I have read in several places on the web that the boot time of Windows 2000 can be improved by using the ntldr file from Windows XP on a Windows 2000 system.
I have tried this, and it doesn't work for me.

I assume that this is because my Windows 2000 installation is not standard.
My Windows 2000 system files are in D:\WIN-NT not C:\WINNT as would be standard.
Is there any way around this?

I looked at the XP ntldr file with a hex editor, and did find references to the path of the OS system files.
If I could edit this to match my system presumably it might then work, but I don't know how to do this safely.
If anyone can help with this I would be very grateful, as the slow start-up of Windows 2000 has always annoyed me, although I very much like everything else about the OS, and want to keep using it!
Thanks, Dave.

I would also like to know how to get W2K to boot as fast as XP... as 2K can shutdown far faster than xp can. Can someone help me do this?

I'm having a hard time here believing that a workstation OS can map the memory better than a server OS, even if it's newer. XP's kernel is based on 2000.

Indeed it is, but I do remember reading somewhere that MS had changed the startup routine in XP to make it start up faster, which is why the ntldr from XP could be used on 2000 to get at least some of the benefits of this.
This is something I've never been able to try out, for the reasons given in my OP, so I've no idea if it works, and how much effect it actually has if it does work!

ntldr is the boot loader for legacy (pre-Vista) Windows, and is only used at the very, very start of the boot process - once ntoskrnl.exe (the OS kernel) is started ntldr is done, so you wouldn't notice any difference from replacing it with another version.

One of the design principles for XP was "get the user to the desktop quicker", so a lot of the startup routines were made to run in parallel in order to get to the point where winlogon.exe is up and the GINA is presented for the user to authenticate.
In Windows 2000 all those routines ran serially, so the logon prompt doesn't appear until it's completed all the previous startup steps.

As the changes are in the (5.1) kernel, there's no way to "tweak" 2000 (5.0 kernel) to behave like XP.

(And for Vista the boot process is not so much of a big deal as you're encouraged to use suspend-to-RAM instead of shutdown - "restart" time is under 2 seconds then.)

Thanks for that.
Sounds like I'm wasting my time even investigating this, which is good to know!
I won't bother taking it any further.

Interesting about the Vista "suspend-to-RAM" recommendation.
If that really is what MS recommend instead of shutting down properly, that doesn't sound very environmentally friendly. So much for Microsoft's "green" credentials!

Actually one of the drives for Vista is energy saving - it goes to sleep after a period of inactivity, and the suspend-to-RAM just draws enough current to keep the contents of the memory chips intact while the mains is connected (no fans to run, no display to drive, no hard disks spinning).
It's the next step up from hibernation (dumping memory contents to a file on disk that is read on resume) and is much quicker both in suspending and resuming.
Sleep > Hibernate > Shut Down

Beats having to mess about speeding up the boot process - I only reboot once a month (patch Tuesday) unless I need to physically move the PC or turn the mains off.
Very handy being able to tap a key and have the logon prompt up in 2 seconds, check email and then put the machine back to sleep before heading to work in the morning.

That doesn't sound too bad actually, and quite a clever idea.
Almost makes me think of going to Vista.
(I did say almost!)

You need to replace BOTH ntldr AND ntdetect.com ! They belong to C:\ . Doing so does make the start of the boot sequence faster,
and as a bonus, fixes bugs in the (optional, scrolling) display of loaded drivers.



You assumed incorrectly. Also, having Win 2k setup as you described cannot be called non standard. It's not even unusual.

HTH and please report back if my proposed "fix" works for you (if it doesn't I'm sure you'll be reporting anyway...)

The other problem with "speeding up" the Windows 2000 boot process is that it runs everything during boot serially, whereas Vista (and to a much lesser extent XP) will load only the most critical subsystems and drivers serially, and then load anything and everything that can load in an asynchronous fashion as such, and postpone services and drivers that don't actually need to be started during boot (like Automatic Updates, BITS, the kernel transaction manager, and the Security Center, for instance).

