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<<I used an 'fdisk'-like utility that re-wrote my partition information. Now WinNT's boot manager doesn't come up. Will booting my emergency disk restore this situation?>> John, Yes it will. Choose verify boot files. <<Also, I'm looking for advice about creating new entries in the BOOT.INI file to add a boot partition for Linux, a Unix-like OS that's been added to its own partitions on my disk. I examined the entry that WinNT added to this file to describe itself, but I'd love to hear someone else's explanation of the parameters on that line. The WinNT help system was of little help.>> The bootloader only supports one other non Winodws NT operating system. You must be able to save the oter operating systems bootsector to the bootsect.dos The path to each Windows NT installation is described in the BOOT.INI file using conventions that are part of the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specifications. These conventions are used for compatibility with ARC computers that run windows NT. An ARC path name is of the form <component>(<x>)disk(<y>)rdisk(<z>)partition(<a>)\<path> where: <component> identifies the controller for the device. The two valid values for this field are scsi and multi, where scsi indicates a SCSI disk and multi indicates a disk interface other than SCSI, such as an IDE or ESDI drive. <x> is the ordinal number of the adapter. For example, in a system with multiple SCSI adapters, the first adapter to load and initialize would be 0, the next would be 1, and so on for all adapters. In the case of a computer with a single adapter, this number is always 0. <y> is (for scsi) the SCSI bus number for multiple SCSI adapters times 32 plus the target ID of the disk. For multi, this number is always 0. <z> is (for scsi) the device's logical unit number (LUN). For multi, this is the ordinal for the disk on the adapter and is generally either 0 or 1. <a> is the partition ordinal for the partition used on the disk. All partitions receive a number except for type 5 (MS-DOS Extended) and type 0 (unused) partitions, with primary partitions being numbered first and then logical drives. NOTE: These numbers start at 1, as opposed to all other entries, which start with 0. <path> is a directory path. For example, a system with one hard disk with the following partitions ————————– | c: | d: | e: | ————————– has the following ARC paths if the controller is an IDE and if C: and E: are primary partitions and D: is a logical drive in an extended partition: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) for c: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) for e: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3) for d: If the same disk is SCSI, is connected to the second SCSI controller in the system, and has a SCSI ID of 3, the ARC paths are: scsi(1)disk(3)rdisk(0)partition(1) for c: scsi(1)disk(3)rdisk(0)partition(2) for e: scsi(1)disk(3)rdisk(0)partition(3) for d: Eddie [Microsoft] Read action !re 138042 Enter reply. (/EXIT when done) 1: Thank you very much. To reiterate, what you saidphrase when aat you just told me, 2: it's not possible for the WinNT boot loader to choose 3: between more than WinNT and one other operating system? 4: 5: If that's true, got the impression from the miniimal online help that t 6: he BOOT.INI file would support any number of OSs., a 7: nd that it"all I needed to do was use Noetpadtepad" to edit 8: the file. f Savvy use r that I wanam, I was able to figure 9: out that the BOOT.INI file undin a DOS FAT partition is 10: in fact hidden and system attrib'sd., meaning that 11: it doesn not not show up in Notepad's file requester, and 12: that unless you change the file attributes, you can't 13: change irt at all. In short, I hope they document this 14: a little better next time. 15: /post Message # 138169 posted