Does this look right to boot XP from floppy?

[casey.o]

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/xphome.html

They have boot disks for everything from Dos to XP. It takes 6 disks to
boot XP Home or XP Pro (this above link is for XP Home), but all the
others are on the left.

I looked at the file list for the Win98 boot disk, and the contents
appear right. (I'm a lot more familiar with Win98 files).

Two things sort of "get me" about this.
First, they dont have SP3. Just 1 and 2.

The other thing, they DO have the .ISO files for Dos and Win98. Both
which are not much more than one meg (or less). Hardly worth even
burning a CD, when one floppy is all that's needed. Yet they dont have
an .ISO for XP.

I dont need this right now, but I dont have an XP Pro Cd for my laptop.
(Not even the Repair CD). So, if it ever fails, I will need the XP Pro
boot disks. After I downloaded them, it suddenly hit me...... Laptop
computers dont have floppy drives......

Knowing that, I DO have a USB floppy drive, but will it work without a
functioning OS? But maybe my laptop will boot from a USB flash drive?
(I'll have to check on that). And then there's the option to burn it to
a CD.

So, the thought occurred to jsut put this all on floppies as instructed
on the website, then copy all the files to a Flash Drive, or burn them
to a CD. But I know the system files need to be installed to a bootable
disk. That's where I get lost. In Win98, I can just insert a floppy in
drive A: and from the Win98 command prompt, type SYS A:.
I dont think this works on XP.

What is the best way to create a bootable flash drive or Cd from these
files?

Thanks

 

[Paul]

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/xphome.html

They have boot disks for everything from Dos to XP. It takes 6 disks to
boot XP Home or XP Pro (this above link is for XP Home), but all the
others are on the left.

I looked at the file list for the Win98 boot disk, and the contents
appear right. (I'm a lot more familiar with Win98 files).

Two things sort of "get me" about this.
First, they dont have SP3. Just 1 and 2.

The other thing, they DO have the .ISO files for Dos and Win98. Both
which are not much more than one meg (or less). Hardly worth even
burning a CD, when one floppy is all that's needed. Yet they dont have
an .ISO for XP.

I dont need this right now, but I dont have an XP Pro Cd for my laptop.
(Not even the Repair CD). So, if it ever fails, I will need the XP Pro
boot disks. After I downloaded them, it suddenly hit me...... Laptop
computers dont have floppy drives......

Knowing that, I DO have a USB floppy drive, but will it work without a
functioning OS? But maybe my laptop will boot from a USB flash drive?
(I'll have to check on that). And then there's the option to burn it to
a CD.

So, the thought occurred to jsut put this all on floppies as instructed
on the website, then copy all the files to a Flash Drive, or burn them
to a CD. But I know the system files need to be installed to a bootable
disk. That's where I get lost. In Win98, I can just insert a floppy in
drive A: and from the Win98 command prompt, type SYS A:.
I dont think this works on XP.

What is the best way to create a bootable flash drive or Cd from these
files?

Thanks

The answer, in large part, is don't bother

On Windows 98 (and you do have a Windows 98 machine), you can use "sys A:"
to make a boot floppy. That puts a couple system files on the floppy. You
boot that to get a Command Prompt. But you need to add stuff to that,
which can take half the day. You need things like mscdex and some caching
file, for better performance. My MSDOS floppy diskette, has maybe a dozen
files on it of various sorts. It might take several files, to cover all
possible optical drives.

*******

It's true, that using the WinXP six floppy set, would get you to a
Command Prompt, but to what end ? What are you going to do then ? One intention
of that floppy set, was to do a disk to disk installation of WinXP. But
when that didn't work for me, I just broke up the set of floppies and used
them for other purposes. The six floppy sets were on the Microsoft site,
so you didn't need to get them elsewhere. And indeed, only SP1 and SP2
compatible floppy sets were offered. I tried the SP2 set, then tried to
do something with an SP3 version of i386 folder, and something there
didn't work right.

The ISO version of WinXP, would be in the interest of keeping your sanity.
It's so you only insert one piece of media, and away you go. There are
mechanisms using RAMDisk, for holding even more on the media (a form
of floppy emulation, but on an ISO). Seatools for DOS might be one
example of the techniques used. It unpacks something into a RAMDisk before
running SeaTools from it. I think basically the media is divided into
two pieces somehow, and the second area contains your application code,
and it can be unpacked into a RAMDisk.

