File System Drivers and Recognizers

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