There are three articles here: a recent one discussing the creation of a bootable CD-R with Nero (including the use of CAB files on 2.88MB floppy partitions), and two older ones explaining the do-it-yourself approach. =============================================================================== Subject: Making a Boot-CD with NERO (extending boot possibilities) From: not@home.com Reply-To: not@home Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom, alt.comp.periphs.cdr Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 16:31:49 +0100 "How can I make a bootable CD?......" I have seen this question asked many times (including myself asking the same thing), and except on few occasions, instead of a complete description of how to go about it, only pointers to URLs were given as answers. Previously I had tried to create bootable CDs with relative failures... With CDRWIN, I managed to produce bootable CDs, whereas with Nero I couldn't, and I was very much frustrated with NERO in this aspect, as I had no problems burning other types of CDs with NERO. After doing some reading, I set about doing some tests using a CDRW to produce bootable CDs with the NERO program. The following article resulted from the tests I performed,and describes various ways to create a bootable-CD with some detailed description of other programs that were used and in what way, and how the boot data was recorded on the CDRW. I also included some other information regarding the preparation and use of custom boot diskettes (of various formats such as 1.44MB, 2.88MB, etc.) for use with some imaging software (such as Ghost), which can be used for an immediate restore of a complete system. I tried to keep this article short, but given the specifics of some methods used/described, I am afraid the length of this article will be a bit longer than most people expect. Permissions: This article could be archived/posted in any of the public servers that archive CD-R related subject matter (no need to ask specific permission). Disclaimer: The information is provided as is with no guarantees (with possible errors that I might have missed), so take the information with a grain of salt and use it at AT YOUR OWN RISK! Furthermore, reference is made to specific software, thus use of other software and/or the specific usage details of other software may affect the results, in which case you may have to conduct your own tests to arrive at a good solution! H/Ware and S/Ware Platform Details ================================== Computer System/Hardware Used: Cyrix 166 MMX processor, 32 Mb Ram, 3 HDs (of various sizes), Samsung CD-ROM, Philips Series 400 (PCA460RW) CD Writer (configured as Yamaha CRW4416E by flashing the firmware with Yamaha 1.0h version firmware - i.e. the CD Writer is listed in System Properties as Yamaha CRW4461E). BIOS settings: BIOS allows boot sequence from an IDE CDROM drive! (for testing purposes the BIOS was setup as: CDROM, C, A --> i.e. CD-ROM first, then Hard Disk C, then A for seeking boot info). Depending on your BIOS, in the case of IDE CDROM drives, the BIOS settings should be similar to this example. IF your BIOS does not support boot from a IDE CD-ROM, then you will not be able to test your bootable CDs! In case of SCSI CDROM drives, you may have to choose: SCSI, A,C or SCSI, C,A or similar. However your SCSI card should be able to support these BIOS settings. Since I do not have a SCSI card or drives, I cannot comment on the particulars of the BIOS and SCSI configurations! IDE connections: 2 HDs are setup as Master and Slave on 1st IDE controller, 3rd HD is setup as Master on 2nd IDE controller. Either the CDROM drive (Samsung) or the CD Writer (Yamaha) is hooked as Slave on 2nd IDE - As I don't have any extra IDE controllers to connect 5 IDE devices, I ended up hooking up either the CDROM or the CD Writer drive to the 2nd IDE as Slave, which seemed to work without problems! No DMA possibilities (old system with only Ultra 33 support, that gave lots of problems when DMA is enabled, so DMA disabled)! Operating System: Windows98SE Other Software used: Nero (v.4.0.7.5), Norton Ghost, WinImage (5.00.5000), WinAce Archiver (v.1.0). The Process of Creating a Bootable CD using Nero ================================================ There are many options available with Nero to create a bootable CD; such as using a bootable logical drive (which can be a diskette, or a hard drive which has a size less then 650 MB)so that the boot data is copied and burned on the CD along with any other data, or an image file (image of a bootable diskette or a hard drive of less than 650 mb size) is used for the same purposes. Furthermore depending on the choices made, expert settings in Nero allow further options to be setup! Considering that a bootable diskette is easier to prepare (especially with win98se), you can either use the diskette as a prototype, or obtain an image of this diskette and use the image file for creating your bootable-CD. NOTE: I have not used the option of getting boot image from a hard drive, as my active boot partition is larger than 650 MBs! I only tested the various ways of using the bootable diskette options. First let us have a look at the bootable diskettes... StartUp Diskette (Bootable Emergency Diskette): ----------------------------------------------- Because quite many of the stuff I am going to explain will make use of a bootable diskette, I have to talk about the various ways of obtaining a bootable diskette.... The simplistic method is to use Format Diskette and choose copy system files in the dialog box, from Windows Explorer, however this only creates a diskette with system files only, and no CDROM drivers that support access to the CDROM drive during the boot process when installing Windows. In this case you have to manually configure your autoexec.bat and config.sys files, add the necessary CDROM drivers so that you can use your CDROM drive after the boot-up process. The other method is to use Emergency Diskette Creation process that is available in various versions of Windows 9x. Emergency Diskette or StartUp diskette option is available in Add-Remove Programs icon in the Control Panel (choose the StartUp Disk tab in Add-Remove Programs dialog box, and click on Create Disk button). Most versions of Windows9x comes with a StartUp diskette (which you can use) so that the OS can be installed on a new HD from the Win9x CD. If the computer comes preinstalled with win9x, then you have to use the startup disk creation process to create a bootable diskette as explained above. If you are using Win98SE, and it is installed on your computer, then check out your Windows\Command subdirectory. There is a batch file called Bootdisk.bat, which will create a bootable startup diskette. A similar utility is available in the win98se CD, under \tools\mtsutil\fat32ebd folder. By using the executable file fat32ebd.exe, you can create a bootable diskette which is the same startup diskette with all the necessary CD-ROM drivers, etc. (If I am not mistaken, you can obtain this utility from Microsoft web site and other places on the Internet, by performing a search!). Now we will look into the use of the bootable diskette and images created (with programs like WinImage)from the bootable diskette, in order to burn a bootable-CD with NERO. 1) Creating Bootable-CD from a 1.44 MB Boot Diskette: ------------------------------------------------------- The process of using a bootable diskette and creating a bootable-CD is a