Each file system supported by Windows NT is made up of three components: the file system driver, the file system utility DLL, and the file system recognizer used during startup to determine the file systems present on the system. All necessary elements and settings are recognized automatically by Windows NT. You can configure file system drivers by choosing the Devices icon in Control Panel.
File system driver and recognizer | File System |
Cdfs and Cdfs_Rec | Compact disc file system (CDFS) |
Fastfat and Fat_Rec | File Allocation Table (FAT) |
Ntfs and Ntfs_Rec | Windows NT file system (NTFS) |
Pinball and HPFS_Rec | High-performance file system (HPFS) |
The Registry path for settings that control file system drivers is the following, where DriverName is the file system driver minus the filename extension:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DriverName
The standard entries for the file system drivers are the following:
Value entry | Default value |
ErrorControl | 0x1 (Normal) |
Group | Boot file system |
Start | 0x4 (disabled) |
Type | 0x2 (file system driver) |
The file system recognizer determines whether the file system should be loaded. The Registry path for file system recognizers is the following, where RecognizerName is the file system driver minus the filename extension:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RecognizerName
The standard entries for the file system recognizers are the following:
Value entry | Default value |
ErrorControl | 0 (startup halts) |
Group | Boot file system |
Start | 0x1 (system) |
Type | 0x8 (file system recognizer) |
The file system drivers and recognizers do not add any additional Registry entries besides the standard entries described in "CurrentControlSet\Services Subkeys," earlier in this chapter.
Note
If CONVERT.EXE has been used to convert the file system on a hard disk drive, this value is added to CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager so that conversion occurs when the system is restarted:
BootExecute = autocheck autoconv \DosDevices\x: /FS:NTFS