Boot.ini question

Timothy Daniels wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Timothy Daniels wrote

The meaning of "rdisk(0)" is "the hard drive having an
MBR and nearest the head of the BIOS's hard drive
boot order".

So when one changes the hard drive (having an MBR)
that is at the head of the hard drive boot order, one
changes the hard drive designated by "rdisk(0)".
This may easily be checked by anyone familiar with
boot.ini and the boot process.

I told you how to prove that it has absolutely NOTHING
to do with the bios's hard drive boot order at all.

It does in *my* PC,

Dont believe it, you're fooling yourself on that.

and my PC is a pretty near generic Dell Dimension.

Then it doesnt work like you claim.

And I told you how to prove that.

"Rod Speed" wrote:
Then it doesnt work like you claim.

And I told you how to prove that.


All you wrote was convoluted gibberish.
Write something that clearly makes sense,
then someone can check your veracity.

*TimDaniels*

Timothy Daniels wrote
Rod Speed wrote

Then it doesnt work like you claim.

And I told you how to prove that.

All you wrote was convoluted gibberish.

Lying, as always when your nose is rubbed in your stupidity.

Write something that clearly makes sense,
then someone can check your veracity.

I'll just tell you to go and **** yourself instead.

Anyone who isnt brain dead can work out what I said.

You're brain dead ? Your problem.

En ,
Timothy Daniels va escriu
You point out an important point, because the "x" in
"rdisk(x)" refers to position in the "hard drive boot order",

Yes.

not simply to the "boot order" - which includes other
bootable devices besides hard drives.

Not really agree (but it could be a disagreement about words, again.)
The "boot order" (really, the "IPL Priority", or "the position inside the
IPL table") only includes _one_ entry for one "BAID entry" corresponding to
the "first (0x80) harddisk"; the other Int13h harddisks are not present in
this table.

What you are seeing on your Dell Dimension is a feature (pretty) specific to
your BIOS, which displays in the so-called "Boot Device Menu", obtained with
a press on F12 while booting, along with all the IPL devices as prescribed
by the BBS standard, _all_ the harddisks installed (and also the BIOS setup,
and the Dell utilities partition, or IDE diagnostics).
As a result, the BAID first harddisk occurs normaly twice (one as e.g.
"Primary Master Drive", and another as "Hard-disk Drive C:".)

Antoine

En , Rod Speed va escriu
But NOT when you JUST change the boot order sequence.

Correct, assuming the generally used meaning for "boot order sequence"
("order inside the IPL table", also known as "IPL Priority", according to
the standard.)

Thats what he claims and he's just plain wrong on that.

Well, he does not really claim that.
He wrote something that you read this way, but his obvious intent were
different, like I paraphrased earlier. What he thought about is an extension
of the BCV priority (as described in 5.3 of the BBS standard) which
encompasses also changing the relative order of the ATA drives. It is an
obvious extension to provide (it allows to boot independantly from a master
or a slave drive, for example), but it is by no mean "standard".

I have no recent experience of Phoenix BIOS besides Dell, so whether it is
common or not among those is not known to me. I do not know of a similar
thing with Award or AMI (they seem to adhere more strictly to the standard).
And I understand neither you do...


Antoine

Antoine Leca wrote
Rod Speed wrote

But NOT when you JUST change the boot order sequence.

Correct, assuming the generally used meaning for
"boot order sequence" ("order inside the IPL table",
also known as "IPL Priority", according to the standard.)

Where exactly are you getting that from ?

Thats what he claims and he's just plain wrong on that.

Well, he does not really claim that.

Yes he does. He claims that the N in rdisk(N) refers to the
entry in the bios boot order list. That is just plain wrong.

He wrote something that you read this way, but his
obvious intent were different, like I paraphrased earlier.

Cant agree with that at all.

ALL he is saying to you now is that its only the hard drives
with an MBR that matter in the bios boot order list, as
opposed to all entrys in that list including optical drives etc.

What he thought about is an extension of the BCV priority
(as described in 5.3 of the BBS standard) which encompasses
also changing the relative order of the ATA drives. It is an
obvious extension to provide (it allows to boot independantly
from a master or a slave drive, for example), but it is
by no mean "standard".

Irrelevant to what the rdisk() entry actually refers to.

It does NOT refer to the entrys in the bios boot order list.

And its completely trivial to prove that it doesnt with the test I posted.

I have no recent experience of Phoenix BIOS besides Dell, so
whether it is common or not among those is not known to me.

Thats irrelevant to what the rdisk() entry actually refers to.

I do not know of a similar thing with Award or AMI
(they seem to adhere more strictly to the standard).

There is no 'standard' with what the bios boots from.

And I understand neither you do...

Wrong again.