This page, has a recipe for editing your own ISO9660 to make a boot CD.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080327085911/http://www.infocellar.com/CD/Boot-CD.htm

There is a package written by a Russian guy, that extends the size of the
boot file set up to around 10MB maybe, and I found some evidence of that
in the Seatools ISO9660. The InfoCellar one uses limited floppy
emulation, but the idea is, it's relatively easy to build your
emulation with it. The main disadvantage of a CD, is not being able
to add files. But once you've got what you want in terms of a file set,
it might be a good concept. So maybe I could take my mature floppy
file set, and convert them to a CD.

The Infocellar server appears to have been implemented on two servers.
Some pages I can still find running live, and others are only
in the archive.

http://www.infocellar.com/winxp/oem-recover-retail.htm

And this one was only in the archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100104080018/http://infocellar.com/winxp/validation.htm

It appears stuff that would ruffle Microsoft's feathers, are now
offline.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

The answer, in large part, is don't bother

On Windows 98 (and you do have a Windows 98 machine), you can use "sys A:"
to make a boot floppy. That puts a couple system files on the floppy. You
boot that to get a Command Prompt. But you need to add stuff to that,
which can take half the day. You need things like mscdex and some caching
file, for better performance. My MSDOS floppy diskette, has maybe a dozen
files on it of various sorts. It might take several files, to cover all
possible optical drives.

*******

It's true, that using the WinXP six floppy set, would get you to a
Command Prompt, but to what end ? What are you going to do then ? One intention
of that floppy set, was to do a disk to disk installation of WinXP. But
when that didn't work for me, I just broke up the set of floppies and used
them for other purposes. The six floppy sets were on the Microsoft site,
so you didn't need to get them elsewhere. And indeed, only SP1 and SP2
compatible floppy sets were offered. I tried the SP2 set, then tried to
do something with an SP3 version of i386 folder, and something there
didn't work right.

The ISO version of WinXP, would be in the interest of keeping your sanity.
It's so you only insert one piece of media, and away you go. There are
mechanisms using RAMDisk, for holding even more on the media (a form
of floppy emulation, but on an ISO). Seatools for DOS might be one
example of the techniques used. It unpacks something into a RAMDisk before
running SeaTools from it. I think basically the media is divided into
two pieces somehow, and the second area contains your application code,
and it can be unpacked into a RAMDisk.

This page, has a recipe for editing your own ISO9660 to make a boot CD.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080327085911/http://www.infocellar.com/CD/Boot-CD.htm

There is a package written by a Russian guy, that extends the size of the
boot file set up to around 10MB maybe, and I found some evidence of that
in the Seatools ISO9660. The InfoCellar one uses limited floppy
emulation, but the idea is, it's relatively easy to build your
emulation with it. The main disadvantage of a CD, is not being able
to add files. But once you've got what you want in terms of a file set,
it might be a good concept. So maybe I could take my mature floppy
file set, and convert them to a CD.

The Infocellar server appears to have been implemented on two servers.
Some pages I can still find running live, and others are only
in the archive.

http://www.infocellar.com/winxp/oem-recover-retail.htm

And this one was only in the archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100104080018/http://infocellar.com/winxp/validation.htm

It appears stuff that would ruffle Microsoft's feathers, are now
offline.

Paul

The object to boot this way, either from a floppy, or flash drive, or
CD, would be to restore my backup from an external USB HDD.

I suppose I could also boot from a Linux CD too, but since linux tends
to stump me quite often, I thought booting to XP from outside the system
HDD would be easier. I know I cant be USING the XP on the harddrive to
copy it's files back, and if it dont boot anyhow, that would not work.

 

[Good Guy]

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/xphome.html

They have boot disks for everything from Dos to XP. It takes 6 disks to
boot XP Home or XP Pro (this above link is for XP Home), but all the
others are on the left.

I looked at the file list for the Win98 boot disk, and the contents
appear right. (I'm a lot more familiar with Win98 files).

Two things sort of "get me" about this.
First, they dont have SP3. Just 1 and 2.

