Hi, Does anyone know of a utility so that I can boot a particular ISO image of an Operating System? What I am after is to boot a DVD which has a load of ISO images (Windows XP, Windows 2000 etc) and a menu appears asking which one I would like to boot to. Anyone seen anything like this? Thanks.

Not to be rude but you have a lot of learning to do about operating systems. You cannot boot to an ISO image. They are compressed images of operating systems. You also can't run an OS off of a CD or DVD.

Doug, How can you be so sure? I know for a fact that yes YOU CAN indeed run DOS and even certain modified versions of Windows (95 & 98) off of a CD. Perhaps *you* have a lot of learning to do about operating system? -Michael

"You cannot boot to an ISO image. They are compressed images of operating systems." On a standard PC, you would be correct, as the bootup sequence does not read contents of *.ISO files, and is not capable of doing so. However, if you have Virtual PC or VMWare installed, you can boot ISO images in the virtual environment by selecting the CD image to boot off of. An *.ISO is also not just an image of an operating system, it is an image of a CD, in exact format as it will appear when burnt to the CD. It is just a "pre-packaged" version of the CD. To make use of the ISO, you must burn the contents of it to a CD with your CD burning software. A perfect example is that you can get *.ISOs of games, applications, music CD's, and even operating systems. I prefer NERO for burning ISO's but any other CD burning suite should be able to also. You also can't run an OS off of a CD or DVD." If you are refering to a stock Windows 9x or NT CD, than you would be correct. However, DOS, and some versions of Linux are infact usable off of the CD. Take Knoppix for example, it is a 100% functioning Linux based operating system that will run off of the CDROM. You do not need to install it to your hard drive to make use of this distribution. Since Knoppix is able to run soley off of the CD, it is optimal for usage as a portable Linux system, a recovery CD, or testing Linux compatibility on an unknown machine configuration. Knoppix can also be installed to the hard drive if you so desire. This distribution is not crippled in any way, it comes with a full version of KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, The GIMP, and many other software titles. IT is also GNU GPL, and freely re-distributable. The site for Knoppix is http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ Here is a direct download link for Knoppix: http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php/327/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso. Just to let you know, this ISO is 694 MB in size, so I would only download it if you are connected with ADSL or faster connection.

Here are some mirrors for Knoppix: ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp3.linux.it/pub/mirrors/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso ftp://ftp.webtrek.com/pub/mirrors/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-09-05-EN.iso

>> Does anyone know of a utility so that I can boot a particular ISO image of an Operating System? Well, my friend is currently working on this(for a standard PC). Hopefully it will be finished soon.

if you got a cd/dvd rw burner you might wanna explore the nero burning program! i have used this program for a couple of years now and can recommend it to anyone! in the nero (www.nero.com) you can have the option to burn boot disks from 3.5inch or boot images of disks from harddrive(s) you might want to get a couple of rw(ReWrite) -cd/dvd disks to experiment with!!! there is another prog wich is called winimage wich you could make and copy 3.5inch disks from and to disks (close to any known/un known diskformat!) all from 0.35 mb to 2.88 mb (if my recollection doezn't fail me!) here you can make bootdisks form most anything good luck 4 more questions please ask me: cooleole@mail.com