How to burn FC4 CDs from Window XP PC

[George N. White III]

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Chris Northwood wrote:

> Windows XP has built in CD writing support, but it doesn't handle ISO's
> (don't think just dropping the .iso file onto the CD drive is going to be
> enough ;)

In many cases the original tools (Roxio, Nero, etc.) that came with the CD 
aren't available, e.g., an older machine that was upgraded to XP or a 
machine loaded with a companies std. configuration that doesn't include 
anything beyond XP's build-in CD writing support.  While some vendors do 
have free upgrades, you may run into issues where the original (assuming 
the guy who used the machine last didn't turf the original CD's) won't 
install on XP and the update won't install unless the original is present.

The Knoppix live cd linux distro can write CD's.  I've only used it with 
older machines (Dell Optiplex PIII 500mhz class that shipped with WfWG) 
that had both a reader and a (4x) writer, but IIRC there is a mode that 
allows you to write to the drive that is used to boot and run knoppix.  I 
generally have a small FAT32 "scratch" partition that I use for .iso 
images to get around fragmentation problems.  Knoppix can read NTFS 
reliably, but I haven't used it for writing CD's so there could be issues 
with thruput on a fast writer or with badly fragmented .iso files are

Thinking ahead to the next step:

I've installed FC versions on a number of XP machines with pre-installed 
XP as follows:

0.  you do have backups, don't you
1.  burn the FC disks
2.  burn the first disk of a Mandrake 10.x distro
3.  defragment the NTFS partion until there is enough free space for
     at the end of the disk your FC needs.  This may take many iterations.
4.  boot the Mandrake installer and use the tools to shrink the
     NTFS partition, but don't install anything
5.  XP should still boot -- use XP's tools to delete and create an
     empty extended partition (this is to work around problems with
     disk geometry in 2.6 kernels -- maybe it isn't needed anymore)
6.  install FC
7.  follow the instructions to add FC to the Windows boot loader.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com]
> On Behalf Of Shadow
> Sent: 16 September 2005 23:10
> To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> Subject: RE:How to burn FC4 CDs from Window XP PC
>
> You burn the the disks as an ISO image using what ever burning software
> you have.....to my knowledge there is no DEFAULT burner software
> installed under XP....I personally use NERO...but that isn't the only
> software available.......it all depends on what your OEM or YOU put on
> the XP machine.......so you need to look and see what you have.

-- 
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>