"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1069597984k@trad
In article
writes:

The most obvious very practical advantage of NTFS is that you can
pull-the plug on XP and not have any reason at all to run Scandisk
the next time you boot.

I know that's true that you can just power down an XP machine, but I
didn't realize it was because of the NTFS.

Speaking of semi-modern operating systems, how do you make a bootable
floppy on Win2000? On XP, there's a check box for it in the Format
dialog box, but it isn't there on Win2K. When I looked in the Win2K
help, it describes how to make a set of four basic installation disks
from the CD, but not how to just make a boot-to-DOS floppy. There's
"related topics" but clicking on that gives me an error message which
suggests that not all of the help is installed (or something is
corrupted) on my machine.

First question is what OS do you want that floppy to boot.

When you check the box in XP, you end up with a bootable floppy for Window
ME which can be problematical or not depending on your application.

It turns out that any diskette formatted normally on an XP or Win2k system
is in some sense bootable. However, it lacks what it takes to boot something
useful. However, if you copy a few files onto it, namely NTLDR,
NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI you get a floppy that will boot a program that
will prompt you to boot predefined various OS kernels on just about any mass
storage device that is active at the time. The definitions are in BOOT.INI.
This methodology can be used to boot a NT or XP system that has somehow lost
its boot sector, master boot record, or the files I just named.


I think I asked this question before, and got an answer, but like
most information that I don't do very often, it's lost (or else
written down and files in a safe place, which is about the same). So
call me an idiot, but call me if you have the answer.

Basically in Win2K, if you want to format a disk that can boot a DOS-like
system, what you usually do is boot a disk that has that DOS-like system
system. Win98SE and later installation CDs will do that for you.

There is also a website http://www.bootdisk.com/ that provides the means to
make bootable disks for any number of different legacy DOS and Unix-type
systems.