What makes an OS CD bootable?

[Conundrum]

Ok, I had the original Windows XP Pro 64-bit install CD. I actually even bought a replacement CD off of Ebay for $.99 and I'm waiting for it to get here.

I copied all of the files from the CD into a folder I called x64 on my hard drive. When the CD broke, I figured I could just make a compilation and that would be that. I burned it to CD, built a new system (because my old one was becoming increasingly flakey) and it didn't work.

On my laptop, I used a utility from HP that makes a flash drive bootable. It worked on my laptop, so I tried it out on my new computer I just built. Didn't work, wouldn't boot from it. Sees it as a USB-HD but won't boot from it. Odd, but ok. So I try booting from a USB Floppy drive I have. It works, but the setup.exe won't load from DOS mode. Plus, the CD drive is SATA so it can't see it or load a driver for it.

I try a bootable CD. I made one with Nero, but the same limitation resulted. I wasn't able to run setup.exe from DOS. So I then tried using the CD from Western Digital's site that they recommend you use to format the hard drive. Well, it boots off of it but I can't even get that to work. The only thing that was useful on that was an old copy of fdisk that allowed me to create a small fat32 partition on what it could recognize of the hard drive.

I'm about to lose my damn mind here. I could wait for the CD to arrive. But does anyone happen to have any ideas on what files I might be missing here that are preventing the CD I burned from working? It's driving me nuts. Please help!

 

[corkyg]

Very simply - it is more than having all the files involved. It is where they are placed on the disk that makes it bootable. This is why we use ISO files to make copies of bootable CDs and DVDs. That preserves the exact location on the disk of the boot files. Without that, all you have is a data disk.

 

[Conundrum]

Yes, but I did a CTRL-A copy of the CD. All of the directory structure and associated files in the compilation are in the same location as the CD. Unless there's something I'm missing here..

 

[seemingly random]

Don't be too hard on yourself. Making an os cd is kind of a black art until you get used to it.

This might answer your questions: http://www.winsupersite.com/xp/sp3_slipstream.asp

google "slipstream xp sp3" and you'll find several days worth of reading.

Once successful making a basic os cd, you can start adding ms updates with the /integrate option: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828930/

 

[Conundrum]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Don't be too hard on yourself. Making an os cd is kind of a black art until you get used to it.

This might answer your questions: http://www.winsupersite.com/xp/sp3_slipstream.asp

google "slipstream xp sp3" and you'll find several days worth of reading.

Once successful making a basic os cd, you can start adding ms updates with the /integrate option: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828930/

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to get straight to work on reading these links you've dropped. I don't even mind applying a service pack. I just want to be able to actually install the operating system period. If only I could boot off of the CD drive that has all of the operating system files on it, I'd be deliriously happy.

Hell, if I could even manage to get the damn Western Digital utility to work and format the drive so I can boot up to it. Then add a config.sys that would allow me to load a drive to the old IDE DVD drive I have. Then I think I'd be able to load the operating system I believe. It's incredibly frustrating to have such a seemingly simple thing cause so many headaches.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: Conundrum

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Don't be too hard on yourself. Making an os cd is kind of a black art until you get used to it.

This might answer your questions: http://www.winsupersite.com/xp/sp3_slipstream.asp

google "slipstream xp sp3" and you'll find several days worth of reading.

Once successful making a basic os cd, you can start adding ms updates with the /integrate option: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828930/

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to get straight to work on reading these links you've dropped. I don't even mind applying a service pack. I just want to be able to actually install the operating system period. If only I could boot off of the CD drive that has all of the operating system files on it, I'd be deliriously happy.

Hell, if I could even manage to get the damn Western Digital utility to work and format the drive so I can boot up to it. Then add a config.sys that would allow me to load a drive to the old IDE DVD drive I have. Then I think I'd be able to load the operating system I believe. It's incredibly frustrating to have such a seemingly simple thing cause so many headaches.

Before going any further, I would determine whether your machine can boot from a cd. You could download the latest workstation ubuntu distribution and burn a cd and test with this.

There is also this: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com I'm not sure any of the s/w included will help but it's another cd to test boot ability.

I assume that your machine can make cd's. Use http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn the iso. You might want to do this first as a sanity check to gain confidence that something works as it should.

Creating and booting from a usb key is a little more complicated since during 'normal' installation xp resets the usb controller. I have heard that this has been surmounted but don't have experience with it.

 

[Bozo Galora]

http://i29.tinypic.com/sgqsyp.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/s6p3ea.jpg

 

[Conundrum]

It's all good folks. Thanks to the friendly wolf (seemingly random
Diamond Member) I managed to get on track. That article you linked me to is great. Thanks again!