It might be possible to get a boot manager to let you choose between a hard drive and a cdrom, I'm not sure. But even if you were able to do that, if your c: drive completely dies, the boot manager won't help because he needs the Master Boot record on the C: drive to start the boot process and your CDrom windows would be useless.

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I did a search on the HP page on how to make a bootable CD and this is what came up. HP CD-Writer Plus Drives - How to Make a Bootable CD QUESTION: How do I make a bootable CD? ANSWER: A bootable 3.5-inch floppy diskette is necessary to start the process. The CD will have the same booting information as the chosen floppy diskette, so it is important to verify that the bootable floppy diskette being used follows the desired boot-up process. Once a useable floppy diskette has been chosen, launch Easy CD Creator, cancel the Wizard, and click the DATA CD LAYOUT tab. Before selecting any data files, click FILE, then click CD LAYOUT PROPERTIES, then select ISO 9660 from the drop-down menu, then click the button next to BOOTABLE. A message will appear prompting insertion of the floppy boot diskette and two files will be taken from the floppy disk and added to the layout that will make the CD bootable. The remaining data files may be added at this point, and the bootable CD is ready to be created. http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg40260.html The page gives an example of how to use easy CD to create a bootable cd but they make no reference for using their own software program to do this.Perhaps the HP CD writer software does not have this capability. DirectCD is of no use for this type of thing either.

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If you are planning on copying your windows system from the cdrom back to the c: drive using dos, I hope that you are aware that any 'long file names' will be lost. There is a program to save long file names and restore them in dos but unfortunately I've forgotten the name. You can probably find it with a little searching.

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You do not really need the CD to be bootable. I am doing something similar. Your problems are 1. File sharing. You cannot record drive C: because files are in use as you record. 2. You have to record system and hidden files. 3. You need some program that will copy long filenames in DOS possibly--although if you copy everything to another drive in Windows it leaves 2 problems. You could xcopy everything in windows but this would be very rough because you have to locate all hidden and system files remove these attributes copy them and add the attributes again. Perhaps drivecopy will do this for you, I am not familiar with it. You want an exact copy hidden and system files and all on another logical drive other than C: Then you make a CD of this. There are a lot of places to go wrong. I know of a shareware program that will make an archive for you on any drive. Then you can copy it back to C: at will. It perserves long filenames in DOS as well as keeping all attributes intact. There is one drawback to this program. It will not archive Windows ME due to the fact that it cannot open five files crucial to its operation. I do not know where to download the program, but if you email a mailing address to fred6008@earthlink.net I will mail you a Shareware version of the program on floppy disk. You can only use it a certain number of times unless you register it.

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Judith, thre is a Disaster Recovery program, which do the job. I have made the CDRW and tested it. You probably have the manual book to look more information. I have HP8210i and I use only the programs, which came along. When I formatted my hard drive, it took one and half hours to reload everything. To backup I needed two floppies and one CDRW.

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When I made my entry above it was early in the morning and I may not have been as clear as I would like. You cannot make a bootable CD that will boot into Windows for a number of reasons. Two of them that come to mind are that since Windows 3.1 you have had to have windows on the drive letter you installed it on for it to boot and two all files on a cd are essentially read only. Windows would never stand for a read only swap file so you are out of luck on that. (I assume you want to boot into windows to preserve long filenames and possibly because drive copy requires windows?) You could make the CD; it just would not boot into windows. You could copy drive c: to another logical drive such as D:. Then you could sys D: for good measure. Then you could burn the CD from D: But how would you run windows to move the installation on the CD-R to drive C:? You need a gimmick or some other software unless drive copy will preserve long filenames in DOS, and if it will you do not need a bootable CD at all, just an exact copy of C: plus a startup disk. I guess you can see now why there never has been a version of DOS that will copy long filenames? It is not because it would be difficult to program.

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All these guys don't have a clue to what you are asking except the one that did the research on how to make a bootable CD. Follow lthose instructions on making the bootablew and them use the PowerQuest to make your drive image and don't forget to make a copy of the PowerQuest program on that CD also as you will need it to restore with. Last thing to do is to go into your bios and set the boot sequence to hae the CD before the Harddrive. HTH, wcr3d

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Judith I sent you something that I use. It works for me. It is called BOOT ISO. Read the .txt files befor you use it.

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REsponse 2 is similar to what I do....some of the responses that follow are redundant and incomplete understandings of the problem. take no notice of them. To briefly explain what I do.... 1. before you do a backup cd of c drive, you have to make dead certain you get as much critical data of C drive as possible... remember, when you do a recovery you will overwrite all data since last cd made. I am referring to things like outlook express folder, address book, MS office data folder, internet explorer favourites. you should make sure these are kept on d drive. 2. I then use ghost to make a compressed image of c drive to my backup partition- f: drive (d: drive is data only and swap file, e: drive is installation and batch files) 3. then I use a burner to copy the ghost compressed image file to the cd in adddition to the ghost program folder. the adaptec software has an option to make the cd bootable. In the autoexec.bat file, I start a batch file which has a ghost command line that automates the recovery i.e. BATCH FILE @echo off echo WARNING!!!!!!! echo If you proceed, all data on drive C will be permanently overwritten. echo To proceed, press any key to overwrite c drive and restore it from echo the previous good backup. pause echo are you absolutely sure? pause g:\ghost -clone,mode=pload,src=e:\image\1c.gho:1,dst=1:1 you then just reboot...... hope this helps....

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Hi Judith, first of all I think that wcr3d is right, only some guys did realy understand what you want to do. So, I know what you, what your problem is, because I´m just doing the same. I´m uing pqdi to make an Image, then I burn it to cd, but I´m booting from floppy to recover. please tell me something more about your experiences that you have made. thanks g.

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OK.. Nobody her understands what this guy is asking for. Let me help. He wants a cd that is bootable that has a working copy of windows 98 so that windows 98 would be running from cd only. The purpose of this is clear in many ways.: 1. A diskless terminal. 2. An unhackable computer. 3. An operating system with full programs ready to run in your pocket. 4. An excellent computer tech tool! I have been working on this for some time. Windows 98 will not work, (yet) But Windows 95 has been working (unstable) for me. It envolves a great deal of work. You must install a clean version of windows on an empty hard drive, then edit the registry and autoexec and config.sys. Some of the information in the registry will go into a ramdrive while other information stays locked on the CD. Email me for full documentation. macman@applecollector.com

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