plain vanilla operation, but sometimes there might be *** a problem! *** When the CD is being burned by copying the data from the diskette, the data flow rate is sometimes too slow, and ends up causing coasters or bootable-CDs that do not properly boot! Note: cacheing the data from the diskette to the HD did SOLVE part of the sustainable data flow rate problem. However, boot sector info usually was not properly collected or transferred to the HD, so that the system files were not burned properly on to the CD. The end result is a successful burn, but a CD that is NOT bootable(at least in my situation.) YMMV! *** Solution *** Instead of using the CD Writer to burn the boot info and any other data you need on the CDR/W, first use the virtual device (CD-Recorder Menu - select Image Recorder as the recording device) to create an image of the whole CD you want to burn. This image will be written on the HD as a file. You can, then select your actual CD Recorder (CD-Recorder Menu - select your own CD REcorder as the recording device) and burn the CDR/W using the CD Image file on the HD. This will allow sustained data flow, and prevents and Coasters or misburned boot data on the CDR/W. NOTE: Of course the above method requires you to have a fast IDE HD and enough disk space for creation of the CD Image file. Important: you should perform a defrag operation before and after creating the CD image file so that the HD performance is relatively optimized! If you have access to Norton Disk Optimizer, so much better, otherwise MS Defrag will suffice! Nero settings for bootable CD: ------------------------------ Nero Settings for using bootable Diskette as the boot source: First of all choose in the CD Recorder menu choose Image Recorder to create an image on your HD. Then select CD-ROM (Boot) from the New Compilation options. In the Compilation Info dialog box, there are several tabs, where various settings should be configured. Boot-Tab: Bootable Logical Drive: no other settings should be configured! File Options-Tab: Select: ISO LEVEL 1, Mode 1, ISO 9660 Do not select other option boxes! NOTE: use of relaxing ISO restrictions will still allow you to burn a bootable-CD, however the only data you can access is the boot data and the files that were on the diskette, but you may not be able to access the data directories and files with long filenames and similar that you have chosen to burn onto the CD! (this is actually tested and confirmed as causing problems!) NOTE: NERO lists a warning "This CD is possibly not readable under DOS/Windows 3.1x. ...." on the tab, when you have selected options that relaxes ISO 9660 restrictions, so undo your selection until the warning message goes away! NOTE: Make sure that the data folders and files you have selected in the File Browser window consist of 8.3 DOS naming conventions, and the directory folder depths are not more than 8 levels deep, otherwise they will be unaccessible! Volume Descriptor-Tab: fill it in as you like! Dates-Tab: fill it in as you like! Burn-Tab: Number of Copies: 1 Use Burn-proof: select Cache files smaller than: specify the size (128k seems ok, but modify it as per your requirements, if you have problems). You can now select directories and files from the File Browser menu to fill your CD (make sure the directory depth is less than 8 levels, and filename conventions are 8.3 characters). In the File menu, select Write CD, which will take you to the CD-Burn tab. When you click Write button, a dialog box will how up so that you can select the drive, directory and the filename of the image file to be written to the HD. Once the image is ready on the HD, you have to select your Recorder >from CD-Recorder menu, and then choose Burn Image from the File Menu to transfer and burn the image onto the CDR/W. When the burn process completes (hopefully with successful burn), then you can test your bootable CD by re-starting your system. NOTE: make sure your BIOS settings are setup properly to boot initially from your CDROM drive. Possible Problems: Sometimes the CDROM drives may not be able to read a burned CDR/W disk. In that case you may have to try to use your CD Writer as the CDROM drive, and place the burned CDR/W disk into the recorder. During the boot process, usually the CDROM and CD Recorder equipment are scanned (if they are on the same IDE controller) and if a boot CD is read successfully, then you computer will boot from the CD. If you have tested successfully using your Recorder, then try using different brands of CDR/W media, so that your CDROM drive is able to read the media as well as your CD Writer, unless you are satisfied by using your Recorder as the CDROM drive for the boot-up! 2) Creating Bootable-CD from a Boot Diskette Image File: ---------------------------------------------------------- This process is a little bit more involved. First you should have the StartUp Diskette available (see bootable StartUp Diskette for more info). You need WinImage or Norton Disk Editor program to create an image file from the bootable diskette. I have chosen WinImage, because of several other considerations such as the possibility of changing the actual format of an image file (as I will explain below). Using WinImage, you can read the diskette as the source, and create an image file from it and write this image file onto the HD. NOTE: You should save this image file as a NON-Compressed (.IMA) file on your HD (eg: BootDisk.IMA) When the image file is ready, all we have to do is goto Nero, and configure our settings for the bootable-CD creation... Nero settings for bootable CD: ------------------------------ Nero Settings for using Bootable Diskette Image File as the boot source: First of all choose CD-ROM (Boot) from the New Compilation options. In the Info Dialog box, we look at the tabs, and perform the following: Boot-Tab: Source of boot image data will be Image File, and in the file name box, use the browse button to select the drive, directory and the filename of the WinImage file. Ex: :\\BootDisk.IMA Check mark Enable Expert Settings box, and do the following: Kind of Emulation: choose Floppy Emulation 1.44MB Boot Message: no change! (i.e. leave it as it is in its Default Text String, which is "Nero Boot-Loader V3.0" Load segment of sectors: no change! (usually it is "07C0") Number of loaded sectors: no change! (usually it is "1") File Options-Tab: ISO LEVEL 1, Mode 1, ISO 9660 (note settings, option boxes not listed here means they are DEselected!) Joliet could be either selected or not selected! (I did not notice any problems whether this is selected or not!) Do not select other option boxes! NOTE: use of relaxing ISO restrictions will still allow you to burn a bootable-CD, however the only data you can access is the boot data and the files that were on the diskette, but you may not be able to access the data directories and files with long filenames and similar that you have chosen to burn onto the CD! (this is actually tested and confirmed as causing problems!) NOTE: NERO lists a warning "This CD is possibly not readable under DOS/Windows 3.1x. ...." on the tab, when you have selected options that relaxes ISO 9660 restrictions, so undo your selection until the warning message goes away! NOTE: Make sure that the data folders and files you have selected in the File Browser window consist of 8.3 DOS naming conventions, and the directory folder depths are not more than 8 levels deep, otherwise they will be unaccessible! Volume Descriptor-Tab: fill