Showing posts with label CD/DVD Utilities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CD/DVD Utilities. Show all posts

Monday, June 29, 2009

How To Make Bootable USB Drive


Having a bootable USB is very essential, especially if you are a Netbook user. Using bootable USB to install an operating system (OS) not only makes the installation faster, but also saves a DVD.

Creating or using an USB drive to install Windows operating systems is very easy if you follow the below mentioned steps.

bootable usb drive

1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:

DISKPART and hit enter.

LIST DISK and hit enter.

Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.

SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process may take few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

Bootable USB

Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.

5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “H” as my USB drive letter.

6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:

D:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.

CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.

BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:

(Where “H” is your USB drive letter)

USB Bootable

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.

You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).

Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.

Forom interwondow.com

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

DAEMON Tools Lite

The new version of DAEMON Tools Lite has been released recently. It is DAEMON Tools Lite version 4.11. DAEMON Tools Lite is free and well known application for cd/dvd-rom emulation. This program is able to emulate almost all known copy protections on the market today, allowing you to run backup copies of Laserlock, SafeDisc, CDCOPS, Securom, Protect CD and StarForce protected games.
DAEMON Tools allows you to create a virtual DVD-ROM drives. So you can mount and use nearly any CD and DVD images without the need for the physical disc.
DAEMON Tools supports all popular versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It also supports more CD/DVD image types than any other optical disc emulation program.
The program has simple and well designed interface. It creates a small system tray icon that gives you quick access to all its commands. Here you can select the number of virtual drives that you want to have at your disposal and mount images for each of them. You can assign each virtual drive any letter of English alphabet which is not yet in use. There is also a capability to select the regional code for any created virtual drives. I want to note that mounting and unmounting of virtual drives occurs almost instantly and without the need to reboot.


Daemon Tools System Tray menu interface


The features of the DAEMON Tools can be extended with additional modules, which are produced by third-party developers.
Major improvements of the new version:
  • included DT Panel with Internet search box and "Mount'n'Drive manager"
  • DT tray behaviour changed to DT Pro style
  • Languages are now changed more easily and more convenient
  • Fixed several bugs

Before you begin to download this good and very useful application, I would like to warn you that DAEMON Tools Lite contains an optional adware toolbar. I recommend you deselect this option during installation.
You can download free version of DAEMON Tools from this page. (2.4 MB)
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BurnAware Free 1.2.9 – Free Burning Software

Not too long ago, the program that was most used for burning was Nero. This program long time ago turn into powerful, multifunctional software suite with numerous components. Media suites like Nero are everything we’ll ever need for producing and burning our disc media.
However, how many times you just use such media suites to simply back up files or create your audio CD? Face it, you use most often the only one burning part of any media suite. So why to pay for features you don’t need? If all you need is simple and good burning software, BurnAware Free Edition will be a right choice.
BurnAware Free Edition is designed to easily perform the most common disc burning operations, such as creating data discs, creating and burning disc images, writing multi-session discs, and writing Audio CD and DVD-video discs. The program supports all types of optical media from CD through to a Blu-ray writable disc.
The user interface of BurnAware is well designed and it is easy to use. When the program is started, it displays a window with the list of menu items.

BurnAware Free Edition start screen


Here you can select the relevant menu item to go to the desired screen where you can compile and work on your project.
Create data disc menu item allows you to compile and burn all types of files and folders as well as to create a disc image from the files on your hard drive.

BurnAware Free Edition Creating Data Discs


The developers did not use the classical structure with two panels, one of which is a navigator on the local file system. Adding data is quite simple. Just click the Add files button to open the Add files and folders window where you can select files and folders you want to add.
However, I think it’s much easier to open any file manager and drag the desired objects on the window of BurnAware Free Edition.
After adding the files you can start the burning process by pressing the red button in the top right part of the screen.
Burn ISO image menu item lets you to burn a disc image. However, using BurnAware Free Edition you can burn only ISO image files.
Creating of Audio CD or DVD-video is also quite simple. But BurnAware Free Edition can create Audio CD only from WAV, MP3, or WMA files.
Like any disc burning software, BurnAware supports both options for disc erasing: quick and full. However, unlike in the case of the actual burning process, when you select for disc erasing you are given no information on the amount of time required for the completion of the task.

BurnAware Free Edition Erase options


BurnAware Free Edition is absolutely free and has all basic functions of burning software. It’ll get the job done without investing much effort in working with it.
BurnAware is also available in Home edition that unlike the basic free edition includes some additional features like creating bootable discs, creating ISO images from discs, supporting ISO/UDF/Bridge file systems and CD-TEXT for Audio CD’s

Download BurnAware Free Edition (OS: Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista; Freeware; Size: 4.4 MB)

Download BurnAware Home Edition (OS: Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista; Shareware; Size: 5.6 MB)
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