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NTLDR (NT Loader) is the boot loader for Windows NT, including its later versions (2000/XP/Longhorn). NTLDR can be run either from a floppy disk or a hard disk. If run from a hard disk, it must be stored on the active partition, which itself must be FAT or NTFS. Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) and above support FAT32, while older versions only support FAT12 or FAT16. It can either load an installation of Windows NT, the boot sector of another drive, or a boot sector stored on the drive where NTLDR is located. NTLDR requires two files to be on the first partition: NTLDR, which contains most of the boot loader itself, and boot.ini, which contains configuration options for a boot menu. Boot.ini uses Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) pathnames for locating installations of NT.
The following is an example NTLDR boot menu:
Please select the operating system to start:
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 98
Use ↑ and ↓ to move the highlight to your choice.
Press Enter to choose.
Seconds until highlighted choice will be started automatically: 30
For troubleshooting and startup options for Windows, press F8.
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If the boot loader timeout option in boot.ini is set to 0, the NTLDR boot menu does not appear.
Example boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"
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