Author Topic: Win2000 Boot CD ?? (Read 24548 times)

Zeke · « **on:** August 12, 2001, 07:10:19 PM »

Why does everyone want a Win2000 Boot CD? Is Win2000 that unstable? If it is I will stay with Win98.

Josetann · « **Reply #1 on:** August 12, 2001, 09:22:59 PM »

They want it, so you don\'t have to make 4 floppies to boot from, if you want to install win2k or have to repair an install. Just like Win98 retail CD\'s. Pop it in, and it will ask you if you want to boot from the CD or the hard drive and if you choose from CD, you can boot from it and use it like a win98 floppy (has all the programs on there, like fdisk, format, etc.) or start the install from there.

Anonymous · « **Reply #2 on:** August 13, 2001, 03:31:13 AM »

The bootable W2k CD is definitely a must-have. Normally, when doing an install, it takes about 10-15 minutes just to read the 4 boot floppies. Well, with the bootable CD, about 20 seconds on my box. Mainly just a timesaver. W2k is a whole lot more stable than 98, but me personally, I do a clean install atleast once a month just to clean it up because of all the software that I \"try\" and sometimes I may run into some problems because of third party software.

Zeke · « **Reply #3 on:** August 13, 2001, 09:26:41 AM »

The salesman told me that the Win2000 CD was an autobooting CD and it pretty much just takes off & installs the OS. No problems. What are the 4 floppies you have to make used for in the installation?
I hope to have my computer assembled this week & will try to install it.

Thanks,
Z

Anonymous · « **Reply #4 on:** August 15, 2001, 05:52:30 PM »

I beleive that those looking are people who did a \"slipstream\" of service pack 1 or 2, or those who have a copy of the install files instead of an original CD. Those who slipstreamed should do a search for the exact phrase \"Making a Bootable Windows 2000 CD with Service Pack Integrated\". You just might find what you need. Those with copies should go get legal copies before asking....

Josetann · « **Reply #5 on:** August 15, 2001, 09:07:37 PM »

Yes, the instructions I posted work fine if you have a FULL CD. I know that a lot of people just downloaded the install files, and probably want to make it bootable. There are other files besides the basic install files that are needed, to make the CD bootable (and are generally left out of such \"distributions\"). That\'s why I left out the files that are needed to boot the cd, which you already have with a legal (or a full copy) CD; we don\'t promote warez.

Anonymous · « **Reply #6 on:** August 16, 2001, 01:08:46 AM »

What? I do have a full CD, a legal copy. Why would you think that everyone is a thief? Maybe because you\'re one?

Josetann · « **Reply #7 on:** August 16, 2001, 04:20:19 AM »

Nothing there suggested you were. His post simply said anyone who was using a copy, to get the legal version first before asking for help. Probably because someone with a minimum warez download of it, will never get it to work. If you have a legit version, then it can be made to work. You may have problems, but at least you/we aren\'t wasting our time on a lost cause.

Anonymous · « **Reply #8 on:** August 16, 2001, 08:33:14 AM »

Cool. I took it the wrong way. My mistake, sorry that I lashed back and said a worse thing. I did follow your directions and they were excellent! Everything worked great except for the Office 2000 CD Key. I can\'t seem to get that one working. I found the setup.inf file but there is only one area on my CD and that\'s for the customer name, no CD key input area anywhere.

Josetann · « **Reply #9 on:** August 16, 2001, 08:57:05 AM »

No hard feelings.

Yes, the PID area is not in the setup.inf file. You have to copy it in, then it\'ll work like a charm.

Anonymous · « **Reply #10 on:** August 23, 2001, 09:22:31 PM »

Any body know how to mod the OEM version of the CD to make it \"auto-enter\" the CD key? I saw the directions for the MSDN version, but it doesn\'t work for the OEM. The last 3 of the pid is OEM for the version that I have...

Don · « **Reply #11 on:** August 24, 2001, 10:19:20 AM »

is there a way to integrate IE 5.5 sp2 into the install as well?

The_Flames · « **Reply #12 on:** August 28, 2001, 09:45:56 AM »

I havent seen a way to put ie5.5 or ie6 into the 2k installation, but if you find a way share it with us as I woould to know

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Eric · « **Reply #13 on:** August 29, 2001, 06:25:29 PM »

The directions should be similar.

The best way that I\'ve found is to run the setupmgr.exe file from deploy.cab (comes on win2k cd under the supporttools directory) and generate an answer file. If you place this file in the i386 directory on a bootable Win2K install CD and call it \"WINNT.SIF\" it will be used as an answer file for installs that boot off of the CD.