it in as you like! Dates-Tab: fill it in as you like! Burn-Tab: Determine Max Speed, Simulation, Write, Finalize CD should be checked! Write speed depends on your CD writer specs - choose max if possible! Write Method should be DAO (Disk At Once) checked (if it is available as a choice - usually it is dimmed and not accessible!) Cache Disk and Network files should be checked if many smaller files to be burned or data to be collected from slower drives or media (such as diskettes) Specify the size of files to be cached (128k seems ok, but modify it as per your requirements, if you have problems). You can now select directories and files from the File Browser menu to fill your CD (make sure the directory depth is less than 8 levels, and filename conventions are 8.3 characters). Once everything is setup, you can start the burn process. From the CD-Recorder menu, select Choose Recorder, and in the device selection list, choose your CD-recorder as the device. In the File menu select Write CD, which will take you to the Burn tab of the Compilation Info dialog box. Make your settings for speed test, simulation, CD-Recorder speed, etc as you like. Make sure that: 1. Finalize CD is checked 2. DAO (Disk At Once) is checked. Click on the Write button, and the burn process will start. Since the boot-diskette data will be read from an WinImage file and the rest of the data from the HD, you should be able to burn the CDR/W without any problems (as long as the HD data transfer rates are ok, and you do not have any buffer underrun problems - I will not address buffer underrun problems, as the issues were discussed so many times. As a basic precaution, just make sure your HD has good transfer speed, and it is defragged! No Screen Savers, CDROM auto insert notification settings and other interruptions are cancelled!) When the burn is completed test your CDR/W as explained before by restarting your system, and having your BIOS configured to boot from the CD drive first! 3) Creating Bootable-CD using customized Boot Diskette: --------------------------------------------------------- This is a bit more involved then the previous methods explained, however it is no more difficult then item-2 "Creating Bootable-CD from a Boot Diskette Image File". What is involved is a special boot diskette image file, slightly modified. To perform the modifications we need to look at the Win9x StartUp Diskette, and other software packages, to come up with something slightly improved or enhanced. But first, I have to explain my aim, so that during the coming discussion, you will know what we are trying to achieve... Some of us use special software such as Norton Ghost, to create an image of a complete HD or a partition, so that we can restore our system quickly, in a matter of minutes (well.. in a matter of half an hour or so!). So, as an example, let's say I have an image file created by Ghost for my main partition, which is saved on another partition (with the filename: Backup.gho). I need to copy this image file onto a CDRW disk, and I want a bootable CDRW so that I can boot from the CDRW disk, then start Ghost from the CDRW, and finally read the Backup.gho image file, and restore it to my Drive C (main partition on my HD). To sum, up I need to have boot data on the CDR/W (consisting of system files to start the computer, CDROM support drivers to use my CDROM and/or CDRW drive, DOS commands to perform any other operation I may need to, and a copy of Ghost executables and configuration files to run Ghost program, and the ghost image file to restore my system), and so on... So far so good... If you look at the contents of Windows/Command folder, you will see that there are lots of DOS commands (files) available for your use, but the problem is to fit all those files into 1.44 MB diskette, preferably the startup diskette (which is already quite full). In contrast, if you look at the file listing of a startup diskette (created by windows 9x) you will see that it contains system files, drivers for CDROM drives, and a minimal set of DOS commands, and an EBD.CAB file which includes a few more DOS commands. As an extra, I need to have access to other DOS commands (like DiskCopy, Doskey, Edit, Deltree, Xcopy, Xcopy32, and so on)and many others as listed in Windows/Command folder. I can do other stuff with those commands (or if you have Norton DOS utilities, and want to use some of those utilities during your DOS session when you boot your system from the CDRW). If you check out the StartUp diskette contents, you will see that: 1. some basic Dos commands are available 2. CDROM drivers available 3. EBD.CAB file which is MS Cabinet compressed file that contains few extra DOS commands (the contents of the cabinet file is extracted during the boot process and written to a RAMDRIVE, so that the few DOS commands are made available.) NOTE: if you remember the old DOS days, then you will recognize the RAMDRIVE, which is virtual device that is allocated a memory space by a device driver in RAM, and accessed as a logical drive, so that files in the RAMDRIVE have better performance. As soon as you shut off the computer the contents will be gone, as the RAMDRIVE contents are volatile and will not be written to the HD! I have several options to deal with the situation; I can just use the StartUp diskette as it is to make a bootable CD, and then keep a copy of Windows\Command directory on the bootable CD so that I can access the DOS commands via the CDRW disc. Alternatively, I can try to copy the DOS commands from Windows\Command as a cabinet file onto the StartUp diskette. The alternative method has several advantages but also poses some serious problems. I need a program that can create a MS Cabinet file (what program can I use?), and the resulting cabinet file should be fitting on the startup diskette (empty space on the startup diskette?), and finally the extraction program on the startup diskette should be able to access my Cabinet file, and extract the contents into the RAMDRIVE during the boot process (probably I have to edit the batch and config files to get things working properly). The first problem is creation of a MS cabinet file, and the solution is to use a utility like WinAce Archiver program, which can create the required Cabinet file. First I copied the contents of Windows/Command folder into a directory DOS on the HD. Using WinAce, I extracted the contents of EBD.CAB file into the same directory (DOS) on the HD. Then using WinAce, I managed to create a new cabinet file called EBD.CAB, which included the following: 1. all the files (DOS commands) in the DOS directory, and 2. contents of ghost folder (which includes the executables, and initialization files for the Ghost program), 3. mouse driver and initialization files While creating the new EBD.CAB file with WinAce, I made sure that each directory and the files in the directory are compressed with their paths saved (select the Store Full Path option in the Add Files/Create archive dialog box). This allows you to have two separate folders; one folder with DOS commands, and the another folder with ghost files. The resulting EBD.CAB, even though it is a compressed file, was naturally too large to fit on the StartUp diskette. Here comes another solution to another problem, that of limited diskette space on the startup diskette. Using WinImage program, you can perform the following: 1. Read the StartUp diskette (which is 1.44 MB bootable diskette), which creates a perfect boot diskette image on the HD, 2. Under Image menu, choose Change Format, which lists possible diskette formats, from which you can choose 2.88 MB Format (which is listed under the standard formats in the dialog box). 