becomes your life-saving straw. It is not difficult to make a bootable disk that can boot the Windows operating system.

There are many versions of Microsoft's operating system. For different operating systems, its boot disk features and uses are also different. And Microsoft has many names for startup disks, such as: Emergency Startup Disk, Emergency Boot Disk, Emergency Repair Disk (ERD), installation startup disk, system boot disk, etc. . In addition, many anti-virus software also provides the function of creating an emergency anti-virus boot disk. What are the differences and uses of these different types of so-called boot disks, this article will explain the boot disk characteristics of several major types of operating systems.

Boot disk

Win9X/Me Win9X / Me Boot Disk

The startup disk contains more than 20 files, including common DOS commands, which can complete disk partitioning, disk formatting, and file copying operations in the DOS environment. At the same time, it also contains a CD-ROM driver that allows you to use the CD-ROM directly in the DOS environment when the Win9X / Me system cannot be started.

It should be noted that if you want to use the created boot disk to start the operating system, you should set it in the BIOS to boot the system from the floppy disk first.

Win98/ME Win98 / ME boot disk

Method 1: During the Win98 / Me installation process, you will be prompted to create a startup disk. If you did not create a startup disk during the installation, you can open the "Control Panel", select "Add / Remove Programs", and click "Startup Disk".

Method 2: After the Win98 installation is complete, a BootDisk.bat file will be generated in the "Windows \ Command" subdirectory, and an EBD subdirectory will also be created. This file can be used to make a boot floppy disk. The production step is to enter the "\ Windows \ Command" subdirectory and execute the Bootdisk.bat program. A prompt message will appear. If the boot disk is placed in floppy drive A, select 1; if the boot disk is placed in B, select 2 , Then press any key to start making a boot disk.

In fact, all the files in the boot disk are hidden in the "Windows \ Command \ Ebd" directory. If you want to make a startup disk in the future, you can just copy all the files in the directory to the floppy disk. The speed is definitely faster than the conventional method.

Method 3: Use NOCOMP.EXE to make a DOS boot disk. Its directory is in% ProgramFiles% \ Plus! \ System.

Win98/Me Features of Startup Disk Win98 / Me

If you boot your computer with a Win98 / Me boot disk, the system will display a boot menu with three options for loading a commonly used CD-ROM drive or performing a normal clean boot:

1.Start computer with CD-ROM support

2.Start computer without CD-ROM support

3.View the Help file.

If you select 1, the Config.sys file loads the corresponding CD-ROM driver, and then loads 2MB RAMDrive. RAMDrive stores the diagnostic tools necessary to solve common problems. RAMDrive is created from system memory (RAM) during processing of the Config.sys file to emulate a physical hard disk. Without RAMDrive, there is not enough space on a single 1.44 MB floppy disk to store diagnostic tools and CD-ROM drivers. Because RAMDrive is created with system RAM during processing of the Config.sys file, it only exists temporarily. If you restart your computer normally, it will disappear.

Note: RAMDrive may cause the drive letter of the CD-ROM to be delayed by one letter. If the CD-ROM drive letter is drive D :, it will become drive E :.

WinXP Boot disk WinXP boot disk manufacturing method

WinXP boot disk production files are not included on the CD-ROM like WinNT / 2000. You need to download a special startup disk creation program from the official Microsoft website. Different versions of XP need to download different versions of the startup disk creation program. The production method is the same as WinNT / 2000, but requires six floppy disks to make it.

U Boot disk

There are many softwares for making bootable U disk: U-speed boot U disk boot disk creation tool, one-key U disk boot disk creation tool, green leaf U disk boot disk creation tool, USBOOT boot disk creation tool.

The following takes USBOOT software to create a bootable USB flash drive as an example to introduce the method of making a bootable USB flash drive. The specific steps are as follows:

1. Insert a USB flash drive and run the USBOOT program. In the "usboot" dialog box that appears, select the USB flash drive.