You can make the *initial* bootstrap quicker via ntldr and ntdetect, but the OS load will still be entirely synchronous and there isn't anything you can do about that short of removing things from loading entirely.

the kernel transaction manager, and the Security Center : N.A. to Win 2k :=)
Automatic Updates, BITS : better set to disabled (or manual) and enable only when needed (windows updates).

I concur wholeheartedly services that are either unwanted or not needed all the time, should be similarly removed from the start up process (and not only services, regular applications too...) As for regular Win 32 apps which are needed, they can be staged using shareware/freeware "delayers" and, possibly, someone wrote a similar delayer for NT services (I didn't search for that one).



Yep. Sysinternals autoruns (free, now available from Microsoft) can be a great help in startup cleaning.

All things being equal, I dare insist, replacing ntldr+ntdetect.com with the versions from Win XP has in my experience made a great difference in perceived and measured booting times for Windows 2000. I did not believe it myself until I first tried, it's almost magics - and with no ill effect that I noticed since. Worth a trial...

Cheers,

--
Ninho

Does hibernation and resume from hibernation also improve when ntldr ntdetect.com are replaced?

Well, I finally managed to get hold of ntldr and ntdetect.com from a Windows XP machine, so I could try this out again, this time replacing both files as suggested.

Unfortunately, it still didn't work!

On boot-up I immediately got the message -
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt \WIN-NT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

This is one of the registry files of course.
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what happened last time I tried this.
Restoring the original ntldr and ntdetect.com files made everything come back to normal, so there obviously isn't anything wrong with my registry files.

As I said before, I think the system just can't find the files because the path isn't what it's expecting.
The path to the system files in the machine I took the files from would have been C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32.
Mine is D:\WIN-NT\SYSTEM32, as I said before.

I'd be interested in any further thoughts on this.

It indeed does work. For even faster times use the files from 2k3

The respective path to MY Windows files is : D:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 , very similar to what you have. And it boots as designed to, whether using the original Windows 2000 Pro SP4 ntdetect and ntldr, or the replacement files from XP SP2.

Please double check the contents of your C:\BOOT.INI file, esp. ARC paths in it. You should have a line similar to the following - but the rdisk(x) and partition(y) will vary according to your patitioning scheme, and you'll have WIN-NT instead of WINNT :



HTH

[Edited] I realise your D: might be on a second physical drive, whereas my D: is a partition on the first physical IDE. I am quite sure however it shouldn't make a difference to the Windows NT bootloader, provided the correct BOOT.INI is present at the root of the partition from which BIOS boots the machine (which Microsoft, strangely, calls the "system partition". The partition which contains your WinNT files they call, also strangely, the "boot partition". IOW they have it in reverse... Need to keep this in mind when reading MS knowledge base articles)

Thanks Ninho.
I've tried with the files from Windows 2003 too, as per Ascii2's suggestion.
Same result as before.
In fact the ntdetect.com file is fine, it's the ntldr which is the problem.

I even tried editing ntldr with a hex editor and changed a "c:\winnt" entry that I found to "d:win-nt".
The system, wouldn't even start then, I just got "ntldr is corrupted, the system cannot start".
Thank heavens for Windows 98 DOS boot disks!

My boot ini is as follows -

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WIN-NT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WIN-NT="Windows 2000 Professional SP4" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Windows 2000 Recovery Console" /cmdcons
C:\="Windows 98 Second Edition"

Any clues there?
My D: drive is a partition on the same physical drive as my C: drive, where Windows 98 sits.
Is the fact that I have a dual boot system causing the problem I wonder.....?
Cheers, Dave.

Can't see anything wrong, it should be working !
Still you'll want to check that your WinNT partition is indeed where the boot.ini says it is, viz a primary partition described by the second physical slot in the MBR. For this check use any HEX viewer, or a competent partition-and-boot-manager (I like Ranish's).



Nope it isn't. Using the Win 2k or XP boot files, my system is able to quad boot Linux, DOS, Win 98 and Win 2k.

Good luck !

--
N.

Sorry for the delay in responding ninho.
I have now checked the partitions on my system disk, which contains drives C: and D:.
D: is the Windows 2000 partition.