The other thing, they DO have the .ISO files for Dos and Win98. Both
which are not much more than one meg (or less). Hardly worth even
burning a CD, when one floppy is all that's needed. Yet they dont have
an .ISO for XP.

I dont need this right now, but I dont have an XP Pro Cd for my laptop.
(Not even the Repair CD). So, if it ever fails, I will need the XP Pro
boot disks. After I downloaded them, it suddenly hit me...... Laptop
computers dont have floppy drives......

Knowing that, I DO have a USB floppy drive, but will it work without a
functioning OS? But maybe my laptop will boot from a USB flash drive?
(I'll have to check on that). And then there's the option to burn it to
a CD.

So, the thought occurred to jsut put this all on floppies as instructed
on the website, then copy all the files to a Flash Drive, or burn them
to a CD. But I know the system files need to be installed to a bootable
disk. That's where I get lost. In Win98, I can just insert a floppy in
drive A: and from the Win98 command prompt, type SYS A:.
I dont think this works on XP.

What is the best way to create a bootable flash drive or Cd from these
files?

Thanks

These six floppy disks were originally released by Microsoft for people
who didn't have CD-Rom Drive. We ar4e talking of year 2001 when CD
drives weren't common and to get one you had to pay about £80 to DELL to
fix it for you. I know I paid £80 extra to DELL to get a CD drive (NOT
a CD WRITER even). In those days DELL website alloed you to configure
your own system and you paid for what you want in your system. I don't
know why they abandoned this because it was a very good way to get a
custom made system.

So I would say they are genuine but the user needs to scan them just in
case something else is added in them.

 

[Paul]

The object to boot this way, either from a floppy, or flash drive, or
CD, would be to restore my backup from an external USB HDD.

I suppose I could also boot from a Linux CD too, but since linux tends
to stump me quite often, I thought booting to XP from outside the system
HDD would be easier. I know I cant be USING the XP on the harddrive to
copy it's files back, and if it dont boot anyhow, that would not work.

This is why Macrium Reflect, Acronis, and other backup programs,
have their own boot CD.

I use the Macrium Reflect Free and you can even make the
backups while booted into the WinPE CD. You can do both backups
and restores from there. (Macrium will make the CD for you.)

Each product is picky in certain ways. Using a SATA hard drive
for the backup drive, always works well. Using a USB drive,
the software may decide it doesn't want to use it. And using
network shares, can really be a problem. In many of these
cases, the restrictions make no sense at all. For example,
what is so abnormal about a USB key ? I have a 128GB one,
which is plenty large for the backups I was trying to do.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

This is why Macrium Reflect, Acronis, and other backup programs,
have their own boot CD.

I use the Macrium Reflect Free and you can even make the
backups while booted into the WinPE CD. You can do both backups
and restores from there. (Macrium will make the CD for you.)

Each product is picky in certain ways. Using a SATA hard drive
for the backup drive, always works well. Using a USB drive,
the software may decide it doesn't want to use it. And using
network shares, can really be a problem. In many of these
cases, the restrictions make no sense at all. For example,
what is so abnormal about a USB key ? I have a 128GB one,
which is plenty large for the backups I was trying to do.

Paul

This sounds like a big hassle if it is picky about USB drives and so
on.... The boot Cd is a good idea, I guess, but first one needs a CD
burner (which I dont have). I'd probably buy one. I see them on ebay
for $20 for used ones. But burning Cds seems like a huge hassle. I'd
rather pay someone else to do the burning for me. I know the local
pharmacy will burn a photo CD for $5.99. The way I figure it, by the
time I buy the blank CDs, waste half the box (or more) on bad burns, and
cope with all the frustration, I'd rather let someone else do it.

On top of that, I have never trusted "home burned" CDs. The commercial
ones have the data etched right into the foil, but those dye based ones
you use at home dont seem to last too long. I heard that just letting
them sit in the sun can destroy them. I would not trust any important
data to them. I dont know what's worse, those home burned CDs or
floppies. I have a lot of old floppies from the 90's and they were
supposed to be my backups of software and some personal stuff. Seems
many of them are failing, just from sitting in a well protected cabinet.

So, with that in mind, I would probably only burn 3 or 4 CDs per year,
and those would be just to make install CDs for linux booters, or make a
disk to share photos with a friend. But with the exception of the
booters, I find Flash drives much handier and far more durable. For
backups, any good HDD is the best choice.

