Updated: by Computer Hope To boot from the computer, place the bootable or into the CD-ROM drive, reboot the computer, and the computer should detect the bootable CD and boot from the disc. If the computer is loading to an error message when attempting to boot to the CD or loads into Windows instead, you may be encountering any of the below situations. Need to press a key to boot to CD or DVD Some bootable CDs, such as the Microsoft Windows CD prompts for you to press any key to boot from the CD. If no key is pressed, the computer will continue to boot normally and not load from the CD. Make sure to pay close attention to the screen as the computer is starting and press a key if prompted. CD or DVD is not bootable Not all CDs and DVDs are bootable. To boot from a CD, you must have a CD that is stated to be bootable.
Keep in mind that early Windows 95 CDs are not bootable. However, Windows 98, ME, XP, and later CDs are bootable. Not setup properly in CMOS setup (BIOS) If the CMOS is not properly set up, the computer may ignore or not look at the CD-ROM or DVD as a bootable option. Open and verify your settings are properly set to boot from the CD-ROM drive. These settings will be under the boot options.
We suggest that you have your boot options setup similar to the example below. If all else fails, make your CD-ROM or ATAPI CD-ROM the first bootable option. Floppy or LS120 (if available). CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. Network (if available).
Hard Drive If CD-ROM is listed after another device that is bootable, it will boot from the other device before the CD-ROM. Verify that the devices before CD-ROM, (e.g., ) has no bootable media in them. Bootable media includes your hard drive, which will always be bootable, unless it is blank or empty.
Disc drive not select from the boot menu On many computers as the computer is booting you may need to enter the (e.g., may see Press F9 for boot menu). If this option is available press the key to enter the boot menu and then select the option to boot from the CD-ROM or DVD drive. Tip: If you enter the boot menu and the CD-ROM or DVD drive is not listed as an option remove the disc from the computer, turn off the computer, press the key to enter the boot menu again. If the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM is not available put the disc back into the computer and then choose the option to boot from the disc. Bad CD or DVD disc Verify the CD or DVD is readable by accessing it through Windows or by placing it in another computer to access it.
It's possible that the CD or DVD is bad or not readable. If you determine the CD is getting errors when being read, try first cleaning the CD before looking for a replacement. Additional information about how to clean your CD disc and CD-ROM drive can be found on our page. Jumpers not set properly Not all disc drives will boot properly if the are not set properly. If applicable for your computer and disc drive,. We recommend that you have the CD-ROM set as master on the secondary controller.
This rule also applies to portable computers with removable disc drives. Cables or other drive related issues Some computers today have multiple disc drives, for example, a computer may have a DVD drive and another CD or CD-RW drive.
If your computer has multiple disc drives, consider disconnecting one of the drives and use the other drive to try to boot from the disc. With some disc drives, if the drive is not connected as the first drive (first connection on the cable), it can prevent the drive from properly booting. If you've never been able to boot from a CD or DVD with this computer, consider checking to verify that the drive is the first drive on the cable. Bad CD or DVD drive Verify other CD or DVD discs work in the drive. If the disc drive is bad, it will be unable to boot from the disc because it cannot read from the disc. If after doing this you, determine the drive is bad, it's recommended that you replace the drive.
What You’ll Need You’ll need two things for this: A Windows 95 ISO file and a Windows 95 boot disk image. Unlike modern operating systems, the Windows 95 installation disc isn’t bootable. You must first boot into an MS-DOS environment from a Windows 95 boot disk, which would have been a floppy disk at the time, to get the installation started. If you have an old Windows 95 CD lying around, you can insert it into your PC and.
While ISO files of Windows 95 are available online, bear in mind that Windows 95 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can’t be legally downloaded from the web. So start digging through those old drawers of yours. Once you’ve got your Windows 95 ISO file, you can download a boot diskette image from. You will probably just need to download the “Windows95a.img” file. Windows 95b (also known as Windows 95 OSR2) was only available to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), so any Windows 95 disc you have lying around will either by the original Windows 95 release (also known as Windows 95 RTM) or the Windows 95a release (also known as Windows 95 OSR1), which came with Service Pack 1 installed. Step One: Create Your Virtual Machine.
We’ll be doing this in, which is completely free to use and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can do it in other programs like VMware, but the process of configuring the virtual machine software will be a little different. Once you have VirtualBox installed, click the “New” button to create a new virtual machine. Enter whatever name you like and select “Windows 95” from the Version box. If you name it “Windows 95”, VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct Windows version. Choose how much RAM you want to expose to your virtual machine.
VirtualBox recommends 64 MB, while official Microsoft blog claims that Windows 95 won’t boot if it has more than around 480 MB of memory. You could split the difference and safely use 256 MB, which would be more than enough for old Windows 95 applications. Continue through the wizard until you’re prompted to create your virtual hard disk.
