Creating a bootable DOS CD?

[Praetor]

I need to create a bootable CD that will get me into DOS and have the full compliment of utilities that used to be available. fdisk, format, sys, emm386, cdsys, all that fun stuff. I would, ideally, like to find an image already made so I can load it into Nero, burn it, and go.

Why do I want/need to do this?

1. I don't have a floppy disk drive installed.

2. I don't want to buy and install an FDD.

3. I need to fdisk/mbr one of my drives so I can get linux to load on it.

4. It's just a really useful thing to have around. 😀

Can anyone help me?

 

[CTho9305]

well.... you can download any old dos bootdisk floppy image, and nero/easy cd creator have ways to use a flopppy image to make a bootable cd. make sure the disk has cdrom drivers.... then dump any other stuff you need on the rest of the CD.

 

[Praetor]

Well, I finally found something that helped. FreeDOS has a 52 mb ISO file that I burned that gave me a dos prompt with fdisk and all the trimmings.

Only problem: I FDISK/mbr'd the wrong partition and I think I messed up my WinXP install. I can get into it, but I don't get a logon screen.

 

[thornc]

BootDisks

Use the XP cd and do a repair!!

 

[Praetor]

I've tried that, to no avail. 🙁 The bootdisk on MS' site looks like it's only if your system doesn't support bootable CDs. Mine does, so that won't help.

Thanks though.

 

[jfunk]

I don't think you'd want to FDISK your drive with a version of FDISK that wasn't from your current O/S.


j

 

[extro]

From the XP recovery console try FIXBOOT and FIXMBR to repair the boot sector.

Fixboot = writes a new bootsector on the system partition

Fixmbr = repairs the masterbootcode of the Bootpartion and searches for void or
not default partion table signatures. You can choose, to overwrite the MBR.

I've never actually had to use either one, so you should probably do a little more research on the subject. 😉