nando Posted June 5, 2011 Posted June 5, 2011 Hello there: I had a Windows XP disc I prepared with nLite that I copied to my hard drive (I copied all the files and folders within one folder) I thought I could just turn it into an iso and then be able to boot it from Vmware or VirtualBox but then I realized I have to make it bootable. I truly thought that because all the folders and files are there it would be able to boot, or perhaps that imgburn could make it boot without needing to get additional boot info from the original CD. I read other posts regarding El Torito and all of that bu I still do not understand what makes a disk bootable, how does it become bootable and why does imgburn need the original CD to make it so? (NLite didn't need the original disk to make it boot. For what I read I understood I need the original CD to make these files boot (either that or doing it with nLite I suppose) but I wanted to find a way to make it boot without needing the original CD, isn't there a way imgburn can automate this? More information on this would be appreciated. ---- By the way, to the author, thank you very much for maintaining this fantastic piece of software, at 5 megs and all the features it puts Roxio and Nero to shame ;-)
LIGHTNING UK! Posted June 5, 2011 Posted June 5, 2011 You need the boot image from the original bootable cd. It's not part of the files/folders that you can see on the disc when you browse with Explorer or whatever and it's not bundled with ImgBurn. El Torito is an extension of the file system. It's an extra bunch of descriptors that point to a boot catalogue and a boot image. Your BIOS will check for the existence of the El Torito descriptors when deciding if a disc is bootable or not. If it is, it'll parse said descriptors and 'run' the boot image - that's what then kickstarts the installation program. You can get the boot image here - http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=16578&view=findpost&p=126019
nando Posted June 5, 2011 Author Posted June 5, 2011 Thank you, that worked! It wouldn't be a bad idea to include a few of these descriptors for Win Xp, 7 and Vista with imgburn though, at 1 kb, it wouldn't make the size of the software much bigger and it would come in handy to a lot of people, that is unless of course there are not any copyright issues in doing this. Anyway just a thought, thanks again for your help and keep up the good work! Nando
LIGHTNING UK! Posted June 5, 2011 Posted June 5, 2011 You don't need to extract a boot image for Vista or 7, there's a file that's part of the installation files for that (etfsboot.com). I've linked the boot image file in the XP guide now to make it a bit easier for people without their own original CD.
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