C: is an active primary DOS partition.
D: is a logical DOS drive within an extended DOS partition on the same disk.

So D: not a primary partition.
I believe IIRC that you can only have one primary partition on a disk.

Is that the problem?

You /can/ have several primaries - partitionning tools offered as part of Microsoft OSes won't let you create
such configurations, but the OSes can work with such configurations.
Conversely, you can have only one primary extended partition, which in turn should contain only one
logical, and optionally one extended, and so on.

Concerning your problem, I would check the validity of the line in your boot.ini :
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WIN-NT="Windows 2000 Professional SP4" /fastdetect"

Open the logical disk management console (diskmgmt.msc) and check that the OS partition is indeed number 2
as reported by Windows.


--
Ninho

Thanks again Ninho!
This is what my disk management looks like.
Does it seem OK?
I'm not sure how you determine whether a partition is "number 2" or not.
The D: drive is certainly listed after the C: drive on disk 0, but does that make it number 2 or number 1 (C: being 0)?


Click to view attachment

Thanks again for all your help.
Dave.

It makes it number 2, because C is not 0, it's 1.

In the strange world of ARC syntax used in BOOT.INI:
multi(X), disk(0), rdisk(Y) & partition(Z)
X and Y begin at 0, but Z begins at 1
if the first word is "multi" then "disk" is always disk(0)

So, multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) is the first partition of the first physical disk on the first disk controller.

damm.. This is amazing.. I also tried this and seems my windows 2000 is so faster how is windows xp boot.

Can someone send me the windows 2003 boot files? I would like to check the speed in windows 2000.

Meados I've sent you a PM with links to my Windows 2003 startup files.
I just wish they worked for me!


Jacobmax, thanks for the feedback.
Are you saying that the entries in my boot.ini file do match my drive configuration?
If so, we still don't know why these newer startup files won't work on my system.
Ninho?

They work like a charm for me! And my language of windows is different.

It runs more faster than Windows XP ones. Seems my Windows 2000 startup is with same speed of Windows XP startup, or at least its very close. (I will do time count to see the perfomance of both boottimes)

I also tried to bot Windows XP with windows 2003 files, but I didn't noted any difference.

Yes, to me it seems fine. Remembering that, according to Microsoft:
Your boot files are on your system volume -- and
Your system files are on your boot volume

then you have NTLDR+NTDETECT.COM+BOOT.INI on C:
and you have your Windows 2000 system on D:\WIN-NT

according to my reading of both your screenshot and your BOOT.INI.

Your screenshot also shows C: as a primary partition and D: as a logical partition which fully occupies an extended partition (See the green border around it in the screenshot.)

I have been following this thread with a view to trying this myself, so I am *very* interested in what makes this work and what doesn't.

The only thing I can think of is that your D: being in a logical partition, is in a slightly different place than if it were a primary partition. The two used to be exactly 63 sectors different when disks were a lot smaller and everything was ruled by CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) geometry.

Microsoft used to advise against multiple primary partions that were readable by DOS because (IIRC) it led to DOS confusion and possible data loss. On the other hand Windows 2000 is perfectly happy with more than one Win-readable primary partition (and I've done it).

The Win2000 NTLDR is parsing the MBR, finding the extended partition and then following the partition "chain" down the disk until it finds the logical partition. Is it possible that the WinXP NTLDR no longer does this? In other words does the WinXP NTLDR require both system volume AND boot volume to be primary partitions?

That would account for the Win2000 NTLDR working and the WinXP NTLDR not. Does anyone else know for sure?

Ok where's my test of speed of booting.
It's in same machine. However Windows XP is almost a clean install and Windows 2000 e full of programs.. About 76 in start menu.. (I don't believe that thsi affect boot time, but it's for you know)

Windows 2000
W/ XP
40 s

Windows XP
20 s

Windows 2000
W/ 2003
38 s

Windows XP
W/ 2003
20 s

So seems its about 2 seconds more fast booting Windows 2000 with Windows 2003 files. Windows XP with windows 2003 files I didn't noticed any difference. :|

I don't have the original Windows 2000 files, so if someone want to send them to me, so I can test the speed with normal booting to compare with Windows 2003 and XP version would be nice.

