Making a Bootable CD

johnnymo87 · 12-12-2005, 12:45 PM

Hi. I'm currently trying to make the switch from windows to the Ubuntu distro of Linux. This will be my first time ever using linux.

I am trying to make a boot CD (my floppy drive is broken).

I checked my BIOS, and set it to 1st boot to the CD-ROM. So, my computer can boot CDs.

I have burned the lastest Ubuntu distro (i386 version for my AMD Athlon) as an image onto a blank CD. I bleive I did this right because the CD is now called "Ubuntu 510 i386". The contents of the CD are folders called ".disk, dists, docs, install, isolinux, pics, pool, pressed" and files called "md5sum.txt, README.diskdefines, ubuntu"

OK. So I haven't repartitioned my computer yet. I just want to test out the bootability of the CD before I fdisk.exe and format.com my harddrive (windows programs for repartitioning and wipe areas of my drive. I would lose all my windows stuff when I do it, which is what I want. I still made backups of all my windows stuff in case the bootdisk fails.).

I put the CD in my bootable CD-ROM, and restart my computer. The "reading" light on my CD-ROM comes on for a few seconds, but then disappears and my computer continues to load windows as usual.

Did I make the CD wrong? (I burned it as an image)
Is my CD-ROM not bootable? (I check it in my BIOS)
Do I need to repartion my drive before the boot CD responds?
Do I have the wrong distro?

I'm a total newbie to switching OSs and linux in general. Please help!

homey · 12-12-2005, 12:57 PM

It almost sounds like you didn't get it to burn properly. I can't be of much help doing it in Windows but, you could check out this tutorial....
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html

You don't need to partition before install most Linux distros as they usually have a patitioning tool to be used during the install.

johnnymo87 · 12-12-2005, 04:35 PM

Thanks for the link.

I went and check it out, and it turns out I have burned the *.iso perfectly onto the CD.

I still can't get my computer to read it during bootup. So I think it's a hardware/BIOS setting I need to change. I already have CD-ROM selected for bootup, but it seems to ignore it.

I'm going to see if my BIOS can be upgraded somehow.