 

[Paul]

This sounds like a big hassle if it is picky about USB drives and so
on.... The boot Cd is a good idea, I guess, but first one needs a CD
burner (which I dont have). I'd probably buy one. I see them on ebay
for $20 for used ones. But burning Cds seems like a huge hassle. I'd
rather pay someone else to do the burning for me. I know the local
pharmacy will burn a photo CD for $5.99. The way I figure it, by the
time I buy the blank CDs, waste half the box (or more) on bad burns, and
cope with all the frustration, I'd rather let someone else do it.

On top of that, I have never trusted "home burned" CDs. The commercial
ones have the data etched right into the foil, but those dye based ones
you use at home dont seem to last too long. I heard that just letting
them sit in the sun can destroy them. I would not trust any important
data to them. I dont know what's worse, those home burned CDs or
floppies. I have a lot of old floppies from the 90's and they were
supposed to be my backups of software and some personal stuff. Seems
many of them are failing, just from sitting in a well protected cabinet.

So, with that in mind, I would probably only burn 3 or 4 CDs per year,
and those would be just to make install CDs for linux booters, or make a
disk to share photos with a friend. But with the exception of the
booters, I find Flash drives much handier and far more durable. For
backups, any good HDD is the best choice.

*Brand New* DVD burners are $20.

Only problem with brand new, is they're mostly all SATA.
You probably want an IDE one. You're several years too late
for a good selection of IDE ones.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136270

Then, buy a pack of these. DVD+RW 15 discs for $14.
They're erasable so you can reuse them. This happens
to be what I got at the local computer store a couple
weeks ago. Mine were maybe $12 and change, then some
tax on top of it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AT1JC9984

My IDE burner is currently housed in a 5.25" IDE enclosure,
complete with its own wall adapter. The USB2 cable on it,
has sufficient bandwidth for anything I can possibly do on
it. Like most all drives now, it has "BurnProof", which prevents
underruns. In the old days, we were very careful not to underrun
during a burn. Now, the drive has a solution for this, and
the "Proof" can go by a number of different names (likely, for
patent reasons).

With your eclectic collection of computers, I don't know
if you have a SATA port to use, but it would really
help a lot in this case. Help keep your costs down.
My IDE enclosure wasn't cheap. Finding an IDE to SATA
dongle might not be cheap either.

You don't need an expensive DVD burner program. You
can use Imgburn 2.5.0.0 from the oldversions site.
That's the last version without toolbars. If after
installation, it prompts you to "upgrade", that would
be another opportunity to offer you some nice toolbars.

http://www.oldversion.com/windows/imgburn/

ImgBurn 2.5.0.0 Jul 26, 2009 2.07 MB

CRC32: 39CD6FC6
MD5: F3791CFACDAC03B9E676E44AA2630243
SHA-1: E07BCC23B495D0A966BAE359EA9E0E3A11888454

I offer checksums, so you can check for alterations in the package.
The checksum information comes from the original Imgburn site.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

*Brand New* DVD burners are $20.

They sure have come down in price. I think I paid around $75 for a CD
player (ONLY) some years back.

Only problem with brand new, is they're mostly all SATA.
You probably want an IDE one. You're several years too late
for a good selection of IDE ones.

I'm sure there are some IDE ones on ebay. This is one thing I'd prefer
to buy new, because CD players seem to have a short life span anyhow, so
I assume it's the same with DVD ones.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136270

Then, buy a pack of these. DVD+RW 15 discs for $14.
They're erasable so you can reuse them. This happens
to be what I got at the local computer store a couple
weeks ago. Mine were maybe $12 and change, then some
tax on top of it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AT1JC9984

My IDE burner is currently housed in a 5.25" IDE enclosure,
complete with its own wall adapter. The USB2 cable on it,
has sufficient bandwidth for anything I can possibly do on
it. Like most all drives now, it has "BurnProof", which prevents
underruns. In the old days, we were very careful not to underrun
during a burn. Now, the drive has a solution for this, and
the "Proof" can go by a number of different names (likely, for
patent reasons).

