Anyway to get a Win98 Zip Bootdisk from Win2000?

[Sheila]

Hi,

I'm trying to put together a windows 98 iomega zip bootdisk.

I'm running windows 2000, and have 98 boot floppies, but I can't seem to
make a 98 zip disk.

Disk boot makers all seem to only allow looking at the a: and b: drives,
and I can't write a floppy image to a zip disk (using WinImage).

The Iomega tools omit the bootdisk checkbox in their Win2k formatting
software.

Do I have to reinstall windows 98 just to make a zip bootdisk?

Thanks All,

-Sheila

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,
I'm trying to put together a windows 98 iomega zip bootdisk.
I'm running windows 2000, and have 98 boot floppies, but I can't seem to
make a 98 zip disk.
Disk boot makers all seem to only allow looking at the a: and b: drives,
and I can't write a floppy image to a zip disk (using WinImage).
The Iomega tools omit the bootdisk checkbox in their Win2k formatting
software.
Do I have to reinstall windows 98 just to make a zip bootdisk?
Thanks All,

Maybe try using a boot-manager? LILO boots windows 98 fine from
a zip, but you need a working Linux to install it. Surely there are
other boot-managers that can be installed from Windows. Anybody?

Arno

 

[Johnnie Leung]

I'm trying to put together a windows 98 iomega zip bootdisk.

You had better first make sure your system allows booting from a Zip drive.
This really depends on the interface of the drive, and whether the BIOS
supports booting from that interface.

Disk boot makers all seem to only allow looking at the a: and b: drives,
and I can't write a floppy image to a zip disk (using WinImage).

You can't do it that way anyway. A Zip drive is not a floppy drive,
although it looks and feels like one physically. All BIOSes that I have
seen treat it as a hard drive when booting off it, so you need a primary
partition on the disk (which is the default anyway).

Do I have to reinstall windows 98 just to make a zip bootdisk?

Probably not, but you do need to be able to drop to DOS (ie Windows 9x sans
GUI, by using a boot diskette, for example), and if the Zip drive is still
accessible, make the disk bootable by using sys or format. If the drive is
not accessible in plain DOS, you most likely can't boot from it anyway.

I have a SCSI Zip drive and have successfully booted from it (just to try,
not that it's something useful to me). ATAPI and IDE Zip drives are most
probably also bootable, provided the BIOS has support. USB and Firewire are
iffy, although some recent BIOSes might have USB boot support. If it's a
parallel port Zip, I would say don't even waste your time.

JL

 

[Eric Gisin]

If you BIOS has Zip support, enable it. You should see B from the DOS 7 boot
floppy.

Then either "format /q B:" or "sys B:", followed by "xcopy a: b:".

Maybe try using a boot-manager? LILO boots windows 98 fine from
a zip, but you need a working Linux to install it. Surely there are
other boot-managers that can be installed from Windows. Anybody?

Clueless as always, Arnie. He wants to boot DOS.

 

[Sheila]

My MB has zip100 listed in the boot order, but I'm running a zip 250
(ATAPI) drive.

I got the board to boot off of it once, but haven't been able to repeat
it (right as the BIOS was about to load the OS, some BIOS menu popped up
asking about boot order on this one occasion, and I haven't been able to
get that menu back since).

The system sees the zip as a hard drive, so you'd think it'd just boot
off of it like any other hard drive.

For some reason, the win98 floppy can't see the zip, even though it's
FAT partitioned and shows up as a hard drive in BIOS.

-Sheila