3. Delete the EBD.CAB file (this is the original EBD.CAB file with limited DOS commands). 4. Inject the newly created cabinet file EDB.CAB from HD into the WinImage StartUp Diskette Image File (in place of the old EDB.CAB file). End result... Well!... 2.88 MB bootable StartUp Diskette Image File, with a new EBD.CAB file (which contains a complete copy of DOS commands, and Ghost folder with ghost executable and configuration files). The final check to be performed is how much space will be required by the contents of the EBD.CAB file when the contents are being extracted into the RAMDRIVE. A quick check of DOS directory and Ghost directory on the HD reveals that I will need about 3 MB storage space, so my RAMDRIVE should be slightly larger than 3 MB. The RAMDRIVE size is setup in the Config.Sys file using a "device=...." statement. COpying the original config.sys file from the startup diskette onto the HD, and using file editor to look into the config.sys and edit its contents, I locate the necessary statement as follows: [COMMON] .... .... devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048 .... which sets up about 2 MB RAMDRIVE. This line is modified to: .... devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 3072 .... Note: depending on the eventual contents of a RAMDRIVE to be created, and the system RAM available, you can modify the settings of the RAMDRIVE as per your needs (incrementing/decrementing the size by 512 KB should give satisfactory results). Save the edited copy of config.sys on the HD, and then inject into the WinImage StartUp Diskette image file (by overwriting the existing copy of config.sys). Finally, the StartUp bootable diskette (2.88 MB size) image is ready with the initial system files to boot a system, CDROM drivers to support any standard CDROM drive, and the ability to create a RAMDRIVE that will contain full complement of DOS commands and special subfolder for Ghost executable and configuration files. One more thing to do in the WinImage program is to choose Defrag Image >from the Image menu, which will defrag the diskette image for optimum performance. Saving this image file as an uncompressed WinImage file (boot288.IMA) makes it available for use with NERO. Now that we have an image file of a startup diskette (boot288.IMA), we have to look into the NERO settings, on how to burn a bootable CD using this image file. Nero settings for bootable CD: ------------------------------ Nero Settings for using Bootable Diskette Image File as the boot source are similar to the steps explained in Step-2 previously; Boot-Tab: Source of boot image data will be Image File, and in the file name box, use the browse button to select the drive, directory and the filename of the WinImage file. Ex: :\\boot288.IMA Check mark Enable expert settings box, and do the following: Kind of Emulation: Floppy Emulation 2.88MB Boot Message: no change! (i.e. leave it as it is in its Default Text String) Load segment of sectors: no change! Number of loaded sectors: no change! File Options-Tab: ISO LEVEL 1, Mode 1, ISO 9660 (note settings, option boxes not listed here means they are DEselected!) Joliet could be either selected or not selected! The rest of the Tabs on the Compilation Info dialog box are same as in Step-2! You can use the File Browser window to add directories and files to be burned onto the CDR/W (Ex: a folder with the ghost image file of your partition) Once everything is setup, you can start the burn process. Since the boot-diskette data will be read from an WinImage file and the rest of the data from the HD, you should be able to burn the CDR/W without any problems (as long as the HD data transfer rates are ok, and you do not have any buffer underrun problems - I will not address buffer underrun problems, as the issues were discussed so many times. As a basic precaution, just make sure your HD has good transfer speed, and it is defragged! No Screen Savers, CDROM auto insert notification settings and other interruptions are cancelled!) When the burn is completed test your CDR/W as explained before by restarting your system, and having your BIOS configured to boot from the CD drive first! As you will see, if successfull, the boot-cd will boot your system, and when you choose CDROM support, will initialize your CDROM (or CDR/W or both) drives, and then create a RAMDRIVE where DOS commands and Ghost will be available. You can then start Ghost from the RAMDRIVE, and accessing the ghost image on your CDR/W, start your system restore. REMARKS Customization and Other Possibilities ------------------------------------- To further customize your bootable startup diskette you can add mouse drivers to be able to use your mouse (especially useful in Ghost), and modify autoexec.bat file for other purposes. The ability to create CAB files and RAMDRIVEs gives a lot of options for creation of special purpose boot diskettes in various formats (1.44 MB, 1.68MB, 1.72 MB, 2.88 MB). I have also successfully created boot-CDs using 1.68 and 1.72 MB formatted boot diskette images! For the purposes explained above, WinAce program (or any other that can create CAB files), and WinImage program (with the ability to create various formats of diskettes or change formats, without the use of actual hardware that may be required) proved invaluable tools and gave a lot of flexibility. Why Put Ghost on RAMDRIVE ------------------------- A special note on why ghost subfolder is included in the EBD.CAB file for later extraction into the RAMDRIVE! This allows for a fast copying of Ghost executables and configuration files into RAM, thus faster response to start GHOST. Furthermore, I have noticed that, if you try to run Ghost from the CDR/W disk, with its configuration files, you receive an error message, as the configuration file could not be updated (as it is placed on a Read-Only media such as a CDR/W). However when you run ghost in a similar fashion from RAMDRIVE, the configuration parameters could be updated, as RAMDRIVE is treated as read-write media. Making use of DOS commands or Ghost from the CDR/W is a relatively slow READing (loading into memory) process with always present problem of Read-Only attribute associated with the files. If you try to extract the EBD.CAB file contents onto the HD, it is also slower compared to extraction to the RAMDRIVE (writing to HD compared to writing to RAM). In summary, performancewise, trying to get all the files you may need or use onto the RAMDRIVE is faster (assuming you have enough RAM). The only downside is, loss of power will definitely make you loose the data, as RAMDRIVE is volatile. But then you have to look into what data you have lost... You will only loose the contents of EBD.CAB, which are still available on the boot-CD, and as soon as you restart your system, you will get the same files loaded into the memory (RAMDRIVE), so in effect volatility is not an issue. Bootable Diskette vs. Bootable CD --------------------------------- The final comment on "why not just use a bootable diskette to boot the system, and then use the CD as a data source for your ghost image or whatever purposes", is that CD media is quite reliable, better capacity, and is not damaged as easily as diskettes due to magnetic interference or other reasons. Most people will probably