I guess that would work too..... I have a floppy drive in an external
case tht plugs into USB, and that is pretty handy. Since I have several
computers, this might be the way to go. I have not had a CD (anything,
drive) on my Win98 computer for years. The few times I've needed a CD,
I just copied the contents of the CD using my laptop, to a flash drive
and use that.....

With your eclectic collection of computers, I don't know
if you have a SATA port to use, but it would really
help a lot in this case. Help keep your costs down.
My IDE enclosure wasn't cheap. Finding an IDE to SATA
dongle might not be cheap either.

You don't need an expensive DVD burner program. You
can use Imgburn 2.5.0.0 from the oldversions site.
That's the last version without toolbars. If after
installation, it prompts you to "upgrade", that would
be another opportunity to offer you some nice toolbars.

http://www.oldversion.com/windows/imgburn/

No toolbars, I hate those fu**ing things....

ImgBurn 2.5.0.0 Jul 26, 2009 2.07 MB

CRC32: 39CD6FC6
MD5: F3791CFACDAC03B9E676E44AA2630243
SHA-1: E07BCC23B495D0A966BAE359EA9E0E3A11888454

I have never known what to do with checksums ????????????
How do you use them?

I offer checksums, so you can check for alterations in the package.
The checksum information comes from the original Imgburn site.

Paul

BTW: I already like oldversion.com. I've been using oldapps.com and
like that one too, but it dont have everything..... Most of my software
is older anyhow. I dont want all the latest bloatware.

 

[Paul]

They sure have come down in price. I think I paid around $75 for a CD
player (ONLY) some years back.

I'm sure there are some IDE ones on ebay. This is one thing I'd prefer
to buy new, because CD players seem to have a short life span anyhow, so
I assume it's the same with DVD ones.

I guess that would work too..... I have a floppy drive in an external
case tht plugs into USB, and that is pretty handy. Since I have several
computers, this might be the way to go. I have not had a CD (anything,
drive) on my Win98 computer for years. The few times I've needed a CD,
I just copied the contents of the CD using my laptop, to a flash drive
and use that.....

No toolbars, I hate those fu**ing things....


I have never known what to do with checksums ????????????
How do you use them?


BTW: I already like oldversion.com. I've been using oldapps.com and
like that one too, but it dont have everything..... Most of my software
is older anyhow. I dont want all the latest bloatware.

When the author of a program releases the program for download,
they post the checksum, like the SHA1 one.

When you download the file from oldversion, you can use a checksum
tool, to duplicate the original calculatiion. If you get the same
number, then you know, with a high degree of certainty, it's the original
file.

Let's take a four byte file, and do a simple summation.

01 + 02 + 03 + 04 = ten

If I move the bytes around though, the sum is still ten.
The method has poor properties, and collisions are numerous.

04 + 03 + 02 + 01 = ten

The beauty of the methods we do use, is they are
similar to polynomial division. Move one byte or change
a byte, and the computed number becomes entirely different.

The FCIV program can compute a checksum for verification.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11533

fciv -sha1 somefile.bin

and that will give the SHA1 number, like the
E07BCC23B495D0A966BAE359EA9E0E3A11888454 string
above.

This is how, when the MSDN Windows 7 or Windows 8 DVDs
are released, and some of them make their way to BitTorrent,
we can be reasonably sure they haven't been changed. By using
SHA1 summation on the 3.5GB file, we can see whether it has
a different value or not. TO detect tampering.

Wikipedia has articles on the various methods. MD5 has been
cracked, and is no longer trustworthy for judging software
distributions. SHA1 is still holding - it's possible someone
with enough computing power (all the computers in the world),
could compute the same output number, for a different set of
bytes, but relatively unlikely to happen today. But it is
considered the next one that will eventual fall to math or brute
force attacks. The MD5 one, it only takes a minute to crack
that one, so it cannot detect alterations worth a damn any more.

If a download site has numbers of that type, posted next to
a download, I sometimes copy them into a posting for people to use.
That's for situations where the person plans on downloading it
from elsewhere (CNET), and if they use the checksum method, there's
a small chance they'd notice a different checksum, and toolbars
are suspected.

It doesn't detect a toolbar as such. But if a download exists on
multiple sites, and some sites added toolbars to their copies, the
checksum can be an early warning. All it takes, is for the author
of the program to release the numbers as soon as possible.

Paul