You can try to open it with 7zip. If you can, then its cpio, if not then try to see if you can open it with WinImage which can open ext2 filesystem images. You'll have to extract it from the gzip first though. I use Knoppix to edit the initrd files and during extraction I'll sometime see stuff like that if I forget to use sudo. Check that you have the appropriate permissions. I use Notepad++ since it handles the UNIX/Windows CR/LF stuff correctly. If what you're trying to integrate is using ISOLinux to boot you should be able to look in the isolinux.cfg at the default entry and find the 'kernel='and 'initrd=' entries. What ever it equals will be what you need. For the Seagate stuff, the easiest way to get the needed files is to go to c:\common files\seagate\maxblast (might be maxtor\maxblast) on the machine you installed it on and grab the kernel.dat and ramdisk.dat files. This is the config line I use on my disc (discwizard, but the same for maxblast): For Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, download the iso version and extract the files to a folder. Look at its isolinux.cfg file and you can figure out what needs to go where. Here's mine for reference: You might try putting PartedMagic on there instead of the GParted Live CD. Its far easier. Just grab the PXE version of PartedMagic for use on your disc. You can get it here: http://partedmagic.com Cheers