You can specify all kinds of things in that file. I would
recommend a good read of the unattend.doc that comes in that deploy.cab file and hand editing the WINNT.SIF file. It\'s pretty cool the things you can put in there.

For further customizations you can place files in a directory called $OEM$ off of the ROOT of the CD (NOT under the i386 directory like on network installs) and the Win2K install will use this as a OEM install files directory when installing from booting off the CD. You can place drivers under there and place commands to be run during the setup into the \"cmdlines.txt\" file. I put a customized NTUSER.DAT file onto the cd and called a a batch file from cmdlines.txt that overwrote the default user\'s with it to setup defaults for the machine. I also put a .reg file and merged a bunch of keys into the registry inside the same batch file. It\'s really nice to do that way because you set the defaults for all the users. I get rid of all that frilly web stuff in the Explorer folder views before I even see it.

It\'s also great to put network card drivers onto the CD for cards that aren\'t supported by default in WIN2K. It\'s such a pain to go dig up or create a driver CD for each type of NIC you run into while doing installs. I put them all in there and added them to the cd using the $1 directory that get\'s mapped to the primary win2k drive (usually C) under Driversmachinetypenic folders and then added them to the
OemPnPDriversPath in the WINNT.SIF file so that it installs the drivers for the cards during the setup process. It\'s really slick.

HINT: You can use the %USERPROFILE% variable in a batch file running out of cmdlines.txt to reference the default user\'s directory. It\'s usually C:Documents and SettingsDefault User but not always if you are upgrading.
That\'s how I copy the NTUSER.DAT file into the default user profile directory. It didn\'t seem to work if I put the command into the cmdlines.txt file but it worked in a batch file called from cmdlines.txt. The working directory for commands run out of the cmdlines.txt is the $OEM$ directory on the CD so you can reference files under there relatively i.e. .NTUSER.DAT If you want to poke around put a cmd.exe line into cmdlines.txt and run a shell.

Good luck

Big_Z · « **Reply #14 on:** August 29, 2001, 06:36:02 PM »

Good stuff Eric. Will come in handy.

Anonymous · « **Reply #15 on:** September 01, 2001, 11:05:55 AM »

I got all of my hardware installed, MoBo,CPU,HS&F, HDs,CDs,Video,Mem,......
turned on power, went into BIOS, made settings,Inserted the Win2000 Cd, Powered down, Powered up, answered a couple of prompts and it installed Win2000. It did not ask for any boot floppies, the Win2000 CD was self booting.
I\'m kinda dense, again WHY are the 4 boot floppies needed that everone wants?
The Epox 8K7A+ MoBo/RAID 0, AMD 1.4/1.6GHz, IBM 75GXP 30GB HDs, Crucial 2100 512MB is a great system

Fred Fargle · « **Reply #16 on:** September 01, 2001, 11:46:17 AM »

I have put the IE6 files on my bootable CD and set the ie6setup.exe to run in quiet mode via the [commands] section of the winnt32.sif file. I first install all of the latest hotfixes in quiet mode (set to not reboot), then run the ie install in quiet mode. One more reboot and you\'re all set!

Anonymous · « **Reply #17 on:** September 01, 2001, 05:29:00 PM »

Because, if someone does not have a CD-rom, BIOS, or a CD that isn\'t bootable for what ever reasons, then you need to create the four floppy disks under the folder named BOOTDISKS. Is that clear?

Once these disks are made, then you WILL have a WAY to boot the computer, and further your failed atempt with the CD-ROM way, and install very happily the OS\' that ran stable for at least 120 days under a very strenous test. (correct me?)

well..

asta

Tr@k0r

Anonymous · « **Reply #18 on:** September 04, 2001, 02:50:58 PM »

You wrote:
> There are other files besides the basic install files that are needed, to make the CD bootable (and are generally left out of such \"distributions\"). That\'s why I left out the files that are needed to boot the cd

I\'m confused - what files did you \"leave out\", and left them out from where? I have the full Win2K CD and followed the instructions in your article (using CDRWin 4.0a beta), but my finished CD gives me \"NTLDR not found\" - won\'t boot.

What files might I have \"left out\"??

Thanks for any help!

Josetann · « **Reply #19 on:** September 04, 2001, 02:58:34 PM »

You misunderstood. There are several files needed to make win2k bootable, I only supply the boot.bin file. As long as you have a full, legal version of win2k then you have all the other files necessary. It\'s if you have a stripped-down warez (pirated) version, that they often leave out any \"unnecessary\" files.

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Author Topic: Win2000 Boot CD ?? (Read 24548 times)

Zeke

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Zeke

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Anonymous

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Don

Eric

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Fred Fargle

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