f you are a system administrator, then you probably have a whole bunch of CDs of all the operating systems installed on your network. So you d be hunting for the right CD every time you have to install an OS on any machine. This can be difficult and time consuming. The way out is to put all your operating systems on a single DVD. These DVDs can also be made to support multi-booting. So whenever you insert the DVD into a drive and reboot the machine, it will list all the operating systems it has so that you can choose the one you want to install. Here�s the way you can do it.
First you need a boot loader for the DVD, which supports multi-booting. There are many ways to burn a multi-boot DVD.
The easiest is to use a software called Easy boot 4.1, which is a shareware utility. It even lets you create colorful boot menus with background pictures. It is easy to use and creates an ISO image as the output file, which can then be used to burn a DVD using Nero.
After the utility is installed, it creates an EasyBoot shortcut on your desktop. Double click it to open a preview menu window and the Easy boot window. From the Easy Boot window, you can change the menu layout and boot menu settings. Click on the Menu tab to set the text for each menu and the command for each to load its corresponding boot image. This command will be executed when the menu is selected. In multi-booting, the boot loader calls the selected boot sector, which will be present in an .img or .bin file. The boot sector, then further searches for the OS kernel and loads it.
After configuring the menus, you need to dump installers for all the operating systems to C:\EasyBoot\Disk1 folder. Then copy the OS boot image (a .bin or .img file) to the C:\EasyBoot\Disk1\ezboot folder. This is the same image file that you specified in the menu command while creating the menu.
Now from the EasyBoot window, select the File tab and click the Make ISO button. This will prompt you to create an ISO image out of all the contents dumped in C:\EasyBoot\Disk1. Click Make button. The tool creates the bootable ISO file in the C:\EasyBoot\iso directory.
Finally you need to make a Bootable DVD out of this ISO image. Start the Nero burning software and select Recorder>Burn Image from the menu bar. Here a burn compilation window will pop up. Select DVD from the drop down list and click the Burn button to make your multi-boot DVD.
Now whenever you insert this DVD into a drive and boot the machine, it will show you a menu of all the operating systems stored in it. Choose the one you want to install
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