China DOS Union

After pressing F8 at startup, isn't the Microsoft Windows that appears together with Windows XP DOS?
Or rather, not pure DOS? Right now I have this problem: "An I/O error occurred while accessing the boot sector file multi(0) disk(0) rdisk(0)parttion(1)\boot"
What is causing this?
Experts, please help explain it.
Thanks!

If your machine has multiple systems installed, then Microsoft Windows should be Win9x/ME.
“multi(0) disk(0) rdisk(0)parttion(1)\boot” comes from C:\boot.ini. It seems this Microsoft Windows is placed in the C:\Boot folder. But that seems to be wrong. For Win9x/ME, it should be written in Boot.ini as something like “C:\=Microsoft Windows”.

Thanks, yeah.
Sorry I didn't explain it clearly.
But before, this was something similar to DOS. I used it for Ghost backup and restore, and I used DOS commands.
Recently I changed some things on drive C, and now it can't be used normally.
I don't know the reason.

If you originally installed DOS first (or Win98), and then installed Windows 2000/XP on that partition, then Windows 2000/XP would save the original DOS system's boot sector as C:\bootsect.dos, and add a Microsoft Windows boot item to the boot menu configuration file (that is, boot.ini). Through it, you can start the original DOS or Win98 system; in fact it just uses NTLDR to call the original boot sector. After you cleaned up drive C, you may have moved bootsect.dos to another directory or deleted it, so now it can't be used normally. For the repair method, refer to this post: http://bbs.wuyou.com/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=34&topic=952&show=0

climbing, you've been hanging around for half a year and you're still not dead? If you don't keep hanging around for the rest of your life, then your mother is a beast. It's nothing, don't get excited. I'm just cursing you a bit.

Thanks climbing, I've already extracted bootsect.dos, but it seems I can't view it with Notepad. It's all garbled text inside.

bootsect.dos is a binary file, so of course you'll only see garbled text with Notepad. Climbing didn't tell you to open it; he meant for you to edit boot.ini.

I've already edited it, but it still won't go in at startup. Choosing Microsoft windows also goes straight into windowsxp. Microsoft windows seems to have disappeared.

Now when I enter Microsoft windows it says "Windows could not find <windows root>\system32\hal.dll, please reinstall the above file copy". How do I solve this problem!? Do I need to do a repair install with XP? Experts, please help answer, thanks, thanks!

Please post your Boot.ini so we can take a look...

The contents of my boot.ini are as follows, please help analyze it, thanks!
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\bootsect.doc=Microsoft Windows

By the way, one more question: with a DOS boot disk, without installing DOS 7.1, can you directly enter a pure DOS environment? What's the difference between a DOS boot disk and a Win98 or WinXP boot disk?

The following is quoted from zhri's post at 2005-3-14 9:34:17:

climbing, you've been hanging around for half a year and you're still not dead?
If you don't keep hanging around for the rest of your life, then your mother is a beast.
It's nothing, don't get excited.
I'm just cursing you a bit.

Hehe, you bastard with a mother to give birth to you but no mother to raise you is here making trouble again. Some day I'll give your PP a good beating on your father's behalf! Good people don't live long, but scoundrels live a thousand years. Even if you unfilial son can piss your father to death, you still can't piss me to death.
Re wlf2w:
I don't know whether your boot.ini was copied exactly as-is, but there really is a bit of a problem.
You need to make sure the filename bootsect.dos is written correctly, and this file doesn't necessarily have to be placed in the root directory of C:\. Assuming this file is called bootsect.dos and is placed in the root of drive C:, then boot.ini should be modified as follows.

timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\bootsect.dos="MS-DOS 7.10"
Also, I suspect what you extracted was the NTFS boot sector. Please carefully look again at the post I provided above and make sure you did it right. Besides bootsect.dos, if you want to boot DOS normally, the C:\ directory also needs to have DOS system files such as io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com, etc. (of course config.sys and autoexec.bat are not required, but necessary).

Thanks for the reply from the poster above. I extracted the file under FAT32, and boot.ini was also copied exactly as-is. But except for io.sys being a pile of garbled text, all the others are empty! But let me ask this: if I can enter a pure DOS environment through a boot disk, then I'll just go in that way! Thanks for your help.

Of course you can enter pure DOS through a boot disk, as long as what you're using is a pure DOS boot disk. But this method is too troublesome. You can completely use VFloppy or Grub instead (this is currently the most perfect method). I'll give you an auto-install archive I made (used to make it possible to start a pure DOS environment under XP). After downloading it, just run the installer directly under XP. Through “Start Grub” on the NT boot menu －＞ the first item, or Modboot-Corpnet, you can enter the pure DOS environment. The former uses Grub technology, the latter uses VFloppy technology, but after restoring a clone, the latter requires you to rerun c:\boot\install.cmd. Download link: http://climbing.minidns.net/clone/grub_vfloppy_corpnet.exe