agree with me, when I say that on more than few occasions when you needed your emergency recovery diskette, you found out that the diskette had bad sectors, or whatever, thus being of no use. If the CDR/W is of good quality, and properly stored, it is more reliable media then a diskette! CDR/Ws are also read-only (once the media is finalized), thus offers better protection against viral infections compared to diskettes (their write-protection may be bypassed as it happened to me so many years ago when my old diskette drive was fooled into thinking the media is not write protected, thus giving free access to the media). And of course, the CDROM drives are faster than diskette drives (especially the latest CDROM drives) when it comes to reading data from, so you don't have to wait for "several years" while your system is being booted-up! I hope that I have not taken too much of the bandwidth of the NG or your time with this article. Good Luck and Happy Burning! =============================================================================== From thlx@mail.ncku.edu.tw Sat Nov 2 04:03:42 1996 Return-Path: Received: from mail.ncku.edu.tw (mail.ncku.edu.tw [140.116.2.10]) by mail6 (8.6.13/Netcom) id EAA09603; Sat, 2 Nov 1996 04:03:39 -0800 Received: from [140.116.9.177] ([140.116.9.177]) by mail.ncku.edu.tw (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id UAA24247 for ; Sat, 2 Nov 1996 20:06:04 +0800 Message-Id: <3.0.16.19961102080305.0bbfd9ba@mail.ncku.edu.tw> X-Sender: thlx@mail.ncku.edu.tw X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (16) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 1996 08:03:08 -0800 To: fadden@netcom.com From: Tung Cheng Tsai Subject: Renewed text about making bootable CD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: RO ==================================================================== HOW TO MAKE A PC BOOTABLE CD Ver: 1.04 Tung Cheng Tsai thlx@mail.ncku.edu.tw http://mail.ncku.edu.tw/~thlx/bootcd.htm ======================================================== Preface I have posted a document about how to make a bootable CD by using DEMO version of CDR Publisher several months ago on the netnews, since the demo version has the upper limit of making a 5 mb image file, so I have suggested using multi-session to make that bootable CD, then use other different CDR software to complete the rest of it. Many friends mailed to me saying that although they had set multi-session before making the bootable CD, the CD still can't be written anything on it after making it bootable. I have no answer to this problem, maybe it's caused by CDR Publisher, or caused by their own hardwares, I'm not sure. So I tried to study the documents got from Phoenix : http://www.ptltd.com/techs/specs.html . One is the "El Torito" specification, file name is cdrom7.pdf, the other is a "How to" guide, file name is makecd.pdf. I have tried many times, finally I succeed. There is another document from CDROM Professional Magazine: http://www.onlineinc.com/cdrompro/CP1995/AugCP95/starrett.html. You can also try it. Requirements 1. Norton's DISKEDIT.EXE 2. A bootable floppy disk or hard disk ( < 650 mb ) 3. Any CDR software that can make an ISO9660 Image file Abstract of Procedures 1. Make an image file of the bootable floppy (hard) disk by Norton's diskedit.exe , named osboot.img. 2. Make a booting catalog file, named bootcat.bin. 3. Make an ISO file that contains the above 2 files and other files and directories to be written to the CD. 4. Edit the ISO file by Norton's diskedit.exe. 5. Burn that modified ISO file into a CD. Descriptions Here I will describe a main idea of what we will do. To boot from a CD, there must have a " Boot Volume Descritor " located at the sector 17 of the CD. It's a string of hex codes. Somewhere after that hex codes, there must have a code set of 4 bytes that is the starting address of the " Booting Catalog" --- the file bootcat.bin we will make. The booting catalog is another set of hex codes, describing things about this bootable CD. And, again, there must have a code set of 4 bytes, that's the starting address of the bootable image, ie, osboot.img file. So what we have to do by diskedit.exe is to: 1. Find the starting addresses of OSBOOT.IMG and BOOTCAT.BIN 2. Edit sector 17 3. Edit the sector that is occupied by BOOTCAT.BIN Procedures 1. Make an image file from a bootable floppy (or hard) Disk a. Using Norton's DISKEDIT.EXE b. Object -> Drive -> A (or B or C) c. Object -> Physical Sector -> OK d. Tools -> Write Object to -> To a File -> ( setting file name ) -> Yes The file name is supposed to be OSBOOT.IMG. 2. Make a file named BOOTCAT.BIN a. Create a file of 2048 bytes in any form. b. Use diskedit.exe to edit its hex codes with the beginning like this: 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 AA 55 55 AA 88 02 00 00 00 00 01 00 BB The rest of this file must be filled with hex 0. ( The last "BB" has no meaning. It's only used for noting where to place the address codes of osboot.img.) You can also download it from : http://mail.ncku.edu.tw/~thlx/bootcat.bin 3. Create the ISO File You can use any CDR software you like. One thing to be careful, the 2 files we have just made must be located at the first place of the ISO image file. You can achieve this by " drag and drop " these 2 files to the window of the CDR software firstly, then drag the other files which will be written on the CD. This is because I have an experience when I put these 2 files at the last place of the ISO file, it will not be bootable in IDE CDROM drive, but boots very well in SCSI CDROM drive. If I put them at the first place, bootable both. I don't know why this happened, tell me if you know. 4. Modify the ISO File Start Norton's diskedit.exe. 1. Find ASCII string "bootcat". After it is found , put your cursor at character "b" , move the cursor up 2 lines and right 1 space. Write down the next 4 bytes. For example, the cursor on the left screen is located at 27 00 00 00 , then write down "27 00 00 00" on a paper for later use. 2. Find ASCII string "osboot". Place cursor on "o", then use the same method to find that 4 bytes. I suppose it is "28 00 00 00". 3. Find Hex string "AA 55 55 AA", that is the sector occupied by BOOTCAT.BIN file. You will find a "BB" at the 3rd line, from this place fill in the 4 bytes got from finding "osboot" ASCII string (eg: 28 00 00 00) 88 02 00 00 00 00 01 00 BB Changed to : 88 02 00 00 00 00 01 00 28 00 00 00 And that "02" at the 2nd place means it's a 1.44 mb floppy bootable image, If you use other media, change it like this: 01 1.2 mb floppy disk 03 2.88 mb floppy disk 04 Hard disk 4. Editing sector 17 of the ISO file: Press home key to go back to the beginning ( sector 0 ) of this ISO image file. Then press PageDown key to offset 34816( Decimal), this is the beginning of sector 17. Replacing the beginning hex codes with the following: 00 43 44 30 30 31 01 45 4C 20 54 4F 52 49 54 4F 20 53 50 45 43 49 46 49 43 41 54 49 4F 4E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BB Notice the "BB" in the 5th line, it's the beginning place to put the address codes of bootcat.bin . ( The "BB" has no meaning. It's only used for noting where to place the address codes of bootcat.bin, you can type the address codes directly from the place of "BB".) In our example, it's 27 00 00 00, so, make the 5th line like this: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BB Changed to : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 27 00 00 00 The rest of this sector ( deep to offset 36863 ) should be replaced by "0". 