XP boot CD

Hello, how can i create a XP bootable CD, or anything that i can get to a DOS prompt from a CD, as i have a laptop and no floppy drive. Thanks.

 

XP doesn't really have DOS. It does offer a couple of command windows but only when the GUI is running.

If you have an XP CD, it should be bootable. If you select to run the recovery console, it will give you a black screen and white command prompt that looks a lot like DOS but is simply XP with no GUI and a very reduced set of available options.

Not sure exactly what you want to do but maybe some of the information from This thread will help.

 

Thanks but i dont have a XP CD because i was given recovery disks by Acer, which are not actual XP proper cd. All i want is to be able to put in a cd on startup and get to a command prompt. Also i do not have a floppy drive.

 

If you have access to a cd burner you can burn a boot cd using the contents of a 98 boot floppy and it will work just fine. I have one to work on the computers comming out now without floppy drives. However, you can't just copy the files from the floppy to the cd and expect it to be bootable. The burn software makes a 'boot.img' file that it writes to a special system area to make the CD bootable.

When you burn a bootable cd in this manner you use a bootable floppy disk such as a win98 boot floppy. The way you do it depends on your software. Search the help file in your burner software for bootable cd or something along those lines. You need to study the help in the burning program that you'll use. They're said to all be different. I use Roxio, which just asks for the floppy at the appropriate time and the whole process is automatic. I also add about 600MB of other programs to the CD to make it VERY useful.

Of course DOS fdisk can see an ntfs partition as well as the raw HDD, but otherwise ntfs partitions appear invisible to DOS; however, there are programs you can add to the disk to make ntfs visible. You're in luck if you have FAT32 partitions as I do.

 

Ok thanks. I have nero and it has something to make bootable cd's with. Thanks again

 

Take a look here also.

 

cbudden--

I understand you really are not after a bootdisk, but rather want to reach a command prompt. You can add a right click context menu item "Open Command Window here" using MS PowerToys
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
This context item will show when right clicking on any drive or folder in Windows. You do not have to install all the PowerToys if you just want the one item. See right margin in above link.

 

Hmmm... Dos is still alive and useful. You can download MS memory test program and you'll find that you have to put it on a bootable disk (floppy or CD) and run it in DOS even if you have XP with NTFS.

 

i do want a bootable cd to get to a command prompt from boot, not when the GUI is running, because i know how to do that. Anyway i have found a solution, thanks for your help people.

 

cbudden--

And the solution was?? Others will benefit if you post it here.

 

I think he discovered it in post #5 re: Nero. That's how I make them. You either have to have some cd authoring software or use an ISO from another CD and modify it with some ISO tweaking software. Freeware preferably. They're out there but I haven't tried it that way yet.

 

Sorry, the solution was the nero one. In nero, select bootable cd from the list of the left, then accept their boot image. I then added some utilities to the disk as i would normally.

 

I don't know what Nero's boot image contains for tools but if you're using the NTFS file system instead of FAT32 you should test the disk to see if you can use it. If the utilities on the disk are DOS utilities they won't work with NTFS. Just thought I'd mention it.

 

It does have support for NTFS, but like you say, should always test first

 

OK. Just thought I'd mention it, just in case.

 

Be aware that the NTFS support that Nero offers is "Read Only." You can copy files to other media but no editing or deleting.

 

cbudden

It should also accept whatever boot image or disk you give it; Roxio does. I like to customize my boot disks for various uses.

 

Following this thread and ran across this:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Regards - Charles

 

Looks good ill give it a go. Thanks

 

Wow, the bart PE thing is very good! Highly recomended!