Virtual Burner

[nikolai]

I am trying to make a system restore disk for Windows 7 Starter on my netbook. However, Windows insists that the disk be written directly to a burner and my netbook does not have one. I'm looking for some software (preferable free) that can emulate a cd burner and will write to and ISO so that I can burn the disk from my other machine.

 

[MilesAhead]

I wouldn't even bother with it. Just use an imaging program to save an image of your current system to an external drive.

You can find free imaging programs on Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities (thefreecountry.com)

or you can use a free or trial version such as Macrium Reflect. As you add programs to your system you can just make a new image. That way a restore doesn't undo everything you added and customized.

I make the restore CD set when I first get a machine, but if you don't have a physical burner it's too much bother. You may not be able to fool the program. And the imaging backups are better anyway.

 

[nikolai]

I already have an image of my drive. But its a dual boot Linux system so grub is acting as the bootloader. When I remove Linux,the PC wont boot. And I can't find my OEM restore disk, so I need to make a recovery disk.

 

[MilesAhead]

Have you already removed Linux? Every Linux I ever ran made a copy of the MBR and saved it. There should be a command to overwrite the MBR using the copy so that Windows will boot just like before Linux was added.

 

[MilesAhead]

Serendipity! This just popped up in my Reboot newsletter:

TotalMounter - Virtual CD/DVD burner - reboot.pro