Bootable CD question

[suzuki1]

If you take the Win98 Boot disk and Win98 CDROM and copy all to a CDR, change boot sequence in the bios to CDROM,C,A. Will it boot and install windows all from the CDROM in one shot?

[METH]

not quite,if you change the boot sequence to boot the cd-rom drive first and place the win98 cd rom in,youll get a choice on start up -boot from hard disk or boot from cd,choose boot from cd,then select start win 98 setup on the next page!

hope this helps

[Ironforge]

If you have the CDROM appear before a fixed disk, then if a bootable CD is present in he cdrom then it will boot from that before going to the hard drive.

It will not however, start the setup process automatically unless you add a few lines to the autoexec.bat

You would have to add:

cd\win98 <- change to setup/cab folder
setup.exe <- start the setup


There are more tricks you can utilize to speed up installation, but it requires a little more work.

[SoopaStar]

All because you have the files:
io.sys
msdos.sys
command.com
etc on the CD will not make it bootable (If I understand this correctly). For instance, on a floppy disk, the first sector has to have the boot files (io.sys and msdos.sys) so the computer knwos what to do. Then it read the command.com command interpretter to do the rest of its business. So, you would have to have a wayt o put those files on teh CD so they are read first. nero burning rom has this capability.

Paul

[Imperion1]

I've toyed with creating a win98 bootable cd for a friend.
Its easier if you have EZCD creator. There is an option to create a boot cd, it asks for the boot floppy, writes it to cd into bootsector, then asks for the win98 cd.

I've created several working ones. Only because the ram was messed up in his system, so I thought I made a few bad copies. But they worked in mine.

[DVNT1]

It would if you use the Win98 boot disk to make the boot image on the CD. Just copying all the files to the CD will not make the CD bootable.


Copied from CDRWIN help file...

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How to create a boot image file

CDRWIN is not capable of creating the “boot image file” which will be written to the ISO9660 image file. However, this file can be easily made with a disk editor utility, such as “Norton Utilities” DISKEDIT.EXE (available for both DOS and Windows).

Before using DISKEDIT, you must first create a boot floppy that functions exactly the way you want it to work when it is written to the CDROM. Try booting your PC with the disk to make sure that it functions properly and loads the correct drivers to access the CDROM drives.

Using “Norton Utilities” DISKEDIT.EXE

Start DISKEDIT.EXE from the MS-DOS command prompt.

Select “Drive” from the “Object” menu.

Choose the drive that is to converted to an image file and click on “OK”.

Select “Physical Sector” from the “Object” menu. Click on “OK”.

Select “Write Object To” from the “Tools” menu.

Select “To a File” and click on “OK”.

Choose a filename and click on “OK”.

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Then you use this image in the CDRWIN. Like Imperion1 said, EZCD creator can do this in a more automated fashion. The above tool should allow you to create a boot partition bigger than a floppy disk though.

[suzuki1]

Thanks for all your help!!
Iam going to experiment with these ideas.

[Ironforge]

I have made dozens of bootable CD's using Easy CD Creator..

there is an option to create a bootable CD.. you just stick the boot disk in Drive A that you want to make an image of.. and it puts that onto the CD..

It is very easy with Easy CD Creator..