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Possible Duplicate:
Create Bootable CD from ISO

Can I burn bootable dvds with Windows 7's burner? If not, what should I use?

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Joan Venge
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  • rodey seems to have [addressed this](http://superuser.com/questions/137512/create-bootable-cd-from-iso/137519#137519) last year. – Synetech Jun 04 '12 at 00:56

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The ISO burning function just burns whatever is in the ISO image to the disc; it doesn’t process the data contained in the image before writing it (hence, a corrupt image will result in a bad disc; Windows will not warn you or correct it before writing). Bootable images contain the boot-record (usually as floppy image) in the .iso file. So as long as the image contains the boot image, then the resulting disc should be bootable.

The burn-to-disc function (which has been available since XP) does not support bootable discs because it works on a file basis. You specify files to be burned, Windows copies them to a holding directory, then when you select the write these files to disc command, it compiles an image and burns that.

(Interestingly, even Microsoft’s own MVPs don’t realize that this is possible. I concur with JoelbX and avirk; ImgBurn is a great—and free—program to burn both images and loose files/folders—without even having to first compiling an image! It has an easy to use interface, but also provides numerous configuration options for complete control.)

Synetech
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  • Thanks, what do you mean by loose files/folders? Also just burned with AWS, I imagine it means average write speed and it said uncorrectable error with imgburn when on verify. This happened before, wonder if it's imgburn or my burner. Last time I remember burning it as 1X speed and it worked fine. – Joan Venge Jun 04 '12 at 01:13
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    I mean that in the past, when you burned a bunch of files and folders to a disc, you had to first compile them into an image (e.g., `.iso`, `.bin/.cue`, etc.) This is due to the various [recording modes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_recording_modes) and the limits of older hardware, but ImgBurn can burn a bunch of files to a disc, even in DAO format without first compiling an image. – Synetech Jun 04 '12 at 01:22
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Yes you can of course. Just .ISO image should be bootable and it will be burn as bootable on DVD. But if you want a third party tool then imgburn is a freeware.

avirk
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