On Mon, 26 May 2008 14:33:29 +0200, gareth magennis
wrote:


"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
. ..
Last time I downloaded floppy boot disks from the Interweb,
most of them (95 and 98) wouldn't work, don't know why.

The CD ROM -- such as the one for W2K -- should have a utility that
creates
the required floppies.




Just had a look on my Win98SE disk and can't find the utility amongst the
zillions of files. I know there is one that launches during setup, but
can
you launch it just off the CD?


With win98 and earlier, yes. Use the boot floppy to load cdrom drivers
and format the hard disk (if necessary), then just enter "D:\setup"

Assuming that the cdrom is mounted as D:, of course.

Many computers from that era were supposed to be bootable from CD, but
weren't. Presumably this came down to limitations in the BIOS's cdrom
drivers. Seldom a problem in newer equipment.

As to boot images not working, the chances are very high that the disk,
or drive, or both are faulty. I always found floppy disks to be a very
delicate medium, with frequent failures of both disk and drive.