Boot Into XP Using A Floppy!

First format a floppy disk using XP’s format utility: open My Computer, rightclick the floppy icon, and select Format.
Copy the files ntldr and ntdetect.com from the i386 folder in the
Windows XP CD to the root of the floppy disk. Then create a file
called “boot.ini” in the root of the floppy disk to contain information
corresponding to the computer which you want to boot using the
floppy.

The boot.inifile should look something like this:
[boot loader]
timeout = 30
default =
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS = “Microsoft Windows
XP Professional” /fastdetect

If XP is installed in any directory other than “Windows”, say “x”, the third line must read:
default = multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\x
and the fifth line must read:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\x = “Microsoft Windows XP
Professional” /fastdetect
Also, in the third and fifth lines, in partition(y), y indicates the partition number in which XP has been installed.Change it to the appropriate value. To find the exact values for your system, in XP,
right-click My Computer and click on Manage. Click Disk Management in the left pane. Now you will be able to view all the drives and their partitions on the right-hand side, look at the bottom right part of the window. Each drive is labelled;there is the drive letter along with the
drive name, in the next line you will see the drive capacity and the file-system and in the last line, you will see the health status.
Observe this last line for each drive and in one of the drive, you will see the status as Healthy (System). This is the boot partition where XP resides.
Note the disk number, say X, at the right of this drive, this is the value which you should put in the rdisk(X). You will be graphically able to find the partition number by counting the partition from
left. If the system partition is the first then you should use partition(1), if it is second then it will be partition(2), an so on.
If the computer boots from a SCSI hard disk, multi(0) must be replaced by scsi(x), where x depends upon the adapter specified in the SCSI driver. If the scsi(x) option has been made use of in the boot.ini file, copy the device driver for the SCSI controller and put it in theroot of the floppy disk, along with the three other files, and rename it to ntbootdd.sys.
In the case of SCSI hard disks, in the third and fifth lines, in disc(z), z represents the SCSI-ID of the hard disk  that must be booted into. Change it to the appropriate value

Category: Boot Floppy, Windows