[reverendmaggot]

Okay so I downloaded Linux and I want to install it on my laptop. I set my laptop to boot from a cd drive but it still won't work. Now I have the Linux installer as an ISO file. One person told me it needs to be converted to a BOOTABLe ISO file but i can't find ANY sort of information about this process online. My question is this; do I need to make this ISO a BOOTABLE ISO and if so how do I do this? If not then can I just burn this ISO with Nero 7? Thanks for your help.

[saikee]

Just use Nero and burn it as an bootable image.

[CouchMaster]

Here's a guide
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO

[reverendmaggot]

I used nero and I tried alcohol 120% and my laptop wouldnt boot from either of them.

[CouchMaster]

If the laptop is set to boot from the CD first and nothing happened then you got a bad burn/DL/or did it wrong. Try, try again...

[reverendmaggot]

I did. I have three different operating systems as ISOs and I tried burning all three of them multiple times. I even tried mounting the images and nothing happened still.

[DoubleHelix]

If you have Nero installed, you just double-click on the ISO file, and Nero should open and burn the file appropriately. Are you simply burning the ISO file to a disk as data? If so, it's not going to work.

[briealeida]

Did you try booting other machines with these disks? It could be the CD drive in the original machine.
If you have a USB CD or DVD drive, try that.

[lotuseclat79]

When you download an ISO file, look for a corresponding md5sum file (if available) and after you download the ISO file, run the md5sum command against it:
$ md5sum filename.iso

If the md5sum does not match that posted on the download website, then your download is corrupt and you need to try again until you get a good download.

That done and verified, here's how to use Linux commands to burn the image:

1) First, always run the following command to ascertain the SCSI bus ID for your CD or DVD device, since on the next boot the device may be mapped differently (this step will avoid the problem of addressing the wrong device address):
$ sudo cdrecord -scanbus

Your CD or DVD device might have a SCSI address of: 0,1,0 or 2,1,0 or something like that as output

2) Next, since you have already verified the ISO image file (using md5sum), for the purpose of this example, let's assume your device was 2,1,0, then put a blank CD+RW disc or reuseable DVD into your CD drive and issue the following command:

If there is data on the CD - you need to blank it out before burning it again (i.e. CD+RW disc):
$ sudo cdrecord -eject -v speed=8 blank=fast dev=ATAPI:2,1,0

If the CD or DVD is blank already, you can skip to the following command:
$ sudo cdrecord -eject -v speed=8 dev=ATAPI:2,1,0 ./imagefile.iso

-- Tom