ABSTRACT

This experiment shows that the Phoenix Technologies BIOS
exposes the hard drive boot order to ntldr such that the para-
meter "rdisk(x)" in the boot.ini file corresponds to the hard
drive having a displacement "x" from the head of the hard drive
boot order, where "x" is a positive integer starting with 0.


HARDWARE

Dell Dimension XPS-R450 with a Phoenix Tech BIOS,
(3) Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 hard drives connected to
(1) SIIG IDE PCI controller card.


HARD DRIVE CONFIGURATION

IDE channel 0, Master - 80GB hard drive
IDE channel 0, Slave - 40GB hard drive
IDE channel 1, Master - 120GB hard drive

Each HD has a Master Boot Record (MBR),
each HD has as its partition #1 a Primary partition
that
1) has a Boot Sector,
2) is marked "Active", and which
3) contains the boot files ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com .


SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

Microsoft WindowsXP Pro installed in partition #1 of each HD.

boot.ini file in 80GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

boot.ini file in 40GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

boot.ini file in 120GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetec
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect


EXPERIMENT

Each HD was in turn put at the head of the BIOS's hard drive
boot order and the PC was started. Each of the three entries in
the boot.ini-derived boot menu was selected and the OS that loaded
was recorded. A file with a name identifying the HD it was on was
put on the desktop of each OS in partition #1 of each HD to aid in
identifying the HD. Since the boot.ini files contained entries
only for the partition #1 on each HD, the experiment was a specific
test for the meaning of the "rdisk()" parameter.

Then the order of the 2nd and 3rd HD in the hard drive
boot order was reversed, and the above experiment was repeated.


RESULTS

HD boot order: 80GB, 40GB, 120GB
menu option selected: booted:
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 80GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 40GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 120GB, part 1

HD boot order: 80GB, 120GB, 40GB
menu option selected: booted:
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 80GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 120GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 40GB, part 1

HD boot order: 40GB, 80GB, 120GB
menu option selected: booted:
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 40GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 80GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 120GB, part 1

HD boot order: 40GB, 120GB, 80GB
menue option selected: booted:
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 40GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 120GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 80GB, part 1

HD boot order: 120GB, 40GB, 80GB
menue option selected: booted:
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 120GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 40GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 80GB, part 1

HD boot order: 120GB, 80GB, 40GB
menue option selected: booted:
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 120GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 80GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 40GB, part 1


DISCUSSION

The "rdisk()" parameter was seen to always correspond to the
position of the hard drive in the Phoenix Tech BIOS's hard drive
boot order through all permutations of the hard drive boot order.
Whether this correspondence is found in other BIOSes is unknown
by this investigator, but since the Phoenix Tech's BIOSes are used
by several large manufacturers of PCs, it is probably a very
common meaning for "rdisk()" among modern PCs running a
Microsoft Windows operating system.


*TimDaniels*, Investigator

Timothy Daniels wrote:

ABSTRACT

This experiment shows that the Phoenix Technologies BIOS
exposes the hard drive boot order to ntldr such that the para-
meter "rdisk(x)" in the boot.ini file corresponds to the hard
drive having a displacement "x" from the head of the hard drive
boot order, where "x" is a positive integer starting with 0.

No it doesnt.

HARDWARE

Dell Dimension XPS-R450 with a Phoenix Tech BIOS,
(3) Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 hard drives connected to

(1) SIIG IDE PCI controller card.

That alone is a problem. You dont get the effect you
are claiming with drives on the motherboard IDE ports.

Bet that is the real reason you have ****ed up so spectacularly.

HARD DRIVE CONFIGURATION

IDE channel 0, Master - 80GB hard drive
IDE channel 0, Slave - 40GB hard drive
IDE channel 1, Master - 120GB hard drive

Each HD has a Master Boot Record (MBR),
each HD has as its partition #1 a Primary partition
that
1) has a Boot Sector,
2) is marked "Active", and which
3) contains the boot files ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com .

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

Microsoft WindowsXP Pro installed in partition #1 of each HD.

boot.ini file in 80GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

That boot.ini is just plain wrong on the comments on each
entry, they arent all for the 80G drive, there is one for
each physical drive because the rdisk value varies.

Otherwise fine up till here.

But you shouldnt have a boot.ini on these other two
drives, that just confuses the issue since you dont
know which boot.ini is actually being used at boot time.

boot.ini file in 40GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

boot.ini file in 120GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetec
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

EXPERIMENT

Each HD was in turn put at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order
and the PC was started.

You cant do it that way either. You should be leaving the 80G drive
with the only boot.ini at the top of the hard drive boot order list, so
you can be sure that that drive is being booted by the bios.