2. Click the "Click here to select the working mode" option, and select the "ZIP mode" command in the pop-up menu.

3. Click the "Start" button, the system starts to format the USB flash drive, and when finished, it prompts the user to unplug the USB flash drive.

4. After unplugging the USB flash drive, wait for a while and insert the USB flash drive again according to the prompt. The system starts to create the bootable USB flash drive. After the creation is completed, the booting USB flash drive is successfully created.

Note here:

1.Usb-zip should be selected for U disk startup.

2. USB mobile hard disk boot should choose usb-hdd.

3. usb-cdrom should start with usb-cdrom. Second, the USB device must support the boot function.

uwin7 Boot disk u disk installed win7 system:

Step 1: Download and store the ghost win7 system image file

Step 2: Use the shortcut key to enter u depth to start the u disk winpe system

The third step: use u deep PE one-click installation tool to install ghost win7 system ^[1]

uwin8 Boot disk u disk to install win8 system

The first step: use Microsoft's own tools to share a new disk, choose the size to be compressed, which is the size of the disk;

Step 2: Prepare a U disk larger than 4G and an image file reading and writing software, and write the win8 image file to the U disk;

Step 3: Insert the U disk, start the computer, select the U disk to start, and follow the steps to install. ^[2]

ubuntuU Boot disk making ubuntuU disk boot disk

The production of some Windows operating system boot disks was introduced earlier. The Linux operating system has been used by more people. In fact, the production of Linux boot disks is similar to Windows.

The first step: download the image file of ubuntu system under Windows environment;

Step 2: Download an image file reading and writing software and write the image to the USB disk;

Step 3: Insert U disk when you want to use it next time. ^[3]

Boot disk repair disk

Win NT / 2000 boot disk, emergency repair disk

When installing Win NT / 2000, as long as you do not add "/ X (indicating that the installation boot disk is prohibited during installation)" or "/ b (indicating that the installation boot disk is mounted on the hard disk) after Win NT or Win NT32, In this way, you do not need to insert or remove the floppy disk) suffix, then during the installation process, Windows NT will let you insert three floppy disks (four floppy disks for Windows 2000) to generate a Setup Boot Disk. In addition, later During the installation process, you will also be asked if you want to create an emergency repair disk. Microsoft generally calls it Emergency Repair Disk, or ERD for short. The following will focus on the Windows 2000 operating system as an example to explain the installation of the startup disk (Setup Boot Disk) and emergency repair disk (ERD) differences and various characteristics.

Boot disk creation installation and emergency repair disk

If you did not make it during the installation process, you can use the following more convenient methods:

The Win2000 installation boot disk can also be called the system boot disk, which can be created using the bootdisk \ makeboot.exe or MakeBT32.exe program on the Win2000 CD. Among them, the former is created in Win9X / Me and the latter is used in WinNT / 2000. Note that 4 blank floppy disks are required during the production process.

To make an emergency repair disk for Windows 2000, you can click on "Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Backup Program" and click Create Emergency Boot Disk. This emergency repair disk only needs a floppy disk, it does not have any function to start the computer, it is only used to repair Win2000 failures. Also the repair process depends on the information saved in the% systemroot% \ repair folder, which cannot be changed or deleted. At the same time, it is better to select the option "Back up the registry to the repair directory" to save the current registry file to the "Regback" folder in the systemroot / repair folder. As shown, this is useful when there is a problem with the hard drive and the system needs to be restored.

If you want to make a Win NT emergency repair disk, you can use the disk repair program Rdisk.exe to create it. At this time, the file will also be copied from% systemroot% \ repair to the floppy disk.

Boot disk installation Boot disk and emergency repair disk features

The installation boot disk, as its name suggests, is mainly used for a fresh installation of Windows NT / 2000; and the emergency repair disk, which contains information about the current Windows system settings, if the computer fails to start or the system files are damaged or deleted, You can use an emergency repair disk to repair your computer. It should be noted that the files or related programs are not backed up when creating the emergency repair disk, so it cannot replace the regular backup process of the system!

The Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) feature helps troubleshoot system file issues, the boot environment (if you have a dual-boot or multi-boot system), and a partitioned boot sector on the boot volume. If you use a floppy disk to start the installation disk and an emergency repair disk, you can solve many operating system startup problems, which will be discussed below. Also, you can try emergency repair even if you did not create an emergency repair disk; however, some changes made to the system, such as service pack updates, will be lost or require reinstallation.

How a boot disk uses emergency repair on a system that won't boot

You can use the emergency repair feature of Windows 2000 to resolve problems that prevent your computer from starting, including the registry, system files, partition boot sector, and boot environment. However, without creating an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) using a backup tool, you cannot use the Emergency Repair process to resolve system issues. If you did not create an ERD and you still try to repair your computer using the emergency repair process, the process will not resolve the issue.

The emergency repair process has been introduced before and will not be described here.

Detailed description of the contents of the startup disk emergency repair disk

When installing Win NT / 2000, the installer creates registry information under% systemroot% \ System32 \ Config. In order to be able to restore the system, the installer will also create a% systemroot% \ Repair folder. It was mentioned above that the contents of the ERD disk are mainly copies of the files in it. It mainly contains the following files:

Autoexec.nt: a copy of "\ system32 \ Autoexec.nt" in the root directory, used to initialize the MS-DOS environment.

Config.nt: a copy of "\ system32 \ Config.nt" in the root directory, used to initialize the MS-DOS environment.

Default: HKEY_USER \ DEFAULT registry key, for compressed files.

Ntuser.dat: For Windows NT, it is a compressed version of "% systemroot% \ Profiles \ Default User \ Ntuser.dat"; for Win2000, it is the "Documents and Settings \ Default User \ Ntuser." "dat".

The Sam: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SAM registry key is a compressed file.

Security: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SECURITY registry key, for compressed files.

Setup.log: Records which files are installed and periodic redundancy check information used during the repair process.

Software: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE registry key, for compressed files.

The System: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM registry key is a compressed file.

Here's a special reminder: For Win NT systems, if you run the Rdisk.exe disk repair program from its Explorer, it will not update the above Default, Sam, and Security files. To update all the above files, you can enter "Rdisk / S" in "Start \ Run", and use the "/ S" suffix option to update all the registry keywords in the Repair folder under the system root directory.

Win NT/2000 Making of Win NT / 2000 boot disk

The bootable boot disk mentioned here means that when Win NT / 2000 is installed, the Win NT / 2000 system can be started directly from this disk. Making a bootable boot disk The Win NT / 2000 bootable boot disk is also different from the Win9X / Me bootable boot disk. It cannot be created by formatting.

To make a Win NT / 2000 bootable boot disk, you must first format a floppy disk under the WinNT / 2000 operating system; and then boot.ini, bootfont.bin, ntdetect.com, ntldr, The five files bootsect.dos can be copied to the floppy disk just made. In this way, once the system files in the root directory are damaged and the system cannot be started, this boot disk can be used as an emergency.

Two functions of boot disk antivirus software boot disk

Anti-virus software on the market generally provides the function of creating an emergency disk. It generally contains two functions:

The first is the role of the boot disk, that is, first boot the system to the DOS state;

The second is the function of the emergency DOS anti-virus disk (Rescue Scan Disk), that is, after booting with a floppy disk, if the computer system memory or boot area is infected by a virus, you can use this emergency anti-virus disk to check for viruses and remove it.

In addition, the boot disk of some anti-virus software also has some additional functions, such as backup and repair of hard disk partition table information and so on.

It should also be noted that even if a rescue disk has been made, the rescue disk should be updated whenever the system's hardware or settings change, and whenever the version of the antivirus software is upgraded. It is important to keep a current rescue key on hand to ensure that the computer is always on and able to retain important system data and settings.