Bare Bones NT

[Thenimrod]

I'm going to make a windows boot loader based on the NT systems (nt4/2k/xp). Before i can start, i need to know what the bare system files are to run 1 program with an extrmley simple gui, then shut itself down, and load the os...

I'm thinking that DOS v7 could possibly do what i need done... my loader program will be alot like the boot sector program in the windows xp installation cd (if you ahve ever done a clean install using boot from cd)

This is an email a friend sent me earlier, anyone got an answer for that?

[nukes]

I don't think you can shut down and boot into another OS with Windows. you may be able to with DOS as I know there was a program to start Linux from inside DOS (loadlin) However, since the windows kernel is the first thing to be loaded, (after the boot loader stage I might add, as what a boot loader actually does is to pick a kernel and pass command line parameters to it) and anything since DOS has access controls built in, I don't think it is possible to use Windows itself as a boot loader.
You would probably be better using GRUB or something as a base as its open source and very compatible with different OSes.
BTW what exactly is your friend trying to accomplish, it doesn't sound like anything useful atm, and if he had enough coding knowledge to make something like that work based off a closed source system, then he/she would most likely do a better job starting from scratch.