How to Create a Bootable Windows CD
If you've ever installed Windows before, you know that the first step is to boot the computer off of the CD. But what do you do if you only have the files from off of a Windows CD, but not the CD itself? Unfortunately, you can't just burn the files to a new CD, because it won't boot. So what do you do? If you're an IT professional or network administrator, it's inevitable that the day is going to come when you will need to create a bootable Windows CD. Maybe you've got MSDN disks and you want to install one of the Windows OS installs on there, or maybe you're working for a client and they've lost their Windows CDs, but somehow they have a backup of the CD's files saved on a server somewhere. Sounds crazy, I know, but when that day comes--here's how you're going to save the day using "Bart's" method of creating bootable Windows CD-ROMs.
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Things You'll Need
- A Windows computer with a CD burner
- Blank recordable CD-ROM
- An i386 folder from off of a Windows CD (This tutorial is for Windows XP only, but other OS's are possible)
- BCD files which will be downloaded off the Internet
Instructions
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Download the BCD package (see link in Resources below).
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Make a new folder called "bcd" on your C drive.The path to the folder should be c:\bcd. Unzip the package's contents into the bcd folder.
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Download wnaspi32.dll and copy it to c:\bcd\bin (see link in Resources).
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Download wxp10.zip (see link in Resources). This is the bootstrap loader for XP and some other files. Extract these files straight into c:\bcd.
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Copy the i386 folder for the Windows XP install to either c:\bcd\cds\wxphome\files\ or c:\bcd\cds\wxppro\files\ depending on whether it's XP Home or Pro. For this example we're doing XP Home. If you see the files: win51ic.SPx or win51ip.SPx you'll need to copy these too, because they are for the Service Pack. The other files such as autorun.inf, readme.htm and setup.exe are optional. Now you're ready to burn your disc.
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Open a command prompt by going to Start > Run, type "cmd" and hit OK.
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Type "cd c:\bcd" (or whatever your path to the bcd folder is) and hit enter in the Command window. Type "bcd wxphome" (or "bcd wxppro" for XP Pro) and hit enter to run BCD.
Now you're going to see a bunch of text run by on the screen. What bcd is doing is creating an ISO file and then burning it to your CD-ROM.
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Put your CD-ROM into your burner when it prompts you for a CD-ROM, then hit enter. When bcd finishes it will eject your CD-ROM and you're finished! Now you have a bootable CD of Windows XP ready to install.
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Tips & Warnings
If your i386 folder is from an MSDN CD you may need to alter the i386\txtsetup.sif file. Edit the file in notepad or other text editor and change the section [SetupData] setup source path to read: SetupSourcePath = "\"
If when installing Windows from your new bootable CD you keep getting the error "put the Service Pack CD into drive A:" then your CD is missing the win51ic.SPx or win51ip.SPx files. The easiest way to fix this is to slipstream a Service Pack into your i386 folder. To do this, download the latest Service Pack for the OS from Microsoft's website and then run one of the following commands depending on what you have, XP Home or Pro. Slipstreaming will create the missing win51ic.SPx or win51ip.SPx files you need to add to your CD. xpsp1_en_x86.exe -s:d:\bcd\cds\wxphome\files\ xpsp1_en_x86.exe -s:d:\bcd\cds\wxppro\files\
Sometimes, when installing Windows XP from a ripped set of i386 files you can get error messages such as "the install cannot copy certain dll files." I've heard a variety of reasons for this phenomenon from needing to install hard drive drivers to more of a conspiracy theory that Microsoft intentionally messes up any Windows CDs ripped in on Windows OS. So, from that perspective, if you are taking the i386 folder directly off of a Windows install disk, try doing the copy in Linux, on a Mac or on an older Windows OS such as 98--then copy the folder back to your Windows PC to burn with bcd. There's no guarantee that's going to work, but it's worth a shot. However, I have never witnessed this behavior if the i386 folder is coming from an MSDN disk.