5. Burn this ISO file to a CD. P.S. : Make sure you understand the above descriptions before burning your CD, or it will just waste a CD! I have tried using IDE hard disk for making a bootable image file, but all failed for booting from that CD! Then I have tried using a SCSI HD, this time it can boot from the SCSI CDROM, but was stuck when booting from an IDE CDROM. If you want to use CDR Publisher (demo), you may use the same method to make a bootable floppy disk image file, then use multi-session to burn it to CD, then burn other files you want at the second session by other CDR softwares, since the demo version of CDR Publisher has the limit of 5 mb image file size. Be careful not to use "single session" option! It will close the disc and no further session will be permitted. thlx@mail.ncku.edu.tw, TAIWAN Copyright by Tung Cheng Tsai 1996 =============================================================================== From an671366@anon.penet.fi Sat Aug 24 17:14:08 PDT 1996 Article: 17894 of comp.publish.cdrom.hardware Path: netcom.com!nntp04.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!lade.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!soap.news.pipex.net!pipex!usenet From: an671366@anon.penet.fi (UK Pete) Newsgroups: comp.publish.cdrom.hardware Subject: Re: Making a bootable CD and boot from it. Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 22:43:37 GMT Organization: UUNet PIPEX server (post doesn't reflect views of UUNet PIPEX) Lines: 422 Message-ID: <32179c80.3622358@news.dial.pipex.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: aj123.du.pipex.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99e/16.227 Status: RO On Sat, 17 Aug 1996 15:02:40 -0400, David Hwang wrote: >Hi, > >I'm looking for any information on how to make a bootable CD and how to >boot from CD. The only method I know to make a bootable CD is to use CDR >Publisher, but I'm missing some procedures. If any one has info on >makeing a bootable CD or boot up the system with CD, please respond. >Thank you very much for your time. > >P.S. The platform is PC. For years, the thought of a bootable CD-ROM has intrigued many: how could it be done in the DOS world? For Macintosh and Unix, bootability has never been a problem; if you made a byte-for-byte copy of a Mac or Unix hard disk to CD, the system could recognize the device and proceed to boot the disc. You can make a CD-ROM image from a DOS hard drive just like you can from a Mac or Unix drive, but it won't boot. In DOS, you need two things to access a CD-ROM drive: the first is a device driver that must be loaded so the system can recognize the CD- ROM device. The second is the MSCDEX program or one of its variants from Corel, Meridian, or other manufacturers that assigns a drive letter to the CD-ROM drive and allows DOS to access the files on the disc. And so the problem with a bootable DOS CD-ROM is that to boot the machine, the command interpreter, COMMAND.COM, must be loaded, and then the device driver for the CD-ROM drive can be loaded, and then MSCDEX.EXE can be started, and only then do you get access to the files on the CD-ROM. Hence, a catch-22, to load COMMAND.COM from a CD- ROM you must first load the device driver and MSCDEX. But you can load neither without first loading COMMAND.COM. The solution is to be able to recognize the presence of a CD-ROM before COMMAND.COM is loaded, and this can be done through the computer's BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or a BIOS on a SCSI or IDE adapter card. Once the drive is recognized by the BIOS, there must be a structure on the CD-ROM that allows the BIOS to load COMMAND.COM or a command interpreter for another operating system. Phoenix Technologies and IBM have jointly released the "El Torito" Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification, which defines how a boot image or images should be placed physically on the CD-ROM. The specification contains a lot of low-level details concerning the structure and makeup of the bootable disc. The bad news is that it takes a while to wade through the specification to figure out exactly how to set up a disc for bootability. The good news is that you can make a bootable CD-ROM using readily available tools and most CD-ROM Recordable software. More good news: the bootable CD is still an ISO 9660 disc, so it can be replicated and distributed like any other CD-ROM. The disc can contain anything that is normally placed on CD-ROM and you can give the user the option to boot from it or not. _[For more on the origins of El Torito Specification, readers should re-visit "Fresh Tortillas and CD-ROM Standards: The El Torito Bootable CD-ROM Specification," in the Standards column, by Dana J. Parker, in July 1995 CD-ROM Professional (Volume 8, Number 7)--ed.]_ Version 1.0 of the El Torito Specification is dated January 25, 1995; it is available without charge to anyone and there are no licensing fees required for the use of any of the information contained in the spec. WHAT IS A BOOTABLE DISC? The process of creating your own bootable CD-ROM is tedious, to be sure, but until CD-Recordable software vendors add this support to their software programs, or until someone writes a program that will automatically patch an existing ISO 9660 image file--which is not especially difficult--the tedious way is the only way to do it. And how tedious can the process be? Well, for one thing, it helps to be handy with hexidecimal numbers. The El Torito Specification describes itself as "defining how makers of CD-ROMs can package several 'images' of floppy and hard disks on a single CD with the ability to catalog these images and to selectively boot from a single image." The document, in what must be one of the great failures of public encouragement, also states the assumption that the would-be bootable disc maker is "familiar with standard BIOS INT 13 functions, ISO 9660, IBM/Microsoft INT 13 ExtensionsÄand ATAPI." Fortunately, although some familiarity with the sector structure of a CD-ROM is helpful, you can understand and make a bootable CD without being familiar with any of those other things. To access a bootable CD-ROM, a PC must be equipped with a BIOS that implements the El Torito requirements for accessing the boot sector. Most BIOS manufacturers are incorporating this capability into their BIOS and it is likely that soon, most new PCs will have the ability to boot from CD-ROM. Adaptec is ahead of the pack, having incorporated bootable CD support into the BIOS on their SCSI cards. The current Adaptec 1542CF card with a BIOS revision of 2.10 or later will allow you to boot from CD. (To see if your Adaptec card has this support, enter the Adaptec setup utility by pressing CTRL-A at the Adaptec BIOS sign on, go to "Advanced Configuration Options." If the boot feature is supported, there will be an option for "BIOS Support for Bootable CD-ROMs" in the menu.) THE BOOTABLE BACKGROUND Dealing with the location of certain data at certain sectors is necessary to produce a bootable CD. The Yellow Book defines the logical structure of a CD-ROM as having 333,000 sectors of 2,352 bytes each. 2,048 bytes of each sector are available for user data, and the other 304 bytes are reserved for things like sync, header, error correction and error detection code, all of which get added to the sectors in the CD-R creation or mastering process. In standard CD- ROM, the first 15 