help creating a bootable 2000/XP CD with Nero 6 SE

[techQ&A]

Here's my dilemma. Our PC's don't have floppy drives, and the only way I can use the symantec ghost licenes I bought is by using the gdisk
utility. Our PC's don't have floppy drives. Because of this, I need to create a bootable CD for windows
2000/XP using Nero 6 SE or Sonic Record Now. I'm guessing Nero's the
only option here. On top of this, I need to include the gdisk program
in the CD image. Has anyone ever done this before? I've found a few
links on creating a bootable cd with no luck when following them. And
the gdisk links only reference using the program with a bootable
floppy. Let me know what you think.
Thanks,

[GaryRouth]

You might take a look over at the Bart's PE site, and see if it's easy enough to add Gdisk to the Bart PE CD (which is bootable). They have pretty good help files. Here's there homepage, as a starting point http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

One site seems to have a Bart PE "plug-in" for Gdisk - you could see if this seems do-able --- http://www.bootcd.us/BartPE_Plugin_D.../77/GDisk.html

I haven't had to use these myself, so I'm just shuffling links from a search engine. You might want to search the Symantec site, too - since after all it is their product... they usually have fairly good information.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[jayb1234]

Another option that would be pretty simple would be to just get a floppy drive and cable and plug it into each machine when you need to back it up.

[glc]

One USB floppy drive would do that job very well.

[techQ&A]

Thanks to everyones input on this issue. I will check out the bootable cd links. If it looks like too much work, I'll try the external floppy idea. My concern is that even though the BIOS probably has legacy USB support, I doubt it will actually work. I've had issues with booting new laptops from external CD drives, because regular dos boot cd's don't have usb drivers. I'll let you guys know what happens.
Thanks!

CH

[glc]

Good point - you do need to check to see if the bios supports booting from USB floppy. I know most new laptops do, and more and more desktops do too.

[techQ&A]

i tried PEBuilder with no success. The program didn't like the fact I was pulliing source files from an OEM copy of windows. Also when I uninstalled it, it left a folder in my C: drive that I couldn't delete. I had to roll back my system a day just to get rid of it. I'm gonna try the external floppy idea next.
Thanks,

CH

[GaryRouth]

Hi again -

If it turns out that neither the external floppy, nor the PE-based CD, will work = you might go try something like the "Ultimate Boot CD", which I believe is also customizable. Here's the Ultimate Boot CD homepage - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

This is from the Frequently Asked Questions:
__________________________________
Question: I don't have any floppy drive on my PC to be able to make images of GHOST.EXE and other programs in the support folder which I use a lot at work. Any ideas?

You can use VFD. It's a virtual floppy disk driver, but only works under Win2K and above.
__________________________________

Here's the link to VFD - "Virtual Floppy Drive" --- http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

It'd be nice if the external floppy works out, but if it doesn't, at least you may still have options.
. . . Gary