THEN you should swap JUST the 40G and the 120G
drives in the boot order list, while keeping them at
lower priority in the boot order list than the 80G drive
and see what drive gets booted when you select each
of the boot.ini entrys with rdisk values of 1 and 2.

Each of the three entries in the boot.ini-derived boot menu was selected
and the OS that loaded was recorded. A file with a name identifying the
HD it was on was put on the desktop of each OS in partition #1 of each HD
to aid in
identifying the HD. Since the boot.ini files contained entries
only for the partition #1 on each HD, the experiment was a specific test
for the meaning of the "rdisk()" parameter.

Then the order of the 2nd and 3rd HD in the hard drive boot order was
reversed, and the above experiment was repeated.

RESULTS

HD boot order: 80GB, 40GB, 120GB
menu option selected: booted:
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 80GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 40GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 120GB, part 1

HD boot order: 80GB, 120GB, 40GB
menu option selected: booted:
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 80GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 120GB, part 1
(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 40GB, part 1

HD boot order: 40GB, 80GB, 120GB
menu option selected: booted:
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 40GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 80GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 120GB, part 1

HD boot order: 40GB, 120GB, 80GB
menue option selected: booted:
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 40GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 120GB, part 1
(40GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 80GB, part 1

HD boot order: 120GB, 40GB, 80GB
menue option selected: booted:
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 120GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 40GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 80GB, part 1

HD boot order: 120GB, 80GB, 40GB
menue option selected: booted:
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1 120GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1 80GB, part 1
(120GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1 40GB, part 1

DISCUSSION

The "rdisk()" parameter was seen to always correspond to the
position of the hard drive in the Phoenix Tech BIOS's hard drive
boot order through all permutations of the hard drive boot order.

No it wasnt, you confused the issue with the SIIG IDE PCI controller card.

Whether this correspondence is found in other BIOSes is unknown by this
investigator, but since the Phoenix Tech's BIOSes are used by several
large manufacturers of PCs, it is probably a very common meaning for
"rdisk()" among modern PCs running a Microsoft Windows operating system.

Fraid not, and phoenix bios are the least commonly used of the 3
majors. And most dont have their drives on a PCI controller either.

*TimDaniels*, Investigator

******, actually.

"Rod Speed" wrote:
Timothy Daniels wrote:

ABSTRACT

This experiment shows that the Phoenix Technologies BIOS
exposes the hard drive boot order to ntldr such that the para-
meter "rdisk(x)" in the boot.ini file corresponds to the hard
drive having a displacement "x" from the head of the hard drive
boot order, where "x" is a positive integer starting with 0.

No it doesnt.

HARDWARE

Dell Dimension XPS-R450 with a Phoenix Tech BIOS,
(3) Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 hard drives connected to

(1) SIIG IDE PCI controller card.

That alone is a problem. You dont get the effect you
are claiming with drives on the motherboard IDE ports.

Bet that is the real reason you have ****ed up so spectacularly.


You're grasping at straws. The PCI card is just the controller,
and all it does is connect the hard drives to the BIOS. The BIOS
controls the hard drive boot order and presents them to ntldr and
the OS.

*TimDaniels*

"Rod Speed" wrote:
Timothy Daniels wrote:

ABSTRACT

This experiment shows that the Phoenix Technologies BIOS
exposes the hard drive boot order to ntldr such that the para-
meter "rdisk(x)" in the boot.ini file corresponds to the hard
drive having a displacement "x" from the head of the hard drive
boot order, where "x" is a positive integer starting with 0.

No it doesnt.

HARDWARE

Dell Dimension XPS-R450 with a Phoenix Tech BIOS,
(3) Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 hard drives connected to
(1) SIIG IDE PCI controller card.

HARD DRIVE CONFIGURATION

IDE channel 0, Master - 80GB hard drive
IDE channel 0, Slave - 40GB hard drive
IDE channel 1, Master - 120GB hard drive

Each HD has a Master Boot Record (MBR),
each HD has as its partition #1 a Primary partition
that
1) has a Boot Sector,
2) is marked "Active", and which
3) contains the boot files ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com .

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

Microsoft WindowsXP Pro installed in partition #1 of each HD.

boot.ini file in 80GB HD:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 0, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 1, part 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini) rdisk 2, part 1" /fastdetect

That boot.ini is just plain wrong on the comments on each
entry, they arent all for the 80G drive, there is one for
each physical drive because the rdisk value varies.


Read again. The comments in the boot options indicate
on which HD the boot.ini file resides. Read on, and you'll
see that there is one boot.ini file on each HD, and the boot.ini
file on each HD says in the comments which HD it's on.
This is so one can see during boot-up which boot.ini file
is being used and thus which HD got control from the BIOS.
"(80GB part 1 boot.ini)" means that the boot.ini file is on
the 80GB HD.

*TimDaniels*