Ultimate Boot CD Customization: MS-DOS and Windows Me Boot Disks with Norton Ghost

Saturday, October 20, 2007 | 20:57 CEST

I recently set out to include my MS-DOS and Windows Me boot disks, as well as Norton Ghost 2003 (DOS version), on the Ultimate Boot CD. The reason why I wanted to do this was that it's convenient to have everything on one CD and not have to rely on the old, slow, and quite limited diskette technology. To accomplish that, I basically followed the instructions on the Ultimate Boot CD customization page.

The Floppy-Disk Image Files

I used Floppy Image ("Create compatible IMG files" setting enabled) to create image files of my boot disks; I saved them in the "custom" subdirectory of the directory containing the files extracted from the Ultimate Boot CD ISO file, as per the first step in the customization instructions. Creating the image files posed no problem; including Norton Ghost did. I have until now used one of the boot disks in combination with a second floppy containing Norton Ghost since the program is too large to fit on either one of the two boot disks, but that approach does not work with the Ultimate Boot CD (as far as I know).

A post in the Ultimate Boot CD forum provided the solution: change the format of the image file to 2.88 MB and include Norton Ghost in it. I decided to include Norton Ghost in both image files. I used WinImage to change the format to 2.88 MB (Image > Change format…), included Norton Ghost by dragging-and-dropping the "ghost.exe" file onto the WinImage window, and saved the changes.

The Configuration File

I edited the configuration file and created an ISO file that included my customizations as instructed by the customization page, and then tried to boot a Microsoft Virtual PC computer with it (quicker than burning the ISO to a CD and testing it on my physical computer); it didn't work. I tried a few things that I thought might solve the problem, but neither of the two floppy-disk images worked.

The help came, once again, in the form of a forum post: for MS-DOS and Windows boot disks to work correctly, raw must be added after the path to the image file. I edited the configuration file accordingly and created a new ISO file which I tested in a virtual PC, and this time it worked!

Here, then, is what I added to the configuration file: 

LABEL msdos
   MENU LABEL MS-DOS Boot Disk
   KERNEL memdisk
   APPEND initrd=/custom/msdos.img raw
LABEL winme
   MENU LABEL Windows Me Boot Disk
   KERNEL memdisk
   APPEND initrd=/custom/winme.img raw

No More Floppy Boot Disks

When the computer has booted using either of the two image files, I only have to type ghost and press Enter to start Norton Ghost.

With my floppy boot disks now on a single bootable CD, in addition to the many useful tools included on the Ultimate Boot CD by default, I couldn't see any reason to keep the floppy disks around, so I simply formatted them. To tell you the truth—I was happy to get rid of them.

I appreciated the usefulness of the Ultimate Boot CD before I customized it, and I appreciate it even more now. The Ultimate Boot CD should be in every computer expert's toolbox.

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