Copying bootsector / master boot record?

[scalar]

So anyway, as you may be aware, I am trying to make a bootable Windows XP CD.

There is a snag here. I can't use the CD-ROM bootsector including with XP setup or Win PE setup, because that bootsector tries to run NTLDR in the \I386 folder.

This is not how Win XP normally boots. The normal bootsector only wants to find NTLDR in the root of the filesystem, in \.

However, I can't find a copy of this normal bootsector in a file anywhere on XP setup / Win PE setup, even though XP setup installs it on the hard drive during a normal Win XP install.

At this point I may need to make a copy of the bootsector already on the hard drive and use that to create this special CD. however, I know of no such program that is capable of doing this.

Maybe I might be able to do it with a raw disk/sector editor, to copy the sector(s) and to copy the sectors to a data file?

[Josetann]

There's probably several ways to do this.  Might try opening the bootsector in a hex editor and edit out the i386 part, perhaps that would make it look in the root directory?

[neldog2]

I think you can use DiskEdit referenced in this page.  Hope it helps.

h**p://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;167685