How to Create a Windows 2000 Setup Boot Disk?

Created 2001-04-09 by Rainer Gerhards.

In Windows NT, boot disks were created via the winnt/winnt32 commands via the /ox command line switch. That switch, however, does not work under Windows 2000. Microsoft moved setup boot disk creation to a separate commend. You need to have access to the Windows 2000 CD in order to use it. Do the following to create the disks:

• Insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive.
• Click Start, and then click Run.
• In the Open box, type drive:\bootdisk\makeboot a:, where drive is the letter of your CD-ROM drive, and then press ENTER.

NOTE: You do not have to be running Windows 2000 to create the Setup Boot disks. A directory called \Bootdisk resides in the root of the Windows 2000 Setup CD. This directory contains two utilities capable of generating the 4 Setup Boot floppies. If you are booted into Windows 9x you will need to run the 32-bit version of this utility called makebt32.exe. If you are in DOS, or booted with a Windows 98 Startup Floppy that has access to the CDROM, you can use the 16-bit version called makeboot.exe.