Drive Image 2002 boot CD

Since the trend in new computers is to do away with the floppy drive, users of Drive Image 2002 who will no longer be able to make emergency boot floppies, can use this procedure to use the DI 2002 program CD as an emergency boot disk.

Set the Bios to look first for the CD drive in the boot sequence, put in the DI 2002 program CD and start the boot process.

This will get to the DI 2002 Caldera-DOS A:\ prompt.

Type in CD\ENGLISH\EXECUTE hit Enter

At the Y:\ENGLISH\EXECUTE\ prompt, type in PQDI , hit Enter and the DI 2002 program will run, letting you do whatever you would normally do in DI 2002.

If you have the downloaded version of DI 2002, create a bootable CD using CD writing software such as Nero, Easy CD Creator etc., then add the DI 2002 .EXE you downloaded and you're all set.

I tested this and it works BTW.

 

Harold7,

OK. For those of us who have never made a bootable CD before, this may not be as simple as you make it sound. Could you please expand further on this. In detail if possible, please.

I'm still pretty dumb about a lot of things.

Thank you.

 

Hi Delores.

Normally, whatever software you use for burning CDs will contain instructions of how it should be used to create a bootable CD.... it's best to practice with a CD-RW disk until you find what works for your system.

Here's a good site http://www.bootdisk.com/ for lots of good information on making bootable CDs along with downloads for the generic device drivers for CD-Rom drives.

If you haven't upgraded to a system without a floppy, you should create a bootable floppy for your present system and then use that one in your CD writing program when it asks for 1.44 emulation... you're basically turning a CD-R into bootable floppy that you then add the executable files to to run whatever program you wish.

You might try building the bootable CD and then copy just the contents of the emergency Drive Image boot disk #2 to the CD, then when it boots to a DOS prompt, type in whatever drive letter represents the CD drive and then type in PQDI... if you already have DI installed on your system this should work just as well as copying the program exeutable to the CD.

 

If you use Easy CD Creator all you have to do is select the make bootable disk option and you will be prompted to insert a bootable disk into the a: drive. If you put the bootable drive image floppy disk in, it'll make a bootable cd using it. No need to copy any files from the disk to the cd. I don't know how the rest work but I suspect it's probably similar.

 

Thanks a bunch guys.

I have Nero.

I should be able to accomplish it.

I was wondering what those of us with floppy's were going to do when they stop making the little critters.

Now in order to use this CD, once it's made properly, I have to set my boot sequence to boot from the CD ROM first, right?

 

I just made a boot disk for DI using one of the files here: http://www.bootdisk.com/

Follow the first link to Boot Disks and download the XPBoot file (Custom Install) then put in a floppy, right click on the XPBoot file you just downloaded, select Open and it will copy itself to the floppy.

Use this as the source for the 1.44 boot file used to create the boot sector on the CD and, if you are making a bootable CD for Drive Image from the downloaded version, add that .exe file to the program and then burn the CD.

This boot runs and tells you what drive letter to use to access the CD to run the program after it gives you an A:\ prompt.

If CD\ENGLISH\EXECUTE (enter)... then ENGLISH\EXECUTE\PQDI doesn't run the program try just ENGLISH\EXECUTE\PQDI.

I really like using this file because you don't have to guess what drive letter to use.

Yes, once you have a boot CD made set your Bios to look for the CD drive first and you can leave it that way because if there's no CD in at boot, it just skips it and goes to the next boot device.

 

Some additional information for you... when you use the XPBoot (Custom Install) file that I referenced earlier and put the files on a floppy and then use that floppy to create a bootable CD, you put a file on the CD called BOOTIMG.

This is a Bin file that you should save to a safe place, copy to your desktop when needed and re-use from there whenever you need to create a bootable CD.

This is the file you use that is referenced as an existing image file ... the other choices are floppy emulation or hard disk emulation.

Using this file will give you access to all your drive letters as well as letting you run whatever .exe you want to write to the CD.

I used this method to create a generic Win XP boot CD and it works great.

 

Harold7,

I don't have XP. I'm still in the 20th century. Probably stay there as long as I can too.

Will work on what you've told me when I can get the time.

I'm one of these that has too many irons in the fire, & don't know which one to quench first.

Thanks for all the info.