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In Windows XP , when you install the recovery console to the hard drive, does it store itself in a partition?

For example Windows 7 apparently includes a small 100MB partition with WinRE on it, that has a command prompt one could use for some repair options. The Win7 equivalent of the WinXP recovery console.

In both cases the option is accessible from the F8 menu, pushing F8 once or twice. Maybe just once is fine.

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and

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The F8 menu is can be edited in msconfig and references partitions.. so did the XP recovery console to hard drive installed a partition?

I know multiple win98 could be installed to the same partition. Not sure if WinXP could? or win7? So not sure if WinXP recovery console when installed to hard drive, was installed to a partition of its own?

ref Installing the Recovery Console in XP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYi3lStYDc4

ref How To Repair Windows 7 And Fix Corrupt Files Without CD/DVD [Tutorial] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA79gow7IP4

barlop
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  • In Windows XP , when you install the recovery console to the hard drive, does it store itself in a partition? RC files are copied onto system disk into separate folder (in general - c:\cmdcons folder + cmldr file). – Akina Apr 26 '21 at 06:57
  • @Akina thanks... can you show the line behind the menu item for recovery console that is in the f8 menu.. i.e. the line in XP's boot.ini file that corresponds to the recovery console menu item? – barlop Apr 26 '21 at 08:52

1 Answers1

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As you said correctly the separate boot partition was introduced later. The XP boot loader ntldr with boot.ini can reside on a different partition than the rest of XP though. As I remember this happens during setup if your hd already has an active primary boot partition containing an older version of Windows or Dos and you choose to install XP to another partition during setup. Then the XP boot loader will be added to the active primary partition and will be set up to load XP from another partition as well as the older version. One of the capabilities of boot.ini is to chain load other bootsectors stored in files and according to these two sources this mechanism seems to be used to load the recovery console:

C:\cmdcons\bootsect.dat="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

The Recovery Console is the loader file CMLDR instead of the NTLDR and the files located in the \CMDCONS folder.

xenoson
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  • I'm aware that with Windows XP, the boot loader is in one of the windows XP partitions. And of course it is because each windows xp partition has a boot.ini file. But i'm not asking about the location of the boot loader.. From what you're saying, it looks like the recovery console is run from a windows xp partition, and probably the one that the boot.ini is running from. – barlop Apr 26 '21 at 17:46
  • Was it possible to install two Windows XPs to the same partition? (It was with Win98) – barlop Apr 26 '21 at 17:47
  • No, that I'm saying is that this basically results in one partition containing the boot loader and another partition containing XP. So similar to the later concept with a separate boot partition. – xenoson Apr 26 '21 at 17:56
  • I think it was not possible any more to rename the Windows folder during Setup as earlier. So two XPs in one partition is definitely a hack. Can maybe done with an setup answer file or afterwards by changing the registry. I remember moving Programs to another drive letter and search and replacing that in the registry. But stuff like that is long gone for good :) Try it in a VM! – xenoson Apr 26 '21 at 18:06