[prathapml]

This info I had made for a friend. I had spent some time typing it up, so I figured I might post it somewhere as well. It might have been posted before, but am posting it for the benefit of new comers. I explain this using Nero6.



Question : My Windows XP unattended CD was made as told, but it doesn't boot from CD, what seems to be wrong ?

Answer : this is the most common problem with XP and Nero.


Are you sure the boot sector was added, and it was loaded into 4 sectors ?
if not, do this.

1. In Nero 6, select "CD-ROM (BOOT)" in new compilation window.
2. do everything else as normally (add your files, boot sector,etc.).
3. click burn compilation icon (preferably, use a CD-RW for testing).

Now, in the "Burn Compilation" tabs, for the boot tab, check the following things:
1. "Image file" field should use a valid bootsector file (extract the boot-sector from the winXP ISO image file - should be 2 KB).
2. tick "enable expert settings".
3. Kind of emulation = change it to "no emulation".
4. Boot message = anything you like.
5. Load segment of sectors = leave it at the default which should be "07C0" (no quotation marks).
6. Number of loaded sectors = 4

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That was done. Now proceed to the "ISO" tab.

1. Put a tick-mark for "Joliet".

Then, for the relax ISO restrictions options:

2. remove or don't tick "allow path depth of more than 8 directories"
3. remove or don't tick "allow more than 255 characters in path"
4. put a tick-mark next to "do not add the ;1 ISO file version extension"
5. remove or don't tick "Allow more than 64 characters for Jolit names".

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The other tabs (i.e., Label, Dates, Misc, Burn) can be changed as per your likings.

It is not really a necessity to give the CD label as " WXPFPP_EN". Give it any name you like. And then click burn.
That's all. You now have your own bootable Windows XP CD.


Cheers !!!

[ShaikJawad]

Thank you! This was very helpful. One question though... Is it necessary to select the "Standard 8.3 filenames" or can the 31 character filenames be chosen? Also, does anyone know what the file size restriction is for the files INSIDE the cd/dvd (not the iso/image itself).

[prathapml]

good to see that this article (which has been re-posted and repeated a million times by a million people) helps someone.

> Is it necessary to select the "Standard 8.3 filenames"
Such an option isn't there in Nero6.
The general thing to remember is that you need to set it to standard ISO9660 settings, and it will invariably work. Once you got that right, (beyond that point) it's up to you to test it and play around with the settings and see if it works for you.
In your case, selecting "Standard 8.3 filenames" will not downgrade your CD, except for making it conform to 8.3 format. But if this option you mention is present as an an add-on option, it is not necessary to choose it and you can use "Joliet" (which I think can give up to 31 characters) instead.

As far as I know, there's no file-size restriction for individual files within the CD.

Cheers !!!

[Alanoll]

why would you use Nero to create a compilation? You could just use CDImage, and then ANY image tool to burn it.
CDImage has teh ability to make teh image bootable, and then if say you have VirtualPC or thelike, you can use teh image, instead of a CD to test with.

One restriction i can think of to CDs though, i think its ISO9660 or maybe joliet, one of the two says you can't have a directory structure more then 8 directories.

[prathapml]

Q. How do you *GET* a boot-sector for your CD, in the first place?

A. Use ultraiso/winiso (CD image modifying tools) to make an ISO9660 (bootable) image of your windows CD onto your hard-disk. Then open the ISO image and extract all the files into any folder.

To get the bootsector extracted in ultraISO (home-page), open the image in it - and use the menus in the following order:
"Bootable >> Save Boot File >> Save" in the folder you want.
That's all!


The reason why you should make an ISO image is because, if you try copying all the files from the CD, the idents (look here to know about it) in the root of the CD won't get copied to HDD. Also, the boot-sector is extractable most easily from a CD-image, than from a CD directly.