I often need to create bootable CDs and DVDs but it's weird because I frequently end up buring myself a new coaster instead. It's not that the process is difficult, just that nero has a few too many options and I forget which ones to choose and end up picking the wrong one. I figured that the best way to avoid this mistake in future would be to write the steps down.
Procedure
- Insert CD or DVD into your DVD Burner.
- Start Nero Burning ROM 9
- Choose DVD-ROM (Boot) or CD-ROM (Boot) depending on what you're creating
- You'll be prompted for a disk image source. Choose a Nero Source - you'll usually find them somewhere like this...
C:\Program Files\Nero\Nero9\Nero Burning Rom\DOSBootImage.ima - Leave the Boot Locale as English - unless you really need a different keyboard layout
- Tick the box marked [X] Enable Expert Settings
- Choose Hard Drive Emulation and leave any other settings as they are.
- Click the button marked New
- Add any files you want but don't try to add operating system files. You don't need to add Command.com because it's already on the Boot disk.
- When you've finished, choose Burn.
That's it.
When you boot from the CD/DVD, you'll find that it starts as Drive A: and only contains a bunch of DOS Files.
Drive C: will probably be your hard drive - which may or may not be readable/writable (depending on whether it's formatted as Fat32 or NTFS).
Drive D: should be the other part of your new disc - all of the files you added.
Good Ideas for Boot Disks
Ghost Images
If you find yourself creating lots of Ghost images to reload PCs you might want to consider using the -SPLIT=650 or -SPLIT=4096 parameters to get the Ghost Images to create files which are the sizes of CDs or DVDs respectively. If you copy the Ghost image and Ghost.exe onto the CD/DVD, you can simply boot the PC off the CD/DVD and start installing without delay. Because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I'll usually also include an autorun.inf file which launches notepad or a html file when the CD/DVD is inserted in a Windows environment.
Game Boot Disks
Want to play those old DOS Classics without the drag of Windows? Consider creating a boot disk which also contains the install files for some of the best. If you've got a good boot image and a lot of spare RAM, you might want to make a bootdisk that sets up a RAM Drive (you can make your own IMA files using WinImage). Playing a game from a RAM Drive will make it much faster but remember to copy your save game data somewhere or you'll lose it.
Comments
If you boot from one of them, the computer should go into setup mode automatically.
If you can't boot and your C: drive is unreadable (ie: not something you want to preserve), the use FDISK to delete and recreate the partition. See Microsoft Notes on how to do this.
There's also a freeware home partition manager boot disk that you can download from MiniTool.
Try using different Media as often settings are determined by the media itself.
If you're using Nero 10,. you'll see a down arrow in the Quick Lists part of SmartStart. If you click on that, you can select Options and change the burning speed from automatic to minimal. That might help.
How to boot from CD or USB in Windows 8
If the problem is cost, then you might want to download CDBurnerXP which is free.
Here's how to make a bootable DVD with CDBurnerXP
https://cdburnerxp.se/help/Data/bootdisc