Is this correct: if files \BOOTMGR or \NTLDR exist on the NTFS filesystem, then it's (probably) bootable.Īccording to my best understanding, the simplest way to detect whether an NTFS filesystem contains a bootable Windows is checking that any of the files BOOTMGR or NTLDR exists in the root directory, because one of these files will be loaded by the boot code. If all my program has is the first 40960 bytes of the filesystem, can it still decide if the partition is bootable? (Preferably with as simple logic as possible.)
If my program is able to list the files in the root directory of the NTFS filesystem, which files or directories should I be looking for (NTLDR)? The active bit in the partition table has been lost.Ĭhecking that byte 0 is 0xeb or 0xe9 and byte 510 is 0x55 and byte 511 is 0xAA is not enough, because even non-bootable NTFS filesystems created by the mkfs.ntfs tool on Linux pass this test, and the expected and required output for this case is non-bootable.
How does my bootloader program figure out which filesystem is bootable? Is it possible just by reading the boot sector (i.e. Only one of them contains a bootable operating system (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10).
A hard disk has 4 primary (MBR) partitions, all formatted as NTFS.
