"Please insert your Windows disc"

[Roof Fiddler]

On versions of Windows prior to Vista, going back at least to Win95, Windows
had drivers, fonts, etc on the installation disc which it didn't copy to the
hard drive by default. The result was that when adding new hardware or
changing the system configuration, sometimes it would tell you e.g. "Please
insert the disc labeled Win95," so it could copy some data.
I haven't ever had this happen with Vista. Is this because Vista by default
copies all of the drivers and fonts from the installation disc to the hard
drive at install time, or because Microsoft makes all this data available
online so Vista can download it when necessary?

 

[Dustin Harper]

Vista has everything it needs when it is installed. All the fonts, device
drivers, etc. are there. If it needs one that it doesn't have, it needs the
driver disk from the manufacturer or get's it online.

It was annoying everytime you changed a network setting in Windows 98, you
needed the disk to reinstall the TCP/IP stack.

 

[Conor]

On versions of Windows prior to Vista, going back at least to Win95, Windows
had drivers, fonts, etc on the installation disc which it didn't copy to the
hard drive by default. The result was that when adding new hardware or
changing the system configuration, sometimes it would tell you e.g. "Please
insert the disc labeled Win95," so it could copy some data.
I haven't ever had this happen with Vista. Is this because Vista by default
copies all of the drivers and fonts from the installation disc to the hard
drive at install time, or because Microsoft makes all this data available
online so Vista can download it when necessary?

It copies all the installation files to the HDD the same way as people
did manually when they installed Win9x so they didn't need the
installation CD.