sectors are unused, with Sector 16 containing the Primary Volume Descriptor (PVD). This can be followed by any number of secondary volume descriptors, followed by a Set Terminator Volume Descriptor. The PVD is always at Sector 16 and on ISO 9660 discs it always starts with the characters "CD001". The El Torito Specification adds two entries to the CD-ROM. These are the Boot Record and the Boot Catalog. The Boot Catalog consists of five entries: the Validation Entry, the Initial/Default Entry, the Section Header, the Section Entry, and the Section Entry Extension. The El Torito Specification takes advantage of ISO 9660's ability to use more than one volume descriptor, by requiring that a Boot Record Volume Descriptor reside at Sector 17 of the CD, which serves as a Secondary Volume Descriptor. The CD001 header of the Boot Record Volume Descriptor indicates that this disc is an ISO 9660 CD-ROM; the EL TORITO SPECIFICATION identifies the disc as one that is potentially bootable. According to the specification, it is not necessary that the boot catalog reside on any particular sector, but only that the absolute pointer in Sector 17 identifies its location. The boot catalog that shows up in the pointed-to sector potentially has five entries. A single boot image CD-ROM, however, only uses the first two, the Validation Entry and the Initial/Default Entry. The Validation Entry is always the first entry in the boot catalog; this entry validates that there is a boot catalog on the disc, but also reserves space for the identity of the manufacturer. If you were to look at the hexidecimal for Byte 0 of this sector, it would be 01, which is the header ID that a bootable CD uses at this position to indicate that a boot catalog is present on the disc. Byte 2 indicates the platform for which the disc is intended, where, for instance, 00 designates an 80x86 machine, 01 designates a Power PC, 02 designates a Macintosh. Other entries can serve as an ID string that can be used to identify the maker of the CD-ROM, but on line two, the entries 14 and 15 are designated Key Bytes and must always be set to 55 and AA respectively. The Initial/Default Entry in the boot catalog indicates whether the disc is bootable, what media type it emulates, the load segment of the boot image, the number of sectors to store in the load segment, and the starting address of the floppy or hard disk image. The 88 in the first byte (see Figure 4) indicates that the disc is bootable. If this is followed by 04, then the meaning is that the bootable image is an image of a hard disk; a 1.44MB floppy would be represented by 02. C0 07 is the standard load segment and in most applications this will not change. The 15 indicates that the bootable image resides at Sector 15h of the CD-ROM. Translated to decimal, this is Sector 21. DEFAULT ENTR is an identifier that is used for reference by the disk producer. Using and creating multiple boot images and discs requires that the Section Header, Section Entry, and Section Entry Extension exist to support, for example, a disc that could have four boot images on it. When the BIOS recognizes the CD-ROM as bootable, it will display a menu and allow the user to choose which disk image to boot. An example of the type of choice a multiple boot disc may offer is a disc that has both floppy and hard disk boot images on it. The Section Header Entry would indicate that a group of booting entries follow, that is to say that the BIOS can boot from any of these images instead of the default image defined in the Initial/Default Entry. In Figure 5, 91 indicates that this is the final header. A 90 would indicate that more headers follow. The 00 in the second byte indicates that the disc is for a PC. As with the Initial/Default Entry, 01 would indicate a disc for a Power PC and 02 would indicate a disc for a Macintosh. The 02 in the third byte indicates that there are two Section Entries following this header. OS Type 01 is an ID string that can be entered by the disc producer. It identifies to the type of boot that will occur when picking this entry from the menu. The first Section Entry is the same as the Initial/Default Entry, with the addition of reserved bytes for selection criteria that is vendor unique. A floppy boot Section Entry would be indicated by an 02 in the second byte. The second and any subsequent Section Entries have the same structure as the first Section Entry, except that its contents are specific to the boot image it identifies. A BOOTABLE DISC, STEP-BY-STEP Anyone writing a bootable disc will need to make an exact image of the hard drive that the Bootable CD will emulate, and then that image will have to be written on another hard disk with a CD-ROM premastering/recording program. The next step is to use Norton's Disk Editor, or other, similarly functional software, to patch the image to make it bootable. After that, it is simply a matter of writing the bootable CD-R disc with any CD-Recordable software. STEP ONE: A BIT-FOR-BIT COPY OF THE HARD DRIVE You first need to copy the physical hard drive, bit for bit, to a file. You can do this with Norton's Disk Editor program, which is part of the Norton Utilities or any other disk editor that allows the functions discussed here. (For the disc created in the course of the exploration described here, I used Norton Utilities 7.0, and specific menu selections reflect that particular program). Here is the procedure: 1. Start the Disk Editor and choose the OBJECT pull down menu. 2. Select the first entry, DRIVE. 3. Change TYPE from Logical Disk to Physical Disk. 4. Select the physical disk that you wish to copy, press OK and you will see a hexidecimal representation of the hard disk, set to Cylinder 0 Side 0 Sector 1. 5. Select TOOLS from the pulldown menu. 6. Select WRITE OBJECT TO from the menu; the dialog box will show the total number of sectors on your hard disk and FILE will be selected by default as the destination. A dialog box will come up, prompting you for the directory and filename of the image you are about to write. 7. Enter the directory and filename, confirm the action, and a bit-for- bit image of your entire hard drive, including empty space, will now be written to the source file. Be prepared to do something else for a while. This will take a long time, two hours or so for a 250MB drive. Remember that the Norton Disk Editor will write a file the size of your full hard disk capacity, even if the hard disk has only a few files on it. STEP TWO: MAKING AN ISO 9660 IMAGE Once you have completed the copy, exit Norton Utilities. Now you need to make an IS0 9660 image containing only the file that you just produced. Create the image on a hard disk with your ISO formatting software, using software that writes a real image to a hard drive. (Software that writes virtual images only to CD-R will not work because you will need to patch the image to make it bootable before you can write it to the CD-R disc.) STEP THREE: PATCHING THE IS0 9660 IMAGE After your software has created the image, you can proceed to the patching process. Using Norton's Disk Editor program, you can view and edit the ISO 9660 image. To edit the image, start the Disk Editor, select the OBJECT pulldown menu and then select FILE from the menu. A dialog box appears: select the image file you just created. When the file opens, you will see a bunch of zeros, starting at offset 0, hex 0. This is the first sector of the CD-ROM image. Make the following changes: 1. You need to move to Sector 17, which will become the boot record. Sector 17 is at offset 34,816, 8800h in the Norton Disk Editor. (To determine where the next sector starts, add 2,048 to the offset displayed on the screen. Scroll down until you find 8800h.) 2. You should see "CD001" on the right of the screen. This identifies the disc as a CD-ROM. To identify it as a bootable CD-ROM you need to add "EL TORITO SPECIFICATION" right after "CD001". Use the tab key to move to the right portion of the screen. Press your CAPS LOCK key and type in "EL TORITO SPECIFICATION". When you reach the end of a line, Norton may ask you if you want to save changes. Choose OK and move to the next line to finish entering the string. 