Win95 on floppies? 5

[khanza]

I have Win95 on cd. However on the super old school laptop I need win95 loaded. It has a floppy drive. Any Help?
Thanks in Advanced!

-=Alex=-

 

[wolluf]

There have been a number of posts about this - ebay seems to be recommended place to find a set. Personally, I'd buy an adapter to allow the laptop hard drive to be mounted in a PC (c. ?5 in UK), copy the win95 install folder from CD to hard drive, boot from 95 boot floppy and start install of from hard drive (assuming drive has room for install files & 95 - how old/big is it?).

alternatively, if its got a network card, you could network it with a PC, and use a dos network boot floppy (you'll find some at

http://www.bootdisk.com)

to connect laptop to PC & copy the files off that way.

 

[khanza]

OOOOOO.... so could i network it and share a cdrom? Hmmm...

-=Alex=-

 

[edfair]

Depends on whether you have a network device, or have capability to network thru the serial or parallel ports. Or whether you have access to something like laplink, or can use intersrv/interlnk or can hook up an external zip drive.
Just needs some way to transfier files.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[mattjurado]

I think wolluf has the right idea. Buy and ide adapter for the drive, slave it off another 9x pc. Format the drive, sys it, then copy the win95 folder to the drive. Plug the drive back in the laptop, it will boot to a dos prompt, now just cd into the 95 folder and run setup.

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.

 

[Blujacket]

An option I've used many times is a Parallel-port Zip drive with the Win95 folder on a 100MB disk. Win98 is too big.

 

[khanza]

Thanks guys. I should've called around first. I called some techie friends and found someone who has the diskettes... Thanks for all of your help! =)

-=Alex=-

 

[edfair]

Next you will probably find that your friend used the floppies to install the program, and when you install it his name is going to be on your machine.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[okcomp]

Ed Fair,

I am curious about your response, the part about the name being on the machine after using the floppies to install Win95, I am sure that I am missing something, but I don't quite understand.

Thanks
okcomp

 

[diogenes10]

Many old diskette based programs required entry of name, company, serial number, etc, during the installation process. Unless the program user was savvy enough to write protect all the original disks, copy the disk that required that info, and install from the copy; the original product was "branded" with the original purchaser's name.

Edfair is exactly right. I didnt even think about that situation a few months ago when I purchased an old diskette based MS product on ebay for an old laptop install. It came complete with the user's info on the diskettes so now I get to see something like John Smith of Indian Hills Tool and Die everytime I run the program.

 

[micker377]

Just dug mine out - 22 disks!

 

[edfair]

W95 stored s/n and user info on the boot sector of disk 2 starting at position 61.
You could get the "fdformat" set of programs to enable reading and writing of the DMF disk and use a disk editor to clean off the previous user info.
I used the "copycq" set of utilities to duplicate any disk 2 I had and installed with the copied disk.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[okcomp]

edfair,
Thanks for replying on this subject. I was unaware of this as I have a couple complete sets of Win95 install diskettes, have used them many times and have never seen this happen but mine are write protected so I guess that is the reason.
thanks for responding, such an old system and I am still learing about it.

thanks
okcomp

 

[TekTippy4U]

okcomp and khanza;
don't ya think maybe givin out a couple of Stars are in order here??

TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.

 

[diogenes10]

Hi ed,
this was an old msoffice-think it was excel5 word6 etc. Hadnt thought about being able to remove info, might take a look at that sometime.

googled, couldnt find copycq, found lots of hits for copyqm.

I think the lotus disks i used to copy just copied with dos.

 

[RoninBK]

I'm not sure if it works in 95, but in Win98se you can run Regedit and drill down to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

then change the RegisteredOwner value to the name of your choice. Of course, take appropriate precautions when diddling around with the Registry

 

[edfair]

diogenes,
old minds tend to not remember exactly. But you got the drift. And you have some good tools if you downloaded it.

ronin,
95 does it the same way. And diddling the registry is probably less dangerous than using a disk editor. But removing the data from disk2 is probably a good idea, especially if the disks are leaving your hands.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[RoninBK]

Figured as much. It's been a while since I dealt with anything older than 98se, so I couldn't tell for sure off the top of my head.

And the registry comment is really just a standard disclaimer. Of course mucking about with that particular key isn't gonna crash the system, but Regedit isn't something you wanna keep open like it's no big deal.