Detecting Hardware

Ntdetect.com detects installed hardware during the Windows 2000 startup sequence. Ntdetect.com passes this information to NTLDR and places a list in the registry. Ntdetect.com detects the following components:

• Computer ID
• Bus/adapter type
• SCSI adapters
• Video adapters
• Keyboard
• Communication ports
• Parallel ports
• Floppy disks
• Mouse/pointing device
• Floating-point coprocessor

Ntdetect.com runs after you select an operating system on the bootstrap loader screen (or the timer times out). NTLDR has started when you see the message:

Starting Windows . . .

followed by a bar graph. When the bar graph becomes solid, the text mode switches to the graphical mode, and the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Family screen is displayed.

© 1985-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.