Well, this has been a fascinating thread. I should really try catching up on my
mail more often.

There are several reasons to have a Win95 3.5" floppy boot (startup) disk.

1. To start your computer to some degree of usability if your hard drive is
okay but Win95 won't load. (Maybe Windows crashed and ate the registry, or ate
the entire Windows directory, or some other icky thing that I could go into
detail on and won't at this point.)  In any of these cases, the main purpose of
the disk is to put you in a position to use your CD-ROM drive (or floppy drive)
to reload Windows itself.

2.  To start your computer to some degree of usability if your hard drive has
died and you need to replace it and install Win95 from scratch.

3.  To start your computer to some degree of usability if your computer won't
boot for some other reason. The files on the floppy drive, can, for instance,
be used to replace the essential three boot (system) files on the hard drive if
they become corrupted.  These files can become corrupted without affecting any
other data on the system, including Windows itself, so it is rather handy to be
able to pop a properly prepared boot disk in, replace these system files, and
be back up and running.

4.  To have a known "clean" boot disk if you have a Master Boot Record virus.
 These viruses normally cannot be cleaned from the boot sector of the disk they
are booting from.  So, if you have an MBR virus on your C drive, it normally
cannot be cleaned unless you boot from some *other* drive, like your A drive,
and then use your virus software to remove the virus.

What a Win95 3.5" boot disk is NOT designed for is to get you back into your
real, full, graphical, Windows 95. It can't possibly, not by itself.  Windows
95 has to have working copies of its registry, and of all the files the
registry references, in order to work as it is designed to.  The files
referenced by the registry generally live in the Windows directory and in the
windows\system directory, and a few lesser places.

The files that make the real graphical Win95 work take up so much space that
either you have to be reading them from the C drive or you have to be reading
them from some other large medium, like a Zip disk or an LS-120 disk or a
recorded CD-ROM.

If Windows 95 will start up by reading its registry and system files from the C
drive, then you don't need a 3.5" boot disk.  If the hard drive isn't booting,
but Windows 95 is intact, you need to deal with the hard drive problem ASAP,
not start up the full Windows 95 and take the chance of destroying everything.

So, the bottom line is that 3.5" Win95 boot disks are not supposed to be able
to put you into your graphical normal Win95 setup. (Unless you design it to
allow you to access a Zip disk or LS-120 disk or CD-ROM with all those files I
mentioned before.) Booting from the floppy and typing "win" isn't supposed to
work that way. These disks are supposed to boot and put you at an A prompt.
 And if you make a floppy boot disk with all the alterations I've seen
suggested that *will* allow you to boot into the normal Win95 environment, the
purpose of the diskette as an emergency "fix-it" boot disk is totally defeated.

Roxanne Pierce
R2 Systems, San Diego
mailto:[log in to unmask]

On Friday, March 06, 1998 16:42, Kelly Younger [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] wrote:
> Jim Meagher wrote:
>
> > Kelly,
> >
> > You may be able to just type in C:\WINDOWS\WIN and press the ENTER key.
> > Try that and see if it loads.
>
> Greetings All,
> Tried this command (no other suggestions worked AT ALL, but many thanks
> anyway!) and got a message "HIMEM.SYS is missing. Make sure this file is
> in your Windows folder." Well, I checked my Windows folder and sure
> enough there it is. I've edited config.sys and autoexec.bat files on my
> C drive and on the floppy with my CD-ROM drivers 'til I'm blue in the
> face. I would love to solve this problem for the heck of it, but my
> system is stable and performing well so I won't trouble this list
> needlessly. To paraphrase what Jethro Clampitt *should* have said, "Hey
> Paw...this thread won't sew!" (Use your favorite search engine and look
> up "Beverly Hillbillies" if you are not familiar with this).
> I would like to thank all who responded to my original "DOS Command"
> post on Wed. 4 March. Have a great weekend folks!
>
> Cheers,
> Kelly