total nooby--ISO help

[Briab Guy]

OK, I down loaded KNOPPIX, winrar grabed. That may be the mistake. Or there may not even be a mistak.
BUT< when unpacked by winrar there is no ISO to copy to a CD from.
Now here is where the noob get dumb, or maybe just cheap, because I only have a couple blank CD's left.
When I unZip the winrar file I get these files:
3 folders:
Demos
Talk
KNOPPIX
A batch file:
Autorun.bat
A INF file:
autorun.inf
a icon:
cdrom.ico
A HTML file:
index.html

I'm sitting here telling myself to just burn it to disk. But if someone "knows" that this isn't going to boot, please try and explain just what I should do.
Thanks in advance
Brian

[Blue_Gundam2002]

Look at the file extension. If its a .iso go to your burning program and select burn from image. If its a .zip or .rar just unzip it and burn to a disk.

[Briab Guy]

As usual, I wasn't clear enough. It was a .RAR, so I did open it.
And this is a list of the contents of the >RAR

A batch file:
Autorun.bat

A INF file:
autorun.inf

a icon:
cdrom.ico

A HTML file:
index.html

3 folders:
Demos
Talk
KNOPPIX

Not wanting to make anoth coffee coster I thought I would just ask if anyone knew if these files are the correct files to make a bootable disk, especialy with the autorun and batch file I thought it may be.
BUT I was wrong, I copied them to disk and it will not boot.
Sooo, maybe I should just shut off winrar and hope it down loads as a ISO?
Any ideas?
thanks

[setfree]

What burning program are you using? You need to make sure that you are actually burning the cd as a bootable cd and not just trying to burn the files to a cd in data mode. I know Nero has a special option to burn a bootable cd so you should try that. Otherwise it probably wont work.

[MSIuser]

to my mind, i think it should work just burning those files to the cd. You do not have an iso, you have a rar download which is different.

easiest and possibly safest option might be to just download the iso copy, unless you are same as me and on dial up. I'm just waiting until 16th june.

[bigandy]

If you are using Nero, choose, Burn Image, and move to the directory in which you have the file downloaded to. If it shows up in Nero, you have an ISO, if not, you have a RAR.

If it is in fact a RAR, check out LinuxISO. Download the Knoppix ISO from there, and burn it as a Disc Image. And you will have bootable disc .

[kilgoretrout]

It's not really a rar file. The winrar program has the ability to read and manipulate iso files. By default, winrar will associate all iso files with itself and identify them as rar files. You can turn off this behaviour in the winrar config menu somewhere. If you manipulated the iso in any way with winrar, the iso you burn from it won't boot. Download again, don't touch it with winrar, and burn the iso as an image in Nero.

[Briab Guy]

kilgoretrout,
thanks, that sounds like the most liky answer, I should have thought to look and see if I couldn't just turn it off in options, etc...
I normaly use Clone CD, but I am not positive about it reading an ISO image. Nor making a boot disk. So I will have to do some home work. I have a Plextor and it does not work with Nero. Don't even ask, because it just doesn't.
I made a boot disk awhile bake,just to learn how, using Ghost, but I do not remember what software I used to burn it with.
Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it.

[kilgoretrout]

Roxio's Easy CD creator works well too and most cd burners come with a stripped down version of it.
Just for your info, bootable cds require that certain boot info be on specific blocks of the cd for the bios to recognize the cd as bootable. The downloaded iso has the boot info in the right place but if you just copy over the files you'll never get that boot info on the right cd blocks.

[mb26]

have u booted from CDs before?.. as it may be that ur bios has not got booting from CD enabled?

[DragonNOA1]

Thanks for the link Andy. It links directly to the ISO so I don't have to deal with the mess of all the files that I have found on other sites.

EDIT* Its d/l @5k/sec... it's gonna be awhile.

[pillainp]

Check if you have a file called boot.img somewhere in the Knoppix folder. There should also be a file called Rawritewin.exe in that folder somewhere. Use Rawrite to write boot.img to a floppy disk. Then use Nero to create a CD-ROM (Boot) and set the source of the boot file as the floppy disk. Burn your CD by dragging all the files you unRARed and you should now have a bootable Knopix CD.

