On 6 May 99, at 14:18, Dreamer's Den wrote:

> I am going to be installing Win 95 on a newly purchased 8-gig
> hard drive.   I could have the store do the install. However my
> goal is to go thru the full installation so I know how
> everything is configured.
>
> As I look in the book I read that a boot disk is required to
> iniatiate the install. I never received a boot disk when I
> originally purchased my computer. (Win 95 b was already
> installed.) All I received was the cd. How do I create this
> disk or is this something I will need to purchase? I have made
> a recovery disk for the old hard drive. However I get the
> impression this is not what is really required.

  You need to do this while you can still boot from your old drive....

  First, insert a blank floppy, and format it with copies of the system boot
files.  Old-timers will go to a DOS prompt and type "FORMAT A: /S", but all
of the necessary options are present if you go to Explorer, right-click on
the floppy drive, and select "Format" from the menu.  [Note that you cannot
actually be displaying the drive contents at the time, which is counter-
intuitive.  If you're using the two-pane Explorer view, make sure the right
pane is showing some folder from the hard drive.]

  Now you've got a disk that will boot to a "DOS 7" command line.  In order
to install from the CD, though, you need access to the CD-ROM drive.  To do
*that*, you'll need a DOS driver for the CD-ROM drive.  (I believe there's a
generic one you can dowload from the nospin.com web site that will work with
most ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drives.)  You need to copy the driver .SYS file to the
floppy, and create a CONFIG.SYS file that loads it.
  You'll also need to copy MSCDEX.EXE from your hard drive to the floppy, and
create an AUTOEXEC.BAT file that loads it.  Both the driver and MSCDEX.EXE
will take a "/D:xxxxxxx" parameter; whatever you use for xxxxxxx must be the
same, so they can find each other.  [If the generic driver doesn't work for
you, you'll need to find one for your specific drive.  It's likely to also
use /D:xxxxxxx, but older drivers may dictate the value of xxxxxxx to be
used, and some drivers may require additional parameters.]

  Make sure that you can boot from this disk, and have access to the CD-ROM
drive, before disconnecting the old hard drive....

  Okay, swap the drives, boot from the floppy, and run SETUP.EXE from the CD.


David G

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