Hello really clever QGL people.

I have been given a really nice hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop from the boss at work. This thing is awesome - has a 3.2G Pentium 4, 1G of memory, and a Radeon Mobility 9700 video card. Its a far better gaming machine than my own desktop haha.

Unfortunately in the months the boss had it, he has loaded it up mightily. There is so much s*** on this thing that it takes 5 minutes to shut down (no s***). I am gonna format it, but I need to ghost the drive first in case the boss needs to check out one of the 4 million programs on here sometime in the future.

This laptop has no floppy drive, ansd the only Ghost I have is a bootable floppy from Norton. I have been tearing my hair out trying to make a bootable CD out of the floppy, nothing seems to work (tried WinImage etc).

Anyone done this before? I really need to wipe this thing. Thanks in advance, sorry in advance about no ninjas or dragons, and yeh the laptop probably has no floppy because I touch myself at night.

I think my googling was inadequate and my question making premature.

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/floppy_image_on_cd.htm if you're interested at all.

First Of All You Need A Cd-Burner, Nero Burning Rom v5.5 or higher
A Floppie Drive, A Blank CDR Disk
When You Have Everything:

With Your Floppy In The Drive And Blank CD In The CD-Recorder



Load Up Nero With Your Floppy In The Drive And Blank Cd In The Cd-Recorder
Close The Wizard
Hold Ctrl + N
Until A Box Appears
Scroll Down The List Until You Reach CDROM (Boot)
Click It
Bootable Logical Drive Must Be A":"
Click The Burn TAB
Click New
Click File
Then Write CD
Then Write
Done

last edited by Tiny at 11:34:46 30/Aug/05

Didn't he also give you Dell rescue CD-Roms? If you have one of those, you won't need to search any longer, it'll do everything for you including format & installing correct drivers etc.

Otherwise you'll have to d/l a lot of drivers yourself from Dell.

while I haven't used the latest version of Norton's ghost, the older versions have the capacity to make a bootable image that will span several dvd's

Didn't he also give you Dell rescue CD-Roms? If you have one of those, you won't need to search any longer, it'll do everything for you including format & installing correct drivers etc.

Otherwise you'll have to d/l a lot of drivers yourself from Dell.

Problem isn't setting the laptop up after I format it, its creating an image of its current state in case in 3 weeks time he realises he needs to go back and get something out of some sort of obscure application thats currently installed.

I ended up using MagicISO to create an ISO image of the floppy and then burn it to a CD-ROM. They have some good documentation on it and it worked flawlessly.

Thanks for replies!

Personally i'd tell him your about to format it and wipe the lot...if there is something he needs let him network it and copy all he needs over.

Personally i'd tell him your about to format it and wipe the lot...if there is something he needs let him network it and copy all he needs over.

Did you miss the part where I said he was my boss, that he owned the laptop, or do you not understand what that particular dynamic entails?

I read the part where you said he was your boss,i assumed that he gave you the laptop to keep.....

I have been given a really nice hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop from the boss at work.

If not to keep,why did he give it to you?

Because I'm a software developer, and it is a tool of my trade?

Although, the way you said it sounded like it was a gift or something "hand me down". You didn't mention you were a software developer.

I didn't think it was particularly pertinent to the problem I was describing (being imaging the drive contents). As it was, the post was long enough!

Even if I did own the thing, it would be rather rude and ungrateful to demand my employer get what he wanted form the drive (after having been asked to image it) because I was going to format it. I'm well treated, have a good package and in return am vaguelly respectful ...

I will however be less concise in future to prevent such unfortunate misunderstandings ;)

I wasnt saying for you to "demand" anything from your employer...I assumed he gave you the laptop,and with the problem at hand,suggested you talk to him,let him know your plans,ask if there is anything he can forsee in the future he may need,and to copy what he does.You also never stated he asked you to image the drive,so again I assumed that you were going to image it yourself,format it,then use it for what ever purpose.Ah well...youve learned your lesson now and all is well with the world. =)