Windows XP SP2 Boot.ini Missing?
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Hello, I have recently installed Windows XP with SP2 on a custom-built machine. After installing the PocketPC 2003 SDK, I keep on getting a Hardware Failed balloon popup on by system tray. It redirects me to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883989[^]. Apparently, the only fix is to remove the "/pae" switch from the boot.ini. The problem that I am facing is that there is no "boot.ini" on my entire system. I have done a complete C:\ search with hidden/system files included. It appears that my boot.ini just dropped off of my hard drive. I always thought that Windows can't boot up without a boot.ini file on the hard drive. :~ Any suggestions on how to get my computer to run my Windows CE Emulator? (Could this also be the cause of the "Windows could not start up" error message that appears randomly?) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
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Hello, I have recently installed Windows XP with SP2 on a custom-built machine. After installing the PocketPC 2003 SDK, I keep on getting a Hardware Failed balloon popup on by system tray. It redirects me to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883989[^]. Apparently, the only fix is to remove the "/pae" switch from the boot.ini. The problem that I am facing is that there is no "boot.ini" on my entire system. I have done a complete C:\ search with hidden/system files included. It appears that my boot.ini just dropped off of my hard drive. I always thought that Windows can't boot up without a boot.ini file on the hard drive. :~ Any suggestions on how to get my computer to run my Windows CE Emulator? (Could this also be the cause of the "Windows could not start up" error message that appears randomly?) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
My computer --> Properties --> Advanced --> Settings (Startup and recovery) --> click on Edit. A notepad window will open with your boot.ini, if available. Good luck!
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Hello, I have recently installed Windows XP with SP2 on a custom-built machine. After installing the PocketPC 2003 SDK, I keep on getting a Hardware Failed balloon popup on by system tray. It redirects me to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883989[^]. Apparently, the only fix is to remove the "/pae" switch from the boot.ini. The problem that I am facing is that there is no "boot.ini" on my entire system. I have done a complete C:\ search with hidden/system files included. It appears that my boot.ini just dropped off of my hard drive. I always thought that Windows can't boot up without a boot.ini file on the hard drive. :~ Any suggestions on how to get my computer to run my Windows CE Emulator? (Could this also be the cause of the "Windows could not start up" error message that appears randomly?) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
On my most recent XP SP2 purchase the boot.ini's attributes were set to hidden So I used the attrib command in the command line first Regardz Colin J Davies The most LinkedIn CPian (that I know of anyhow) :-)
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Hello, I have recently installed Windows XP with SP2 on a custom-built machine. After installing the PocketPC 2003 SDK, I keep on getting a Hardware Failed balloon popup on by system tray. It redirects me to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883989[^]. Apparently, the only fix is to remove the "/pae" switch from the boot.ini. The problem that I am facing is that there is no "boot.ini" on my entire system. I have done a complete C:\ search with hidden/system files included. It appears that my boot.ini just dropped off of my hard drive. I always thought that Windows can't boot up without a boot.ini file on the hard drive. :~ Any suggestions on how to get my computer to run my Windows CE Emulator? (Could this also be the cause of the "Windows could not start up" error message that appears randomly?) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
Thanks for all of the information; I am now able to access my Boot.ini file. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a "/pae" switch in my boot.ini file. I guess the emulator wasn't made to run on my machine. :sigh: Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
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Hello, I have recently installed Windows XP with SP2 on a custom-built machine. After installing the PocketPC 2003 SDK, I keep on getting a Hardware Failed balloon popup on by system tray. It redirects me to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883989[^]. Apparently, the only fix is to remove the "/pae" switch from the boot.ini. The problem that I am facing is that there is no "boot.ini" on my entire system. I have done a complete C:\ search with hidden/system files included. It appears that my boot.ini just dropped off of my hard drive. I always thought that Windows can't boot up without a boot.ini file on the hard drive. :~ Any suggestions on how to get my computer to run my Windows CE Emulator? (Could this also be the cause of the "Windows could not start up" error message that appears randomly?) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
