Hi "LurksWithin",
Good question!
The computer that I'm trying to recover is a 2001 "vintage" Sony Vaio which has an external discette and CD device. I've tried booting the machine with both plugged-in and it does check for each before trying to load Windows 2000.
I had assumed that discettes were needed because:
1. Searching Microsoft Support pages suggested that Win2K would only boot from discette and not CD.
2. The boot disk-creation program from SysChat specifically asked for doskettes. (By the way the Windows 200 boot dosk program on the Microsoft website has the same name as that from SysChat and has the same rror situation).
3. I've no information on where the Vaio will look for an alternative boot device so assumed it woud only be a diskette because of its "vintage".

So - is there a way of using a Boot-CD that you know of?
Thanks for your interest in this "challenge".
Best wishes, Bruce