VirtualBox will automatically suggest 2.0 GB, and you probably don’t want to go over that. The retail versions of Windows 95 only support the FAT16 file system, which means they can’t use drives over 2 GB in size. Windows 95b (aka OSR2), which was only released to device manufactures and never sold at retail, does support. So, if you were using this version of Windows 95, you could theoretically use up to 32 GB of space. Don’t boot up the machine right after you’re finished creating it.
First, you’ll need to change a few settings. Right-click your Windows 95 virtual machine and select “Settings”. Click the “System” category, click the “Acceleration” tab, and uncheck “Enable VT-x/AMD-V”. If you leave this option enabled, you’ll be able to install Windows 95, but it will just show a black screen when it boots up afterwards. Next, click the “Storage” category and select the virtual drive under the Floppy controller. Click the floppy disk button to the right of Floppy Drive and click “Choose Virtual Floppy Disk File” in the menu.
Browse to the boot disk.img file and select it. Finally, click the Empty disc drive under the IDE controller, click the disc icon to the right of Optical Drive, and click “Choose Virtual Optical DIsk File”. Browse to your Windows 95 ISO file and select it.
Click “OK” to save your settings when you’re done. Step Two: Prepare Your Virtual C: Drive You can now just double-click the Windows 95 virtual machine in your library to boot it up. It will boot to a DOS prompt.
Note that the virtual machine will capture your keyboard and mouse once you click inside it, but you can press the host key—that’s the right Ctrl key on your keyboard, by default—to free your input and use your PC’s desktop normally. The key is displayed at the bottom right corner of the virtual machine window. First, you’ll need to partition the virtual drive you created. Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter: fdisk This process is very simple.
You’ll be starting with an empty drive, so you just want to create a DOS partition. That’s the default option, which is “1”. You just need to accept the default options to go through the fdisk process. You can just press “Enter” three times after launching fdisk to create a DOS partition, create a primary partition, and agree that you want to use the maximum size of the drive and make the partition active.
You’ll be told you have to restart your virtual machine before continuing. To do this, click Input Keyboard Insert Ctrl-Alt-Del in VirtualBox. Press the right Ctrl key to free your mouse first, if necessary. You’ll now need to format your new partition, which will be available in the virtual machine as the C: drive. To format it, type the following command at the A: prompt and press Enter: format c: Type Y and press Enter to agree to the format process when prompted. You’ll then be prompted to Enter a label for the drive.
You can enter whatever you like, or nothing at all. Press “Enter” afterwards to finish the process. Step Three: Launch the Windows 95 Installer You will now need to copy the files from the Windows 95 ISO file to your C: drive. Theoretically, you should just be able to run the Setup program from the disc drive itself to install Windows 95. However, this produces errors, as the disc drive isn’t mounted after the installer reboots, and the installer isn’t able to find driver files it needs.
Instead, we found it much easier to simply copy the files to the C: drive and run the installer from there. First, figure out which drive letter your disc drive was mounted as. This is displayed when your virtual machine boots up. On our virtual machine, it’s the R: drive.
If you forgot and can’t see it on your screen, you can always restart your virtual machine once again with the Ctrl+Alt+Delete option in the keyboard menu to view this info. Run the following command to copy the files from the Windows 95 disc to your C: drive, replacing R: with whatever drive letter corresponds to your virtual disc drive. Xcopy R: C: INSTALL /S When the process is complete, you can now switch to your C: drive and launch the setup program from the INSTALL program, like so: c: cd INSTALL setup Press Enter once again to continue when prompted.
The graphical Windows 95 setup program will appear. From here on out, you can do everything graphically without messing with the DOS prompt. The actual installation process is simple. On most screens, you can accept the default options and speed through the process. You will be prompted to enter your Windows 95 product key before the installation process finishes, however. Different editions of Windows 95 require different product keys, so ensure you’re using the correct key.
When you reach the Analyzing Your Computer screen, be sure to check the “Network Adapter” and “Sound, MIDI, or Video Capture Card” options to ensure all the virtual machine’s hardware is correctly detected and configured. When you’re asked to create a Startup Disk, you can select “No, I do not want a startup disk” to continue. This isn’t 1995 and you’re not installing this on a real PC, after all. The actual installation process will be extremely quick on modern hardware, even in a virtual machine. At the end of the setup process, Windows will prompt you to reboot and tell you to remove the floppy disk from your computer. To do this, click Devices Floppy Drive Remove Disk From Virtual Drive. Click “OK” to reboot your PC and continue afterwards.
The setup process will continue setting up your hardware. You’ll be told you have to provide a name to continue, but you can enter anything you like here. Finally, you’ll be prompted to provide your time zone and set up a printer.
