Detecting Hardware

  • Article

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.