Hi Meados,
My Windows 2000 files are now uploaded where you found the Windows 2003 ones!
Let us know how fast the boot is with them.
Dave.

I have attached an archive with the original ntldr and NTDETECT.COM files from a Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4 installation.

Ok, I have tried with original ones of Ascii2 wheres the results:

Windows 2000
Original Files
42 s

Windows XP
W/ 2000
Didn't boot

Final Results:

Windows 2000
Original Files
42 s

Windows XP
W/ 2000
Didn't boot

Windows 2000
W/ XP
40 s

Windows XP
20 s

Windows 2000
W/ 2003
38 s

Windows XP
W/ 2003
20 s

Please not that this can have some inaccuracy.

I also decreased the boot time in 2 second with 2 tips of this tutorial:

http://www.johntp.com/2006/02/15/improve-w...-xp-boot-speed/

Maybe is possible to decrease more replacing other windows files.

This is fascinating stuff, and it looks from Meados' findings that it's well worth doing.
I still can't resolve the problem with my system though.

JacobMax suggested earlier that it may be because my Windows 2000 drive is not on a primary disk partition.
I have only ever used fdisk to partition my drives, which will not allow more than one primary partition on a physical drive.

I realise that there are many other partition management programs out there, so could someone recommend one (ideally free!) that will allow me to make my D: drive into a primary partition, instead of a logical volume within a secondary partition as it is now.

At least then I can eliminate that as being the possible problem why the Windows XP and 2003 boot files won't work on my system.

I can boot into Windows 98 and backup my Windows 2000 (D:\WIN-NT) system files folder onto another drive, so if the original gets lost by changing the status of the D: partition it won't matter.
The critical thing is that the new second primary partition must still be drive D:, and even more vital, the operation must on no account jeopardise the data which is on drive C:, or I will be deep in the brown stuff!

Any suggestions gratefully received.
Dave.

Hi again, Dave! Sorry I didn't come back to you again earlier, have been away.
Reading the whole thread again, concurr with James that source of your trouble maybe the NT loaders from XP and 2003 no longer booting from a secondary, while 2k had no problem with it. It would be a strange regression, but quite possible with Microsoft software.

My recommendation of partition mgmt software : Ranish. You'll need to learn and practice some however before you touch your disk. In any event backup, backup, backup ! Ranish partition manager has an active and helpful support group hosted at Yahoo groups. Oh, did I tell you it's free ?

I think I know why this:
has happened.

It's because the Windows 2000 version of NTLDR needs two additional files:
arcldr.exe and arcsetup.exe.



I now have a second theory why Dave's system won't work. Sometimes the boot sector in a logical partition has an incorrect value for the "hidden sectors". This value should be the number of sectors from the start of the disk to the boot sector, but is often only 63, which is the number of sectors to the last partition table.

Again, to use Ninho's phrase, this would point to a regression from the Windows 2000 NTLDR to the Windows XP NTLDR. As with my last theory, I don't know for sure.

The good news is that if D: is changed from a logical partition to a primary primary then Windows 2000 should still keep the same drive letters. The reason it is D: to start with, is that there are NO primary partitions on any other drives (see the screenshot posted above).

What I don't know is whether Windows 98 will recognize a second primary partition at all, or maybe ignore it. Information around the Internet seems a bit vague about this and my old, old PartitionMagic manual has conflicting information on different pages.

I can answer this last point : Win 98 will recognise several primaries and assign them letters, as long as they are partition types that it knows, i.e. any flavour of FAT. It won't touch an NTFS (of course), but it is smart enough to "skip over" one and look for other DOS/Win partitions. There are certain bugs in DOS 7's IO.SYS partition enumeration code and letter assignment, only in certain cases where there exist also non-MS partitions, which is not a concern for the OP, I think.

Sorry for the delay in replying everyone, I've been away.
Interesting the two files that James_A mentions.
Neither of those two files are on my system except in the WIN-NT\ServicePackFiles\i386 folder.
I tried copying them to C:\ to see if that was in fact the cause of my problem, but it made no difference.

