Create a bootable CD or DVD with or without floppy

With the CD-ROM available on almost every computer nowaday, floppy drives become a history. However, for those who find computers a hobby, might run into a situation when they need to create a bootable CD that works just like the old floppy disk. Unfortunately, to do this, you still need a floppy drive to read your bootup floppy disk. Wait, the good news is, you can just down load a bootable ISO image and burn it to a CD. And even better, we have a copy of an ISO image right here. You can download this image and follow the instructions below, or you can do a web search for more options.

The information on this article will guide you step-by-step how to create a bootable CD/DVD, either using a bootup floppy disk or a boot image file. You will end up having a bootable CD or DVD, with CD-ROM driver supported, that could startup your PC and bring up the command prompt. This is going to be a good starting point, then you can run other utilities such as hard drive ghost, etc..

Many current CD/DVD burning software support the bootable feature. If you already have your favorite burning software, look around to find the bootable option. For this article, I will use the steps and sample screen-shots with the burning tool called Nero.

You will need a boot disk (floppy) or a bootable ISO image to start. If you don't have one, you can download an ISO image here. This boot image is Windows-98 based, which means it uses the Windows 98 bootup sequence, which should do what we need. You can also download different boot disk images from the internet. I've found bootdisk.com has a very good collection.

I assume that you already have Nero installed. Also, it is highly recommended to use a rewritable disc so you can redo the process if you have to.

1. Launch Nero Burning ROM
2. At the New Compilation Window, select "CD" from the drop-down menu and select "CD-ROM (Boot)" for CD, (or select "DVD" and "DVD-ROM (Boot)" for DVD)
   
   
   
   
3. If you use a bootup floppy disk, insert the floppy disk and select "Bootable logical drive..."
   
   
4. If you use an image file, select "Image File" then click "Browse" to browse to the image.
   
   At the "Open" Window, browse to the location where you saved the boot image and choose the image you wish to use and click "Open" (you might need to change the "Files of type" to "All Files" in order to see files with different extensions.)
   
   
5. Click "New" at the New Compilation Window.
6. Nero New Compilation Window disappears and Nero brings up its main screen where you can add more files to the CD/DVD if you wish. For example, adding a "ghost" folder with the file "ghost.exe" as follows.
   Once you're done adding all the files you wish to, click on the "Burn" icon.
   
   
   
7. At the "Burn Compilation" Window, select "Burn"!