You can just click “Cancel” in the Add Printer Wizard window to skip configuring a printer when it appears. Finally, your PC will reboot and you’ll be prompted to create a password.
You’ll then be presented with the Windows 95 desktop. You’re done—you now have a Windows 95 virtual machine. To really get back into the 90’s, open Windows Explorer from Windows 95’s Start menu and head to the C: Install Funstuff Videos folder. You’ll find music videos for Weezer’s Buddy Holly (“Weezer”) and Edie Brickell’s Good Times (“Goodtime”), which were included on the Windows 95 disc. There’s also a movie trailer for the movie Rob Roy, which was also released in 1995.
The videos in the “Highperf” folder are higher quality than the ones in the main Videos folder, so be sure to watch those—your modern PC can handle them!
Hi I'm trying to put a CDROM in an old Pentium 166, running windows 95b. Basically what’s happened is I’ve transferred a hard drive from an old 486 that died into the newer Pentium 166 but can't get the CDROM to read anything.
I'm pretty confident the CDROM works; it powered on, and windows detected it when it booted for the first time with the new hardware wizard. I've searched the net for ages trying to find drivers, but didn’t have any luck.
I found a long shot at driverguide.com but it had a sys extension and windows would only look for inf extensions. Is it possible to pull generic drivers off of the windows cd put them on floppy and simply transfer them to the appropriate place? I've also tried using a 95 boot disk from bootdisk.com which apparently has 4 universal CDROM drivers. The default one didn't work, but I was a little unsure of how to change it to the others (will have another look a bit later).
Even if this works though, I’m still not sure if it will help. If I do find one of the universal drivers work, can I simply copy it into windows somewhere and use it? If anyone can help me out with this problem it will be greatly appreciated, its starting to wear me down. I don't have much experience with old software so its eating up way too much time, especially for something in the good will category. Thanks for the help Crashman I'm not actually able to tell you what drive it is right now (I've left work for the day ). I can tell you it’s a generic brand drive, its 24 speed, and it’s really hard to find a driver for p) at least for me I was getting non atapi compatible errors, with some jumper configurations, but I’m pretty confident this isn't the issue.
I pulled the drive out and tested it in a fedora core 2 client and it worked (it sounded like a beefed up lawnmower but it worked I've also tried a few other old drives and had the same results. I'm pretty confident its a software issue, because of the way it was successfully probed by windows during its first boot.
I'm almost certain it’s simply getting the right device driver for the cdrom. Where are the CDROM device drivers stored in win95? As a side note; what data transfer standard did we use before atapi?
And does anyone have any driver search tips? They would be appreciated immensely, now & in the future. Thanks heaps Edited by maxthepadewan2 on 10/17/04 07:54 PM.
Windows 95 Install Disc
When you said old, I thought you meant pre-ATAPI. Windows 95 doesn't need a special driver for ATAPI compatable CD-ROM drives. And any IDE drive of 24x speed is ATAPI compliant. I haven't seen non-ATAPI IDE drives since the 2x days (although there were a few early 4x drives with the issue). So that leaves us with a configuration problem, or a problem with the cable itself. Make sure the drive is jumpered correctly and set properly in motherboard BIOS.
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman! Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's! I've tested the CDROM, data cables and IDE slots and there fine. I'm 99% sure; I need to configure some windows files to get it working. I've been trawling around the net for the last few days, and found reference to mscdex which I guess is what you’re talking about. Came across this stuff at 4. To install Windows 95 from a CD-ROM, the real-mode CD-ROM drivers must be loaded in the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files.
If they are not, continue with these steps. If they are, proceed to step 9.
View the Autoexec.dos file and note the line referring to the Mscdex.exe file. View the Config.dos file and note the line referring to the CD-ROM driver. Edit the Autoexec.bat file and add the MSCDEX statement you noted in step 5. Edit the Config.sys file and add the CD-ROM driver line you noted in step 6.
The article is about installing Windows 95 to a new folder, but it’s kinda what I’m after. I used sysedit to have a look at the file they where talking about, and got cannot open autoexec.bat, so I think I’m getting closer to the problem (I forgot to mention this isn't a clean install, it was just a HDD transplant) I searched for autoexec and nothing came up, so I'm guessing it was removed/disabled for some reason at another time. Is there a way to recreate the autoexec.bat file?
Edited by maxthepadewan2 on 10/17/04 07:23 PM. I see the problem: You don't know what you're talking about! Joking dude, OK, let's get started!
To begin with the article you brought up discusses making a bootable floppy with CD drivers or similar actions to provide DOS mode CD-ROM support. Anyways, that's a diversion, if you wanted to install Windows 95 from CD you'd be best off downloading a 98SE boot floppy from bootdisk.com. Getting back to what you REALLY want to do, there are a few reasons an ATAPI drive might not show up in Windows 95. The first and easiest is a backwards cable. If your CD-ROM activity light stays on, you have at least 1 end of the cable switched. The good news is, for unkeyed cables you can have both ends switched and everything will work normally, so under the situation where the drive activity light stays on with no CD in the tray, it doesn't matter which end you flip over to correct the issue.