3. Make sure that the space between CD001 and EL TORITO SPECIFICATION is 01 and not 20, which is the ASCII space character. 4. Check the first byte in the first line. If it is FF or any other number, change it to 00. You can do this by pressing TAB, moving to the first byte in the line with the cursor keys and typing in "00". 5. Double check to make sure that the numbers and characters on your screen match Figure 3 in this article. Don't just check the characters because some of the hex numbers will not show up as characters. 6. When you are sure that they match the numbers in Figure 3, save the changes to disk by pressing ESC and choosing WRITE. STEP FOUR: DETERMINING BOOT CATALOG PLACEMENT You need to determine where the boot catalog should begin. While it can theoretically be placed anywhere, since the boot record refers to it, this example places it at Sector 19. Follow this procedure: before you create the boot catalog, go back and tell the boot record where the boot catalog is. Sector 19 is 13 in hexidecimal, so you need to go back to Sector 17 and enter the number at line 8840h, Byte 7. Use the editor to enter "13" at this position. You are now finished with Sector 17. STEP FIVE: CREATING THE BOOT RECORD To create the boot record, you need to go to Sector 19. Sector 19 is located at offset 38,912, 9800h, and there will be no data here; the boot catalog will consist of the Validation Entry and the Initial/Default Entry. Follow these steps: 1. Use the editor to enter the bytes shown in Figure 4 on lines 9800h, 9810h, 9820h and 9830h. Save your work as you go or as the Norton Disk Editor prompts you. Don't worry about a mistake--you can just type over it and save again. 2. Check to make sure that the hard drive boot image starts at Sector 21 (15 in hex). There are good reasons to check: the 15 at line 9820h, Byte 8, tells the BIOS about the location of the hard drive boot image, but some premastering software may put it at Sector 20, 22, or 23. Wherever this sector is will be OK, _as long as its location is specified in the boot catalog._ 3. Determine that the image is in the correct place by moving to offset 43008, A800h (Sector 21) and looking for the string that appears at the beginning of Figure 6. This is the beginning of the hard disk image, and if you do not find it at Sector 21, keep scrolling down until you locate this string. (Again, to find out which CD-ROM sector you are in, divide the offset by 2,048. In this case, 43008 / 2,048 = 21). 4. If you find the start of the hard disk image at another location, determine its sector number and note the number for insertion into the Initial/Default Entry. If the hard disk image starts at a sector other than 21, you will need to determine what sector it is and convert the number to hexidecimal, and then replace the 15h with that number. AND NOW, THE WRITE MOMENT Once the boot catalog is completed, save the file for the last time. The image should now be ready to transfer to disc. Write the ISO image file to your CD-Recorder in the normal manner. You can close the disc or write in multisession; if you make a multisession disc, you must close the session. Once done, you can double check the positions of the boot sector, boot catalog and the hard disk image, but it is more fun to just put the disc in your drive and reset the computer. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN, TO BOOT? Finally, a CD-ROM that boots. Think of the possibilities. In a complex system like the PC, and with demanding and configuration-hungry titles pushing the platform, the biggest wonder of it all may be that bootable CD-ROM has been so long in coming. The possibilities are quite striking and large in number. Even if you count in hexidecimal. Subject: How to make a bootable CD First, The bootable CD I made using these instructions was for Use with the NEW Adaptec 2940 PCI adapters which carry the BIOS 1.21 or Later. These adapters have the option for booting from a CD EVEN if the MotherBoard BIOS does not support it. I have sucessfully used the CD with the 2940 and the New 1542CF's. I do not know and have not tried any IDE systems (Since I don't have any thing IDE) Second, This procedure is not a straight forward "Drag-n-Drop" kind, but thats what makes it all the more challenging. Finally, I have added some minor corrections done some re-formating to the Original Posting. Here it goes. Note: The bootable CD made this way is a simulation of floppy disk, I still can't do a hard disk simulation yet. Checklist: 1) You will need a bootable floppy, with all boot-up settings and files on it, including the drivers for the CDROM you boot from. 2) You need an IDE or SCSI CDROM drive. For IDE, you also need an upgraded bios of motherboard to support boot from CDROM. 3) You need a DEMO version of "CDR Publisher", it maybe located at ftp.cdr1.com. No need for registered version for doing this. 4) Norton utilities is also needed, especially DISKEDIT.EXE. Procedures: 1) Copy all sectors of the bootable floppy disk to your hard disk, it's done by DISKEDIT.EXE of norton utilities as follows: Choose [object] --> select drives to your floppy disk. choose physical sectors --> Choose OK (all sectors selected) Choose [tools] --> write object to ---> set the file name (forexample: boot.img) Click on --> done 2) Start CDR Publisher with [file list] as source and [CDRecorder] as destination. Choose [configure] --> [disk format and layout] --> [bootable CD] --> [Create PC bootable CD] --> [boot disk image file] , enable the "MULTI-SESSION" option under [disk format and layout]. select the file you just made: boot.img, ---> [boot media type], select 1.44 meg diskette, it depends on what type of floppy disk you used.--> [apply] Back to the initial screen, select [file selection] on the left side ( source ). Now you just have to "drag" a small file from windows' file manager, don't do too much because the demo version of CDR Publisher only allowed an image file smaller than 5 mb! So be careful. Choose [create image] on the right side ( destination ). Before starting this step, you can make a " virtual write" by switching it on from : [ hardware info ] --> [ destination drive ] --> [ virtual write ]. Disabling this does a real write to your CD. DONE! This creates the BOOTABLE CD with the Session OPEN, so now you can add more stuff to it. Also before actually booting the PC from the CD I had to set the Adaptec BIOS to boot from the CDROM's SCSI ID (Adaptec BIOS Activated via CTRL-A key combinations at System Startup) I hope this proves helpful. Thanks Daya --------------------------------------------- an671366@anon.penet.fi Supplying The Warez on CD to Southern England --------------------------------------------- ===============================================================================