Making a boot CD?

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Ante
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Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Making a boot CD?

Post by Ante »

Well, I really hope this question hasn't been up, because I've tried to search for it in the forum, with no luck.

Anyway, in the guide for installing ReactOS it says: "... burn the cd as a bootable disc. The .iso file must not be burnt directly like data files. It must be burned differently". OK, I got that, and I've the programs DeepBurner and CDBurnerXP Pro, both competent and with features to burn bootable CD:s.

If I load the ISO with a typical menu-option "Burn ISO image", I don't get an option to make the CD bootable.

If I mount the ISO-image with Deamon Tools, and "insert" the files from there and choose to burn, I'll indeed have an option to make the CD bootable, but is there any particular emulation to use (1.44 MB floppy or HDD)?

If I use the Floppy alternative I will end up with a CD that boots Caledra DOS (or something like that) and with the same structure as the mounted image, but then I don't have a clue about how to start the installation.

The HDD emulation doesn't boot at all.

Can someone please give me a simple answer or a How-To instruction other than the "Nero Express" one in the guide mentioned above. Because that one doesn't help me.

Best regards
Ante
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

You shouldn't need to do anything special. Actually, if you have Daemon tools, if you mount the drive, you might be able to just do a copy CD with whatever burning utility you have.
frik85
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Post by frik85 »

@ Ante:

Don't use "Deamon Tools" or similar apps, they are not suitable in this case.

If you use Nero Burning Rom (or an alternative cd burning app), choose "burn image to cd" in the wizard window, select the "*.iso" file and then click on the "burn" button.

The boot information is in the iso file itself and using Nero (or a similar burn app) will make your CD bootable. Don't try to do (e.g. copy files per hand and add boot data later) it manually, as it is an advanced task and nothing for beginners.

And don't use the Nero "make bootcd" or "make bootable cd" or similar, this function won't work, as it will just add DOS to your CD!

Anyway, you have to reboot your computer to boot the LiveCD / install ReactOS from CD. That means you cannot install ReactOS directly from Windows nor any other operating system.
Ante
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Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:07 pm
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Post by Ante »

Thanks to both of you Z98 and frik85!
I have to admit that I got confused by the instructions about installing ReactOS and the boot thing mentioned there. I started looking for the problem in the wrong end, but you booth led me back on the right track!

I have tried to burn the ISO directly to a CD using the "Burn image to CD" option. The CD is recognized as a bootable CD, thats not the problem, the problem is that the computer reboots by itself the moment it starts to read from the CD.

The computer I use have no problems booting a WinXP CD or any kind of Linux CDs I have tried so far.

I'll try another computer and see how it works.

Ante
GreyGhost
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Post by GreyGhost »

Welcome to ReactOS.!!!
About the booting problem .... ReactOS as u may already have read ...is alpha stage developing OS and thus maybe ReactOS doesn't support some of the hardware u may have.....

About burning the iso ... though u've already done it i thought i'd tell it anyways.... the iso cd image has all the required stuff for booting etc. already done....
u just need to burn it as a cd image.... in CD Burner XP pro the option " Burn Disc from ISO " is available in the "file " menu... thats the one u'll need....Just point it to the .iso ...

As for the documentation .... ( i've done the iso burning part there) but if it is confusing ... please feel free to make suggestions and some one (i will surely when i do get time ) look into it to improve the quality of the documentation ...
Also considering that u've registered here u can edit the pages at the wiki and improve them :)
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

Reboots? That's a new one. Incidently, what exactly are you trying to do? Are you going to install ReactOS as your only OS? Dual booting doesn't work well yet without a bit of effort.

As for it rebooting, I've never heard of that one. But I don't know Windows internals in much detail, so I don't know if there's even a setting that could trigger that.
Ante
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Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:07 pm
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Post by Ante »

Thanks for the welcome and the response GreyGhost and Z98!
If helping with documentation and testing is a way to contribute, I'll try to make an effort. I really understand that it's in alpha stage, but thats the most exciting part of it!

