linderman

Most troubleshooting diagnostic utilities have a bootable ISO (Images of Complete CD’s Burned As One Whole Image) file version. Today’s computer specs / builders seem to be dropping or not installing floppy drives any longer in their units. Therefore, the old tried and true bootable floppy diagnostic are fast becoming extinct and in some cases not available on newer computers.

The most common diagnostic utilities include Hard Drive Diagnostic Utilities, Memory Diagnostic Utilities, and numerous useful and handy ISO files that offer invaluable troubleshooting assistance. This tool would be at our disposal if we knew how to create and work with an ISO file?

Website instructions say we have to burn the file to a blank CD or DVD disk. Please note that the term burn, does NOT mean you can simply copy the file to a CD. This is a false assumption of the concept of creating an ISO file or disk.

ISO burning incorporates a bootable image into the CD burning process. Many computer users have programs like Nero or Roxio that have ISO burners in them. These are great full featured programs that can make your job easier.

If you don't have one of those nice software packages, you can download a freeware burner called CDBurnerXP. to use without cost. This program will make it so you can burn the downloaded ISO file to make a bootable CD.

HERE are screenshot instructions and illustrations for making a bootable CD with CDBurner XP. With this program, the job of making an ISO image is about as easy as it can be.


To boot from the CD which you just made:

Simply restart the computer with this CD in the drive tray. If you find the the program doesn’t automatically start upon reboot, then you may have to enter your system bios to verify that your boot order is set to boot from the cd-rom drive before the hard drive.

Example:

First Boot Device = CD/DVD drive
Second Boot Device = Hard drive

Note: Don’t forget to save and exit when leaving the bios!

Commonly sought after free download troubleshooting ISO files are:

Killdisk is a hard drive eraser/file wiper program. Please select the DOS version category.

Dariks Boot n Nuke is a great 3 pass eraser/wiper program.

Memtest 86 is for memory testing. Download the pre-compiled bootable ISO zip file.

The Ultimate Boot CD program has hordes of awesome tools for you to use. The actual download is provided by one of their external mirror sites listed at the bottom of their webpage.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard is a great drive diagnostics program. Please choose Data Lifeguard version 11.2 for the DOS CD.

Seagate Drive Diagnostics is a nice program from Seagate. Please press the “I agree to end user agreement,” then fill out the following form to download Seagate Seatools for DOS.

Creating an ISO image is fairly easy, but at times one can have problems that are unexpected. Please feel free to contact linderman or any hardware team member if you have issues with implementing the ISO image operation.


A special thanks to our Hardware Manager Dai and Asst. Manager Tumbleweed 36 for their assistance and guidance