Booting from a cd image?

[DWk]

Ok, I'm just wondering if there's a way to boot a computer (probably through an extra utility?) to a cd image. For example, lets say, you have an image on hdd x:\windowsimage.iso and you need to format your computer, can you boot from it hence avoiding going through the cd/dvd-rom?

Thanks

 

[BlueWeasel]

Not that I know of.

With blank CDs being so cheap these days, why not just burn it and be done?

 

[DWk]

Heh. It's not a matter of being cheap... I don't mind burning a CD or copying a disk which includes a little utility from which you can point to an image that you can boot from.

Reasons? Well there could be many..... maybe test a windows image, another image, dunno.

 

[DWk]

Bump?

 

[Nothinman]

VMWare can directly read and boot from ISOs.

 

[DWk]

But would it work the way I'm saying.... cuz VMWare of course it can boot from cd images, but only because it's running another OS (either the same OS or another one). I'm looking for a bootable booting utility (lol that would be the name) which more likely runs BEFORE windows.

 

[Nothinman]

Why? Booting it inside of VMWare would give you the exact same results, unless you require some hardware in your machine that VMWare doesn't emulate.

 

[DWk]

I don't want to emulate anything. I just want a simple utility to boot from it.

But please, explain furthermore of VMWare, I haven't actually tried that way. Thanks

 

[Nothinman]

The problem is that such a utility wouldn't be simple, you would need something that understand the ISO9660 filesystem for the image and it's extensions like RockRidge and Joliet, el torito booting and the multiple image types it can emulate, the filesystem the ISO resides on, how to speak to the controller holding the drive holding the filesystem holding the file, etc. Essentially you would need a full features, miniature OS.

Get an eval of VMWare, it's pretty straight forward and the OS running from the ISO shouldn't know it's running inside of VMWare as opposed to real, physical hardware.

 

[DWk]

Well if you were to format your computer that way, is it possible to boot inside VMWare even though it's being emulated? Since you are inside Windows, wouldn't that prevent you from installing windows over the partition you are in?

 

[Nothinman]

Since you are inside Windows, wouldn't that prevent you from installing windows over the partition you are in?

Sure it would, in VMWare you generally use emulated disks which are really just files in the host OSes filesystem. You can give VMWare RAW access to a drive, but I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[DWk]

So in the end, my idea wouldn't work currently?

 

[Nothinman]

Yes, the booting from an ISO to format the computer idea wouldn't work. But if you were really adamant on doing something like that you could just create a small partition on the other and make it bootable with whatever you want and use something like XOSL to boot it. There's no need to make an ISO.

For testing the image, VMWare would work fine, for actually formatting the box you would have to burn it.

 

[ActuaryTm]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
VMWare can directly read and boot from ISOs.

Agreed. VMWare or Virtual PC. Microsoft "absorbed" the Connectix software, and has actually improved it quite a bit.

 

[DWk]

Cool, thanks