emergency back up floppy

[Art B.]

I have a new Dell computer with XP. As I did with the old
win98 do I need to create an emergency back up floppy? If
so, how does one do this?
Thank You.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have a new Dell computer with XP. As I did with the old
win98 do I need to create an emergency back up floppy? If
so, how does one do this?
Thank You.

Your new computer probably has a larger hard disk (40 gig+) that's formatted
NTFS, so the old-style boot disks will not do much at all. W9x or ME boot
disks won't recognise the NTFS format, so with such disks you will not get
access to the system.

Instead, the XP CD is bootable and will allow you to read the NTFS disk.

The one time that the old-style disks are good - assuming they have CD
drivers - is if you cannot boot from the CD. You can then boot from
floppy, change to the CD, and run 'winnt' in the \i386 folder. That is the
*real* XP setup program, and will allow you to get into the recovery console
should you need to.

HTH
-pk

 

[ART B.]

Can I make one of those floppys for the new computer? I
gave away all my old ones with the old computer.