Bootable CD Utilities by reanimatolog - F.A.Q. - Why do I get the message "CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR"?

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F.A.Q. - Why do I get the message "CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR"?

This message can appear while booting selfmade Microsoft Windows XP/2k/NT bootdisks. It is generated by the bootsector NT5BOOT.BIN (WinXP/Win2k) or NT4BOOT.BIN (WinNT4). It doesn't mean what it says, though ;).

The message means that the bootsector was unable to find the file \I386\SETUPLDR.BIN on the CD. This can have two reasons: The file is not present ;) or the reason explained below...

Depending on the CD writing program, the file SETUPLDR.BIN (and every other file on the CD) is stored in the file table either as

SETUPLDR.BIN;1

or else as

SETUPLDR.BIN

the first variant is standard (';1' is "file version" as described in ISO9660 and an obligatory part of the file name), the second variant is used by Microsoft on it's CDs. The bootsectors NT5BOOT.BIN and NT4BOOT.BIN will only findthe file \I386\SETUPLDR.BIN if the ';1' is not present.

What to do?

If your CD writing program has an option to disable the version numbers of the files, this has to be used to enable the use of the original bootsectors NT5BOOT.BIN and NT4BOOT.BIN.

In Nero, the option is:
"Do not add the ';1' ISO file version extension"

in CDRWin:
"Disable Version Numbers"
If your program does not have this option, you have to use the following bootsectors: NT5BOOTM.BIN and NT5BOOTM.BIN. In this version, the file version option is switched off,that means

SETUPLDR.BIN;1
SETUPLDR.BIN

are identical to them.
As an alternative it is possible to use Bootable CD Wizard that supports the loading of I386\SETUPLDR.BIN without using the Microsoft bootsectors and not dependent on the presence/absence of version numbers in the file names.