IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Communications Remarks
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S 6.42 Creating start-up disks for Windows NT
Initiation responsibility: Head of IT Section, IT Security management
Implementation responsibility: Administrators
For every system operated under Windows NT with a floppy disk drive, a set
of repair floppy disks should be kept at hand. For computers with Intel
processors, this is contained in the three set-up floppy disks supplied with
Windows NT as well as an emergency floppy disk with which the primary setup
status can be reproduced if files are damaged. An emergency floppy disk
must be created for every computer as these floppy disks cannot be exchanged
between different computers.
During the Windows NT set-up, the user will be asked if he wishes to create
an emergency floppy disk. To create an emergency floppy disk, an empty 3½"
floppy disk must be placed in drive A: as required. The information necessary
to repair the system will be saved on this floppy disk.
Given that no emergency floppy disk was created during installation, this can
be carried out afterwards with the service program RDISK (in the Windows
System directory %SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32, for example
\WINNT\SYSTEM32). The program must be started with the parameter /s, if
the user accounts and access rights should also be stored. However, the
selection of this parameter can mean that the backup no longer fits on one
floppy disk, if a large number of user profiles are defined on the system
concerned. Therefore, the option "Actualise Emergency Information" should
be selected at first, in order to save the present system state. The actual
emergency floppy disk should then be generated with the option "Create an
Emergency diskette".
Note: This process should be repeated after every change to the system
configuration so that the emergency floppy disk always reflects the present
system state. Only in this way can it be ensured that new entries in the
configuration, drive letter assignment, Stripe Sets, data-media sets and
mirroring are observed in the repair information. Otherwise access to certain
drives can be impossible after system failures. Creation of the emergency
floppy disk should thus be carried out after the next successful system boot-up
to ensure that a properly running system is being backed-up.
If no start-up floppy disks are available, they can be created with the Windows
NT set-up program (WINNT for MS-DOS or Windows 95 set-up and
WINNT32 for Windows NT set-up) found on the Windows NT installation CD
by executing the program with the parameter /ox. The program requires three
empty 3½" disks. They must be placed in drive A: and the files necessary to
start-up Windows NT will then be copied onto the floppy disks.
If system files, boot variables or the boot sector is damaged and the previous
start configuration cannot be reproduced with the method of using the most
recently known functional configuration, the repair procedure in the Windows
NT set-up must be used to reproduce the previous system state.
For the repair procedure, the Windows NT set-up program requires either the
emergency floppy disk or the configuration information which is saved in the
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000