Can I boot to my PC with a ms-dos boot floppy?

Can I boot to my PC with a ms-dos boot floppy?

I am facing problem in booting my PC with a floppy. I have tried the following methods without any success.

1. I formatted a floppy by right-clicking floppy drive from My Computer, choosing format and then choosing the option create an MS-dos bootable floppy. When I tried to boot with this floppy (after making necessary changes in the bios boot sequence order), the PC booted with a message - "Please type the name of the command operator, e.g., c:\windows\command.com..." and an "A>" prompt. Any thing typed at the prompt repeated the same message again and again. I have checked and found that file command.com is very much there on the floppy.

2. I copied NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM AND BOOT.INI from my PC to a floppy. (This had been suggested in Microsoft's support site.) When I tried to boot with this floppy, a message popped up; "ntldr is not found at disk(0)\rdisk(0)\partition(1)..." etc. I have checked and confirmed that that is the exact location where NTLDR is located.

Can any one please tell me what is happening?

My operating system is Winxp sp2, and all partitions are NTFS.

Thanks in advance.

 

Booting to a PC with NTFS through DOS floppy

Hello everybody,

Three days ago I faced a problem in booting my PC with a floppy, DOS-bootable or otherwise.

My PC has Winxp sp2 as OS and all the partitions are NTFS.

I had tried all the suggested methods of preparing the floppy. I had gone through all the relevant KB articles of Microsoft and visited a host of other useful sites, but without any success.

However, I accidentally stumbled upon the cause of the problem and set it right. I now like to share my experience with other members of this forum. It was a very unusual cause.

There were 2 options in BIOS settings. SATA1 & SATA2 - ENABLE/DISABLE and SATA3 & SATA4 -ENABLE/DISABLE. First option was enabled and 2nd option (SATA3 & SATA4) was disabled. Enabling 2nd this option let the PC to be booted from a floppy, even a DOS-BOOTABLE floppy (Windows 98 startup disk). I have confirmed this by both disabling and enabling again and again.

Now I would like to share my experience that IT IS POSSIBLE TO BOOT THE PC FROM A DOS FLOPPY EVEN WHEN ALL THE PARTITIONS HAVE NTFS. By booting the PC with a dos floppy, you may not be directly be able to access your NTFS partitions, but some low level disk activity can be performed on the hard drives by using third party disk manager softwares, like Partition Managers etc.

Thanking everybody for their responses.

Subudhi