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Best of ISO burning under Windows.

Answers From Robert L Keeney, G�tz Waschk, Simon Rowe, Chris Olsen, Ed Wiget

We had a general request for burning CD images under Windows: http://linuxgazette.net/issue65/lg_mail65.html#wanted/1

I've downloaded the ISO file. Now what do I do with it? I've burned a CD and it won't boot with it.

We got a lot of answers Here's the best ones:

MULTIPLE DIRECTIONS

Although most of these are Linux, there's a few Windows and at least one Macintosh program shown.

[Robert L Keeney] The adaptec instructions worked for me. The others I haven't tried.

http://www.linuxiso.org/cdburninginfo.html

CDRECORD

In the original our querent complained that the Howto instructed him in cdrecord...

[G�tz Waschk] This program is portable and the windows version shares the parameters with the linux version.

There is a binary for windows at:
ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/cdrecord/alpha/win32/

First you have to find out the SCSI id of your CD recorder with

cdrecord -scanbus

...than you can burn the image with

cdrecord -device <your_id> filename.iso

NERO BURNING

A different reader noted that Nero Burning's FAQ on their website gives a step by step example of burning a Redhat image to a disc.

[Simon Rowe] change the file extension to 'NRG' eg
SuSE71.iso ---> SuSE71.nrg

The Nero software will then recognise the ISO image correctly, and should burn it ok using the applications defaults (in version 5.x anyway!)

Once the filename extension has been changed, just double click the file in Windows, and Nero should load ready to burn the ISO image. This works under Windows 2000 and Windows 9x., I have not abused my computer with Windows ME to try it there though

ADAPTEC EZ CD

[Chris Olsen] EZ-CD Creator will handle iso's really easily, just install it, and you can right click the .iso image and select record to cd. Presto, a proper image, not one big file on CD.

[Ed Wiget] Windows 98 + Adaptec EZ CD Creator 4.xx

download the iso file for the distribution you wish to create cd's.
assuming you already have Windows 98 on that machine and Adaptec EZ CD Creator installed, you need to close everything down in the taskbar next to the clock (no programs except systray and explorer should show up if you press ctrl+alt+del).
to make sure the large iso file is continuous, you should defragment your hard drives. As an added measure, you should also clear your temp folder of any files on C:\TEMP and C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
I would hope this isn't actually necessary, it should be making regular Windows filesystem calls to get at the bits, but it might make it burn faster. My suspicion is that more of that speed would be from a general Windows speedup, if it's been awhile since your last defragmentation.

Open EZ CD Creator, and select Data CD
From the File menu, select Create CD from CD Image (almost all cd recording software for windows uses a similar statement to distringuish an ISO file from normal data files)
EZ CD Creator by default looks for a *.cif file, change this to iso from the drop-down list in Files of Type.
note: another reader commented that 4.02d defaults to extension .cdi ... I suppose it would be nice if these Windows burning programs would learn to agree on something. *sigh*

Browse to the location of the downloaded iso file and select it.
Select Open
The buttons Create CD, Track at Once, and Close CD should be selected.
Select the speed of your CD-Recorder
Select O.K.
When it is finished recording the CD, place it in another computer and make sure you can see the CD's contents.

To which I will add, these may be mostly Linux binary programs on our discs, but you should be able to mount up the disc and see their names, at least. That's what all those "TRANS.TBL" files you might see are ... support for long names on a CD filesystem.

Thanks to everybody who wrote in! -- Heather

HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

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