creating an e-smith boot floppy

Most modern computers are capable of booting directly from the e-smith CD. If your computer is an older model and unable to boot from a CD, you will need to create a boot floppy. Here's how.

instructions using Windows

There are two ways to create an e-smith boot floppy under Windows. Before you start, make sure you have handy a blank, formatted 1.44MB 3.5" diskette.

You must ensure the boot floppy is error free. If formatting in Windows, ensure that the format results indicate "0 bytes in bad sectors". We recommend a "Full" format.

method 1

  1. Insert the e-smith CD into your CD drive.

  2. Doubleclick the "My Computer" icon on your Windows desktop.

  3. Doubleclick the icon for your CD drive.

  4. You should now see the contents of your e-smith CD. Doubleclick the dosutils folder.

  5. In the dosutils folder, doubleclick the icon labelled rawrite.

  6. The rawrite utility will ask you for the disk image source file name. Type d:\images\boot.img (assuming d: is your CD drive) and press Enter.

  7. Rawrite will ask you for the target diskette drive. Type a: (assuming a: is your floppy drive) and press Enter.

  8. When prompted, insert a blank, formatted diskette into your floppy drive and press Enter.

  9. The rawrite utility will return a message telling you whether your disk was created successfully

method 2

  1. Insert the e-smith CD into your CD drive.

  2. Click the Start button, then Programs, then the MS-DOS Prompt icon.

  3. At the prompt, type d:\dosutils\rawrite (assuming d: is your CD drive) and press Enter.

  4. You will be asked for the disk image source file name. Type d:\images\boot.img (assuming d: is your CD drive) and press Enter.

  5. You will be asked for the target diskette drive. Type a: (assuming a: is your floppy drive) and press Enter.

  6. When prompted, insert a blank, formatted diskette into your floppy drive and press Enter.

  7. The rawrite utility will return a message telling you whether your disk was created successfully.

instructions using Linux

Under Linux, the commands are: 

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k
umount /mnt/cdrom

If you've read these instructions and still aren't sure what to do, please let us know. We value your comments and suggestions to help make this site as useful as possible.

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