installing OS's with a floppy disk question

[thesecession]

If at all possible, how would you install windows (any version) with a floppy disk? My cd-rom is currently broken and i need to install windows or any OS for that matter. i only need to browse the web and play xbox connect with it. I would appreciate some links to websites that offer OS's that you can install with floppy disks and tutorials if it is a hard thing to do.

[coolfuse]

in the old days, most win installer comes on diskettes. i miss that lol. but they are not compressed as cabs. just the *.??_ compression. i wonder if xp can be contained on that many disks?

[Relyt]

these....

well a 1.4mb floppy probably won't hold the windows os. In the old days you could copy the os to several floppies with dosshell. But not anymore. It's most likely a cd install. You do have some options. Use a live linux version, but that may not work on xbox connect, but you might be able to go online with it as long as you don't have a winmodem.

Go to a computer store and see if they have an old cd player if money is the issue. Hey if you have friend, they may let you bum their cd player, after all they are easy to install. You could put your hdd in someone else puter as a slave and install, but when you return to yours it may ask for the cd to acquire a few more files to accomodate your computer. Anyway....

[Uncle Phucre]

I had a similar situation with a Dell laptop that had the bios passworded (I did not have the password) when I had to reinstall Windows 98 . I'm not sure if Windows XP would work in the same situation, but you could try. Note: this assumes you know your way around a DOS command line.

Find a friend that has a Win98 box with a CDROM drive and an extra IDE for your HD and copy the entire CD to a folder on your drive (you may want to format your drive first, just for good measure). Call the folder anything you want, but for the purpose of this HOWTO, let's call it Win98. While you are there, make yourself an emergency boot disk (floppy, of course).

Remove the HD and reinstall in your box. Boot your box using the EBD you made on your friend's box. At the DOS prompt, change to C:\Win98 and run setup.exe and it should install the same as it would from CD. Win98 may give you one or two dialogs stating it can't find some files. Not to worry, just point it to C:\Win98 and all should proceed normally.

If you have the HD space to spare, I would highly recommend leaving the Win98 folder on your drive, or at the very least, all the *.cab files. If you don't, you may find yourself in a bind when installing anything that requires the Win98 CD.

Hope this helps.

[Tedob1]

hell dude you could do it. get on some ones computer that has a cd and zip the entire contents to floppies using the "span disk" option with a compression util that supports long file names in dos. it wouldn't take no more than 400 floppies.

but i think it would be cheaper to go to a computer fair. you can pick up a used one for three-five bucks. keep your eyes open on garbage night. somebodys always throwing away perfectly good but "out dated" machines. plug into a hub with someone and do a network or direct cable connect install/transfer (interlnk/intersvr ). or you could sit there while 400 floppies slowly tick away plus the three required for dos.


you could download freedos and use arachne to browse the web. a very cool browser but i dont know about Xbox

[mark_boyle2002]

I have a Full set of windows 95 disks. make me an offer.

[SDK]

Dual-Post!!!

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=256226

[CXGJarrod]

Originally posted here by mark_boyle2002
I have a Full set of windows 95 disks. make me an offer.

I used to have a full set as well for a Toshiba Laptop work used to own... Something like 32 disks of compressed data...

Enter Disk 1, Enter Disk 3, Enter Disk 2, Enter Disk 5, Enter Disk 9, Enter Disk 17, Enter Disk 29, Enter Disk 14, and so on... took so long to install windows....

[nihil]

Mark,

I too have a complete set of Win95 floppies.............and still sealed in their original brown paper packets (why does Windows come in "plain brown envelopes" )

The answer to the gentleman's question is...............if your CD drive is busted.............go buy another one.........hell, you only need a 4x.......people give anything less than around 32x away don't they.............I certainly have.................you should be able to get a used one real cheap?

Anyway............what makes you think that your existing one is really busted?

Cheers