It would have been great if it had been that simple!

I will have to bite the bullet and experiment with disk partition managers, to see if I can convert that D: drive to a primary partition, preferably without losing everything.
I will be doing backups first of course!

I have read your post twice to make sure, but:
really surprises me.

Are you able to acquire an old version of PartitionMagic? This program, written by PowerQuest some years ago could do this partition conversion with ease without data loss. I used to use version 6.0 which handled Windows 2000 NTFS partitions as well, but not those created by Windows XP.

I now use a free LiveCD with GParted on it, but must warn you that I once lost all the data on a FAT32 partition because of an error. Maybe the error was part GParted and partly my misunderstanding of an on-screen message, but I still hesitate in recommending it.

PartitionMagic, incidentally, seems to be one of a long list of programs which Symantec have effectively killed-off by acquisition.

Hmmm... those 2 are used for SCSI disks I believe. Definately not used for booting from IDE !

--
Ninho

arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe do appear to be required. I would attach the archive with all ntldr, NTDETECT.COM, arcsetup.exe, and arcldr.exe; but MSFN.org forums seems to limit attachment size to 200K (attachment would be like 303 KB).

I think arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe have something to do with ARC paths.

EDIT: For SCSI, Ntbootdd.sys is often used. By default, Ntbootdd.sys is not installed when not necessary.

I have that files, I can do the test of windows xp with windows 2000 boot files if you want.

I would like the test performed. The change in boot time should be interesting.

Curiouser and curiouser!
Both my C:/D: drive and my E: drive are SCSI drives.
Not only does arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe only exist on my system in the ServicePackFiles folder, Ntbootdd.sys does not appear to be present on my system at all!

So what does that mean?

I have looked at PartitionMagic BTW, and it looks very good.
Unfortunately it's not free!
I'll have another look at the Ranish program, and at GParted too.
Thanks all.

A typo existed in my previous post "For SCSI, Ntbootdd.sys is used." should have been "For SCSI, Ntbootdd.sys is often used.". Using Ntbootdd.sys is normal for SCSI disks. However, it may be optional if the system BIOS is capable of loading the system files from the SCSI disk. If you are using server boards with onboard SCSI controllers (with support in BIOS) or simply have the BIOS support for handling of additional SCSI contollers, the Multi method (usual for IDE drives) may be used to load the operating system. Examining your signiture, I speculate this to be the case.
Posting the contents of your "boot.ini" file may be helpful.

Posting the contents of your "boot.ini" file should be helpful to determine the answer.

EDIT: I think it should also be mentioned that the Ntbootdd.sys file is not same file for all SCSI controllers.

Ah right, that explains why I dont have the Ntbootdd.sys file.
My motherboard is a server board (Supermicro X5DAE if anyone's interested!)
It has no on-board SCSI controllers, but uses an Adaptec PCI card which is actually a legacy from my previous system.

I posted my boot.ini file contents earlier in the thread.

OK, I finally "bit the bullet" and tried changing my disk partitions.
I used the Ranish partition editor, which I was very impressed with, thanks Ninho!

Well, after lots of agonising and head scratching, I'm now back as I was before!
It soon came back to me exactly why I had the drives partitioned as they were.
I converted the D: partition to a primary partition with no problem.
Unfortunately, when I rebooted I discovered that it was no longer drive D:!
It had become drive F:, and the old E: had become D:, and the old F: had become E:.

This is no good, because although I can redefine the drive letters using Windows 2000's disk manager, this does not change what DOS and Windows 98 sees.
The whole Windows 2000 system configuration depends on Windows 2000 being on the D: drive, and I certainly don't want the drive letters being different on the two operating systems!

No matter what I did, I couldn't resolve this.
If I disconnected the other two drives, the Windows 2000 partition became D: again.
However as soon as I reconnected the other SCSI (E:) drive, it became D: and shunted the Windows 2000 drive down to E:.
Even deleting the partition and reformatting the other SCSI drive didn't make any difference, it always became drive D:, whether it was a primary partition or a logical drive within an extended partition.
(Many hours I spent verifying and formatting drives yesterday!)