I thought one of the first things every developer did to a new install is go to Folder Options and
- Show hidden and system files
- Show file extensions
- Show protected operating system files
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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Thanks for all of the information; I am now able to access my Boot.ini file. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a "/pae" switch in my boot.ini file. I guess the emulator wasn't made to run on my machine. :sigh: Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
Do you have an x64 processor (AMD Opteron, Athlon 64 or Intel P4 or Xeon with EM64T)? If so, is
/NoExecutepresent? If it is, you'll have to turn it off by setting/Executein place of/NoExecute. Hardware no-execute protection in XP SP2 requires a processor that supports the feature, which x64-compatible processors do. However, there wasn't room for the chip manufacturers to add the protection bit to the 386-compatible page table entries - all bits were already in use. The feature only works in Processor Address Extensions mode, which uses a larger 64-bit Page Table Entry to map from 32-bit virtual to >32-bit physical addresses. Bit 63 is the No Execute bit on these newest processors. I believe the AMD Sempron also supports the feature, despite not having 64-bit support. /NoExecute (with any setting other than =AlwaysOff) implies PAE mode, but doesn't imply that more than 4GB of physical memory can be address. MS found that many, many drivers and devices simply couldn't cope with being presented with physical addresses over 4GB. Therefore, /NoExecute if specified on its own limits physical address space to 4GB. You must specify /PAE in addition to /NoExecute to get both features. The default for XP SP2 is /NoExecute=OptIn. This protects certain system processes from exploitation of buffer overflows (the process will still probably crash with an access violation, which could be a denial of service, but is better than running arbitrary injected code). See KB 891667[^] for more details. Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder -
I thought one of the first things every developer did to a new install is go to Folder Options and
- Show hidden and system files
- Show file extensions
- Show protected operating system files
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
I thought that enabling system files/folders in the search tool would help me find boot.ini. I guess I was wrong. :-O It appears that I still have lots to learn in the way of the programmer. ;) Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!
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Do you have an x64 processor (AMD Opteron, Athlon 64 or Intel P4 or Xeon with EM64T)? If so, is
/NoExecutepresent? If it is, you'll have to turn it off by setting/Executein place of/NoExecute. Hardware no-execute protection in XP SP2 requires a processor that supports the feature, which x64-compatible processors do. However, there wasn't room for the chip manufacturers to add the protection bit to the 386-compatible page table entries - all bits were already in use. The feature only works in Processor Address Extensions mode, which uses a larger 64-bit Page Table Entry to map from 32-bit virtual to >32-bit physical addresses. Bit 63 is the No Execute bit on these newest processors. I believe the AMD Sempron also supports the feature, despite not having 64-bit support. /NoExecute (with any setting other than =AlwaysOff) implies PAE mode, but doesn't imply that more than 4GB of physical memory can be address. MS found that many, many drivers and devices simply couldn't cope with being presented with physical addresses over 4GB. Therefore, /NoExecute if specified on its own limits physical address space to 4GB. You must specify /PAE in addition to /NoExecute to get both features. The default for XP SP2 is /NoExecute=OptIn. This protects certain system processes from exploitation of buffer overflows (the process will still probably crash with an access violation, which could be a denial of service, but is better than running arbitrary injected code). See KB 891667[^] for more details. Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris MaunderHello, Thanks for all of the information. My processor is an AMD Athlon 64 3000+. I will try to remove the /NoExecute=OptIn while I test my application; once it is finished, I will put it back into the boot sequence. Thanks, Programmer2k4 My sig: "The so-called 'Bugs' do not exist, they are merely features hidden by developers with message boxes that say 'An unhandled exception has occurred'." - Programmer2k4 "And it is a professional faux pas to pay someone else to destroy your computer when you are perfectly capable of destroying it yourself." - Roger Wright I now use my CodeProject Blog!