How do you reconstruct a valid boot sector after restoring a Windows
2000 (or NT or XP Pro) system from a non-image backup?  I'm looking
for the equivalent of the old "sys" command from Windows 95 and
ealier.

Here's more detail.  In the olden days when I ran Linux and Windows
95, I would back up my Windows 95 partition by using mtools to
generate a script that would reset hidden and system file attributes
(mattrib -/p C:/) and then, by mounting the partition on Linux as type
VFAT, create a tarfile of the entire partition.  To restore, I would
create a new partition, mount it under Linux as VFAT, extract the tar
file, and then run the script generated with mtools to restore the
attributes.  After this, I would boot from a floppy and, from A:, run

C:\windows\command\sys C:

After this, the system was once again bootable and was fully restored
down to the arrangement of icons on the desktop (which reset
themselves under Windows 95 if you didn't restore system file
attributes on certain files).

I have not been able to figure out how to do this under Windows 2000. 
Assuming that you are using FAT32 rather than NTFS, using the tar +
mattrib method of doing backups still generates a complete backup, but
I can't figure out how to reset the boot sector after restoring. 
Using fixboot/fixmbr from the recover console does not work.  Neither
does using repair from the Windows 2000 CD, with or without a startup
disk.  There is clearly some information in the boot sector that knows
the location of certain key files (perhaps ntldr?) on the Windows
partition.  I've seen commercial packages like Ghost, Partition Magic,
and DriveWorks copy partitions and have them be bootable afterwards,
but I'm trying to figure out how to do it with commands that are
already there on the system or with some utility that does this
without all the other baggage.  I'd rather not have to buy something,
but a good and inexpensive commercial tool would be tolerable if there
are no other options.

I attempted an answer to this question, but was unfortunately unable
to provide a useful answer and requested that my answer be withdrawn.

Therefore, I'd just like to advise all of my suggestsions which didn't
work:

* AEFDISK (didn't work)
* XOSL (not able to use with VMWare)
* Using dd to copy the raw bootsector (bootsector relies on 6 byte
address to point to starting sector of NTLDR, which varies)


Good luck!

Just to follow up....

I found a link that explains the format of the boot sector in detail:

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/boot_sector.htm

The parts of the boot sector I was concerned about actually contain
head, track, sector information.  The offset to NTLDR is not present
in the boot sector.

It turns out that the standard fixmbr/fixboot approach I complained
about not working in my original post does work if you format the
partition from Windows 2000.  In this case, some standard boot sector
is written to the drive, and some other constraints seem to be
followed as well.  It also appears that doing a clean install of
Windows 2000 and then synchronizing everything including registry
files from a backup works, so I have various solutions.  I'm going to
close the question.

Thanks to seizer-ga for all the suggestions.

Utlimately, I ended up buying a copy of Ghost to do copy the Windows
2000 installation from one machine to another.  Although my method
works, Ghost is a lot easier...