boot discs?

botheredbothered Manchester UK
edited January 2004 in Science & Tech
A workmate needs a boot up floppy. I went to the downloads and got 98se and ME, formatted two new floppys and copied the files. Then I boot the PC, when it reads the discs it tells me to remove any discs or other media and press any key to continue. It then boots as normal after I take the floppy out. Where is the 'start with\without CDROM support'? The floppys do exactly the same in another PC. Why don't they work?

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Is this for an XP box????

    If so, can give you a bootup disk set archive link pair for home and for pro sets, from Microsoft, but they are 6 floppies big just for bootup. 2000 uses 4-5 disks, depending on what is needed(scripted reload(5) or just recovery bootup(4) from floppy).

    98 and ME disks cannot recognize NTFS, and AFAIK since this is so you might be not wanting them for fixing a 2000 or XP install. Also, to get the boot disks to work, the BIOS needs to be told to floppy boot first, not HD boot first. Default is typically HD before floppy on almost all BIOSs.

    John.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Go to www.bootdisk.com. They've got standard Win9x boot disks for free download.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Or make a Windows startup disk from any other machine with same Windows on it. Note that a Windows 98 SE startup disk can access ME and Back HDs. Not all boot disks have the CD-ROM driver autoinstall, and not all have the RAMdisk installer(which is usually accessible as drive D,while the CD-ROM will usually be E after using a Windows startup floppy) and archive that the startup disks do. You want the Microsoft boot disk image for best and most familiar results, and the Ultimate Boot Disk can be helpful also, for non-NTFS based windows boxes.

    John.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited January 2004
    What my workmate wants it for is to format a new HDD. He wants a floppy that gives the two options, start with, or, start without CDROM support. I've always done that with a 98 or ME boot disc. I have put both onto seperate floppys and to check them started my PC, 1st boot floppy, to make sure they are ok. That's when I get the message in my first post. Neither floppy will load in my or another PC. Why?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited January 2004
    bothered wrote:
    ...when it reads the discs it tells me to remove any discs or other media and press any key to continue...
    That means that the computer is not seeing your disks as valid boot disks. You'll get the same error message if you put a blank floppy in the drive.

    You'll have to figure out what went wrong in the creation of your boot floppies.

    On a related note, I found this nifty little utility for NTFS. Copy it to a DOS boot disk and it will allow you to browse NTFS volumes just like FAT32 drives.

    You can download it here.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited January 2004
    Bothered mate, this is my bad:(. In the original rush to get the downloads section up and running (when the main page was re-done a few months ago), I neglected to properly test those two boot disk zips. I tried them out and they didn't work for me either. I have now replaced the two zips in the downloads section with working ones.

    My apologies for the inconvenience.

    p.s (As even more proof of my complete ineptness, I noticed one of the original boot disk zip files from the downloads section actually contained a bios file for an ABIT KR7A motherboard. I think that serves to illustrate that when I made those disks I wasn't sure what the hell I was doing he he. ;) )
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited January 2004
    No problem Spinner. You're doing a grand job. It's always nice to fix something.
    I'll download them again.
    Cheers all.
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