[kilgoretrout]

I have a Plextor and it does not work with Nero.

See his post ablove.

[pillainp]

Sorry, didn't see that. If the Plextor is newer than the version of Nero that you have, you could try downloading the latest CDROM.CFG file from Nero's site and copying it to Nero's folder. Then see if your drive works. Else there are a number of other free CD burning software out there.

By the way here is a link to a list of all Plextor writers supported by Nero. Names in blue with a hyperlink point to firmware updates for that writer: http://www.nero.com/en/6320120381421...lextor&lang=en.

[Briab Guy]

First, I wanted to say thanks, I appreciate the help.
To answer some Q's,
Yes, The PC is set to boot off CD, the order is: CD,Floppy,C:.
Progress report:
I got the ISO to D/L. (just untiked it in winrar-DAA)
Iloaded Roxio easy CD creator,5 Platnimum.
It makes Boot CD's. In the process it asks if you want:
Floppy emulation 1.44
Floppy emulation 2.?? (this is from memory)
HD emulation
No emulation

I took a stab at HD emulation and ended up with a :
BOOTCAT.BIN 2KB
BOOTIMG.BIN 699MB
But not a bootable CD :-)
But from reading pillainp post, it sounds as thoiugh I need to make a flopy boot disk, then use the "floppy emulation 1.44" ?
Again, I am greatful for any help, because now, just getting a CD through the mail is not an option :-)

Thanks
B

[Briab Guy]

kilgoretrout,
I believe I am making this harder then it is!! I just reread your posts.
I have the ISO, I have Easy CD creator. What next? Keep in mind the post above, I am getting 4 options as how to bur the CD.
Thanks for your time.

[pillainp]

If you downloaded the ISO from LinuxISO, it should be bootable in itself. All you will need to do is burn it to CD and you are done. Something on the lines of "Create CD form image". Select it, point to the ISO file you downloaded, and let 'er rip. This time, try to burn to a CD-RW and the to CD-R when you are sure the whole shebang works.

[Briab Guy]

Well sort of.
I copied the ISO with roxio, the directions are a little different then the directions at http://www.linuxiso.org/. Maybe I have a newer ver.
Anyway, It boots. Goes to a screen with the little penguin guy up in the left hand corner, starts to load:
accessing Knoppix CD
reads the memory like its doing a POST
making a RAMDISK
creating Directories
finding USB Video etc...
So I know its loading at least
But then just as I was all excited and wanted to come back here and tell you all, it just went blank! Dead screen!
Almost there!

[DragonNOA1]

I d/l Knoppix from the link and burned it to a disk. Works great. They have checkers you can d/l to make sure that your d/l was 100% complete. If one bit is messed up, it could tell your computer to spit out the hard drives and jump out the window... well in a manner of speaking.

[pillainp]

Go to the page where the ISO is listed for download and click on the "MD5SUM" link next to the D/L link. Copy those figures down. Then go here http://www.lucamauri.com/md5checker/ and download the MD5 Checker and copy it to the directory you downloaded the Knoppix ISO to. Then open up command prompt window and type:
MD5 Isoname.iso where Isoname is the name of the ISO.
This should generate a sequence of letters and numbers. Copy those down and compare them to the string you got from the site.

[Briab Guy]

HEY IT WORKS--GREAT___
I havn't started to work with it yet, I wanted to get back and tell you's that your help payed off!
Actually I think the disk that went blank probably works. I was making the CD's on this box and tring them on another PC.
To keep it short, I burned one more, with a minor change, booted it on the other PC and it did the same thing, booted then went blank. So I tried it on this PC and it went all the way through the boot process to the OS screen. I will try the first one on this PC after I send this. The other PC has an older VooDoo card in it, so maybe ?
I did download the md5 sum generator and the md5 checksum container. I am just glad I tried the CD on here before I started to mess around with all that. Because I have no idea what they are supposed to do!
Again I thank everyone for the help
Now if I could only get unix top work on my PC :-)