My interest in ReactOS is for helping youth-organisations with less economic resources getting still functional older hardware combined with free OS:s and tools for making their own news pamplets, webpages, member databases and so on, in a completely legal way, without illegal copies of famous word processors and like wise. So far I've looked into Ubuntu and the flavours of it but i wanted to try ReactOS as well mainly becase the Windows environment is rather well known and there are a lot of simple to use and good freeware developed for Windows.

Concerning my problem and the "reboot", well I tried my CD on another computer and of course it worked. So it must be the hardware on the first computer tested. It's a VIA EPIA Mini-ITX C3 800 MHz board, 256 MB memory, 8 GB harddisk (empty) formated as FAT32, and a TEAC CD-reader. AWARD Modular BIOS v6.00PG
The reboot executes right after I press a key after the BIOS have said:
Boot from CD:
Press any key to boot from CD

Z98 please contact me if I can be of further help with hardware/bios settings.

GreyGhost, thanks for your effort in making an instruction at all. I know how hard it is writing a good instruction, believe me, I do it at work sometimes. Below I marked (in bold) the two parts in the instruction that confused me (slightly embarrasing at this point!):
"The most common problem while installing ReactOS seems to be that users forget to burn the cd as a bootable disc. The .iso file must not be burnt directly like data files. It must be burned differently. Most CD burners will provide this feature. Nero is a very common burner but you are always free to use your favorite burner. You can always read the documentation to find out how to burn bootable CDs from .iso files for your burner."

If the ISO image already contain the required boot information then it shouldn't be necessary for the user to burn it as a bootable disc? And the last part about the instructions for bootable CD:s from .iso files, the help in DeepBurner (no offend) ended me up in downloading WinImage for making bootable iso images (wich actually didn't help me alot). At this point I almost gave up thinking that this installation shouldn't require this much, and so I started to read the forum and finally I couldn't resist asking myself, wich evidently have helped me up to this point!

But complaining without a suggestion on how to make things better is just anoying, so my suggestion is that it should be clear that the ISO is complete, or as you say above in your reply:
the iso cd image has all the required stuff for booting etc
I'll send you an suggestion!

I'll be back! Hopefully with shorter messages than this one.
Ante
geertvdijk
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Post by geertvdijk »

Now I am not sure, but I read you use a VIA EPIA Mini-ITX C3 800 MHz, and I remember some people having trouble with VIA and ROS... Not sure though...
-graey-
Ante
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Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:07 pm
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Post by Ante »

geertvdijk, you are right!

There is actually a tread about this problem:
http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... light=epia

That this could be the problem didn't occur to me because I was occupied with the bootable cd issue.

/Ante
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

I actually own a VIA. It does not work with ReactOS, be it the LiveCD or boot CD. Even Windows has problems with it from time to time. So if you want to use ReactOS, I'd suggest an actual Intel or AMD processor based system, not a VIA Mini-ITX system.
GreyGhost
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Post by GreyGhost »

Hello ..
Thanks for the suggestions :) i'll make changes to those parts (and maybe go through other parts of the wiki ) as soon as possible :)
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Jaix
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Hej Ante

Post by Jaix »

Swedish: Tjenare, kul att se att du hittat ReactOS, tråkigt att du inte lyckades att installera, ett litet förslag tills det fungerar är att köra Win2K eller WinXP och sen köra VMWare server/ player eller QEmu på så sätt kan du använda datorn i alla fall och emulera en "ReactOS" dator i den, det blir lite slöare men helt funktionellt.
Du kan även testa att byta CD-spelare i din dator mot en annan om det är den som är problemet.
Triangle
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2006 7:02 pm

Post by Triangle »

Hello,

I suppose using ISO-burner tool. It is small, yet relaible and very easy to use. I liked it alot, you might also find it helpful
http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm
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