An up-to-date Emergency Repair Disk is critical when you need to repair a broken
NT installation. When you add or remove hardware or make significant changes to
your setup you need to update your ERD. This only happens when you explicitly
chose the Update Repair Information option. You can bring up the Repair Disk
dialog by typing “repair disk” in Start/Help/Index or by typing rdisk in
Start/Run. Unless you have explicitly asked for the data to be updated, the
information stored on the ERD and the information stored in the repair directory
is probably that generated during the initial install. It will not help you 6
months or a year later (or 2 years later). You have added a different harddrive,
changed out disk controller, added a partition, removed a partition, …. The
ERD is not as important as an up-to-date \winnt\repair directory which has
equivalent information. Using the AT scheduler, you can schedule an automatic
update of the \winnt\repair files using the command
rdisk /s-
The /s parm tells the repair disk utility to update
the erd and repair directory data. The /s- tells the
repair disk utility to NOT request a floppy to generate an new ERD but to update
the \winnt\repair directory only. Once you have this process automated, you will
not need to worry about having a current ERD disk.
OK. OK. You say, what if my harddrive fails and \winnt\repair is GONE. If you
are in a network environment, the updated repair data should be copied to a file
server for use in this case. If you are on your own, keep pushing those floppies
into drive A: and generate updated ERDs.
ERD Related Tips:
- NT ERD – never there when you need it
- Contents of NT ERD
- Steps Performed by the Emergency Repair
Disk
- Disable a Service or Device that Prevents
Windows NT from Booting
- Cracking Windows NT passwords
- Using the
Emergency Repair Disk to Fix Windows NT Problems
- Repair Disk
Secrets Reduce Downtime
- Patch
Available for RDISK Registry Enumeration File” Vulnerability
