total n00b question...but please help

[phatarse]

I used Nero 6 to burn the iso image to CD.  It completed successfully, but when I view the disc in Windows Explorer there is nothing on the disc.  When I set my PC to boot to the CD drive first it just cruises on by.

Do you have to set some options in Nero to burn the disc correctly?  I've burned many ISO files before with no problems.

[judb]

there is nothing on the disc.. its just the boot image which is hidden from the filesystem...

You may not have bootable cdrom support enabled in the correct order in your bios.. so it is bypassing bootable cds..

[FiftyPence]

So in other words, just go Start>Run>D:\ or whatever your CD drive is and it should run.

I think im right here  :-/

[judb]

no, you are incorrect.  There are NO FILES on the CD image itself.  It is all stored in a special hidden section for booting only.  You'll never be able to see those files in windows.

You have to enable Bootable CD support in your Bios, or use the boot floppy with boot floppy support enabled (usually is on most motherboards) in the Bios.

The floppy disk method you'll see files but not on the CD.

[Slack]

FWIW, I burned the ISO with NERO. And it booted fine.

Check your BIOS.

[phatarse]

Thanks for all the help.  I finally figured out that the disc won't work on a dual boot system.  At least one that uses Partition Magic's boot manager.  I of course changed the bios to first boot from the CD drive and this will work with most things (XP install disc for example).  The PhatHack disc would just cruise right on by and load Windows normally.  I tried it on my wife's machine and it works fine.  I was just a little spooked when I checked the disc and saw no files AND it didn't boot.

All is well now and I shall give it a go.  Thanks again.