Moving on, a more serious problem under Windows 95 that would prevent the CD-ROM from working, or any other drive for that matter, on the secondary IDE cable, is the IDE controller driver. It's often the case that the primary IDE controller works, but not the secondary. And it can be a real pain to find the correct driver and get it installed. A shortcut would be to install the CD-ROM as primary slave, rather than secondary master. With Western Digital hard drives, that means changing the jumper from 'Single' to 'Master'. Most other drives use the same setting for single as for master, WD just had to be different. Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's! The best cure for w95 was ALWAYS the old and trustworthy Mitsumi CD rom driver for DOS which is loaded at the system start up (and it created that Autoexec thing as well also too). The issue you have is with the IDE controller driver and there is nothing you can do but find the Mitsumi floppy (I'll dig one out somewhere in my closet if you'll ensist with the long green paper bill;o) or delete IDE drivers and let it find it again. PS: to tinker a little, remove the secondary and then primary IDE driver from the Device Manager and let it find it after the reboot again (reboot manually, caz it is going to hang after Primary IDE will be deleted), that fixes the problem sometimes, but it is a tricky thing to do, sometimes I had to do it a few times to get it back to normal breathing and see CD rom again;) I forgot from the top of my head, but I did load IDE drivers from 98 CD when it was asking for them after the reboot, so that works too.this is very useful and helpful place for information. Yes, I know this is a long time ago.
The problem does have to do with what the person is talking about when they mention the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. The solution is to Restart Windows 95 in DOS mode at shutdown. Type the old DOS command at the C: prompt Edit Autoexec.bat. You should have something like: @echo off setup Path C: Windows;C: Windows Command The line you need should look something like: C: WINDOWS COMMAND MSCDEX /V /D:CD003 /M:10 If it is there and has a REM note, use that line, and remove the REM.
Save the file. Go back to DOS. Tye the old DOS command at the C: prompt Edit Config.sys The line you are looking for should look like this.
Device=C: CDROMDRV USDIDE.SYS /D:CD003 Save the line or remove the REM and use the line as above. I tried to put in an old hard drive on the system and put a REM in front of those lines to get the old hard drive going.
I realized my mistake and went to the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys and removed the REM and it worked for Windows seeing the CD-ROM. Before I removed the REM, DOS was seeing the CD-ROM and Windows was not.
Hi Tomasz, Thank you for posting your query on the Microsoft Communities. Have you tried running these discs with Windows 10? Do you get any error message? What does the CDs contain? If it is a game or a program that you are trying to run from the CDs, you can try running them in compatibility mode.
Right click on the game/program icon in the menu, and select 'Open File Location'. Right-click on the folder and show the games/program with.exe highlighted. You can then try compatibility mode on it, or right click it and select 'Troubleshoot Compatibility'. Let us know the result. If you have further queries, we will be happy to help. There is no such thing as a 'universal service pack'.
A lot of things have changed in the last 20 years, and there is no way that Microsoft can keep ever program that ever was created to keep working. One big stop might be that you might be running Windows 10 64-bit (note there is a Windows 10 32-bit version too, but it will be limited to 4 GB of memory). A 64-bit operating system can run 32-bit programs and 64-bit programs.
A 32-bit version can run 32-bit and 16 bit programs. Windows 95 was a 32-bit operating system, and it is entirely possible the program you want to run is a 16-bit program.
If you just have to run these old programs, your best bet would be to use some virtual machine software to run say Windows XP, which should be able to run that Windows 95 program. Note I'm just another user trying to help.
Windows 95 OSR 2 Windows 95 offered, at long last, a well designed document-oriented desktop shell that worked much like the 1984 Macintosh Finder. It also included a new way of finding installed applications through a 'Start' menu. And it included the same networking abilities as Windows for Workgroups. It integrated the ability to run 32-bit applications similar to or with Win32s. It no longer ran on a separate DOS product. But Windows 95 was not a pure '32-bit' OS: It was still based around the framework of Windows 3.x, 2.x and 1.x.
Download torrent poison ivy 2 lily full. It still ran on top of DOS, but bundled its own special 'Windows 95' DOS (AKA MS-DOS 7). It could even still make use of DOS drivers. The 95 architecture was continued with. Most 95 CDs are NOT BOOTABLE.
If a download does not include a boot floppy, please see If the listed serials below do not work for a specific release, please see the You may also override the install type (no serial needed) by creating a file name MSBATCH.INF with the lines 'Setup', and then 'ProductType=1', placing that in the Win95 setup folder, and then running setup.