To add insult to injury, this didn't even do what it was supposed to do!
I had the system with just one physical disk connected, partitioned into C: and D: drives, both primary DOS partitions.
Windows 98 on C: and Windows 2000 on D:.
All worked fine, even though I couldn't leave it like that as I obviously need the other drives.

I then put the Windows 2003 NTLDR file into C:\ and rebooted to Windows 2000.
Exactly the same result as before -
"\WIN-NT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt".

So the whole exercise was a complete waste of time!
The 2003 NTLDR still doesn't work on my system even if Windows 2000 is on a primary partition.


In fact the only way I could get the drive letters to be what I wanted again was to reformat D: as a logical drive within an extended partition, as it was before.
Then adding the other drives (also logical drives within extended partitions) didn't change the drive letters.

So, a large number of hours spent, terrified of losing my data, all for nothing!
Anyway, I am now back to normal, and haven't lost anything, apart from a day of my life.........

What I'm now considering is whether to try changing over the two OSs, and having Windows 2000 on C: and Windows 98 on D:.
That would put Windows 2000 on the active primary first partition on the drive, which would more closely match the configuration of a single boot system.
Anyone thinks that's worth a try (it won't be easy, as I don't want to reinstall both OSs from scratch)?

You may also want to try Fred Vorck's tutorial tomake a faster 2000 install.

Win 98 has to be installed in the first primary partition (C:) and the partition has to be marked active. It has to be "C". Try installing it to "D" and you get an error message.

Indeed. I note that you may not need Ntbootdd.sys on Windows 2000 with your BIOS, but this may not be true with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 boot files (it is already know that they function differently given that arcldr.exe and arcsetup.exe are not used). It is possible that the Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 boot files handle SCSI devices differently (with respect to Windows 2000), or requires a different configuration in boot.ini for the SCSI devices.

So, merely copying the newer operating system files to Windows 2000 may not work for your configuration.

To find out what is necessary for your configuration using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 boot files, you can install a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 family operating system and examine (and retain a copy of) the files created.

Are you saying therefore that you can't add Windows 98 to a machine that already has Windows 2000 on it?
In that case Windows 2000 would already be on the C: drive so Windows 98 would have to go elsewhere.

My Windows 2000 Resource Kit Book doesn't seem to say that there would be any intrinsic problem with that, only that you might have to use the Windows 2000 Repair Console after installing Windows 98 to repair the Master Boot Record, as it would have been over-written by Windows 98 Setup.

It's gone very quiet.................


Does anyone actually know any reason why I shouldn't swap my operating systems over so Windows 2000 is on C: and Windows 98 is on D: ? I might actually be able to use the later NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR files then.

More importantly, since I did all my messing about, although apparently everything is back to as it was before, Windows 2000 is now taking even longer to start up than it did before!
Quite the reverse of what I was trying to do in the first place of course!

Mainly it's now spending ages crawling along the very first "Starting Windows" progress bar, far longer than it used to, even though the NTDETECT.COM and NTDLR files are back to the ones that they always were.

Anyone any idea why this might be?

It's gone a bit quiet on my side, because I am still recovering from reading your dramatically recounted experience of moving your partitions round:... ...

I am not sure what to do next. I think one way I may have slipped-up is by looking at your Boot.Ini file and assuming that you had IDE disks not SCSI. Now Ascii2 has explained why that is. I have been trying to find out some more information before posting again. For example, the function of arcsetup.exe and arcldr.exe. I have never seen or heard of a Windows 2000 system without these two files present. Until now. Admittedly, all the systems I have installed or repaired have had IDE drives.

There must be some good BIOS support or emulation going on, otherwise how would Ranish (an MS-DOS program IIRC) load and work?

Since your current C: drive contains valuable data, I would be treading much more carefully from now on. Referring to another of your earlier posts, repairing the MBR is seen as a big problem in some circles, which is why you see the oft-repeated advice to install the latest OS last. Sorry, I don't (yet) have anything more constructive to add.