making a bootable USB for windows 95

[onespeedbiker]

I have been trying to make a bootable ISO, so I can transfer it to a USB, to boot Window 95 install files (the Windows 95 install disc is not bootable and comes with a bootable 3 1/2" diskette). The primary issue is trying to to find a boot image. I tried using etfsboot but is does not work. As a work around I used rufus to make a dos bootable USB and added the install files, but the USB boots as a C: drive, I would like to use Imgburn to emulate a 3 1/2 floopy so it would boot as an A: drive.  I have an external 3 1/2 floppy, so I can use the Windows 95 diskette, but I'm on a mission to use a USB. Any advice?

[dbminter]

My guess is you'll probably have to forget about it.  I don't know if Windows 95 even supports booting from USB, let alone installing from it.  Was USB even supported in Windows 95?  I thought USB didn't come out until 1999, by which time Windows ME had come out.  And that would be the earliest support for USB, I'd think.  And back in the early days of USB, booting from such devices wasn't in PC BIOS.

[onespeedbiker]

Yes, the later 0SR 2.5 had USB support and the computer I am using has a USB boot in the Bios. I actually did get a CD to boot using a floppy emulation and a windows 95 floppy boot disk. The problem I had  was while it booted as an A drive, I couldn't access the Windows 95 install files I had placed on the CD because floppy's don't don't support directories.

Edited June 2, 2019 by onespeedbiker

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Whatever you boot from needs to load CD-ROM drivers if you intend on actually running something from it.

[dbminter]

What do you mean floppies don't support directories?  They'd be relatively useless if they didn't.

 

As LUK said, do you have the CD driver you need to add to CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT?  (I forget what the file name is and whether you have to put it CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT.)  Without that on the bootable floppy, CD drives can't be accessed in DOS.

[onespeedbiker]

Yes, it was late when I wrote that.  What I was trying to say was since the CD was  emulated as a 3 1/2 floppy is 1.44 mb, the OS would not recognize a sub directory of 700 mb (regardless of the reason it did not; it shows the root directory and noting else).  The driver you are talking about it MSCDEX.EXE

[dbminter]

I've gotten flash drives to boot with floppy boot images and made them larger than 1.44 MB.  I used something called WinImage, I think, to edit an image I made of a bootable floppy.  Then, I edited that .IMG to add other things to it.  Then, I forget what I used, but I used some other application to make this edited IMG into a bootable USB flash drive.  I needed a bootable flash drive to run an ancient DOS word processor called Q&A.  The drive had to contain all of my Q&A files and I had one database that was larger than 1.44 MB.

 

I wish I could better remember what I used and how I did it because that might make what you want work.  Sorry.

[onespeedbiker]

Yes, that is what I did, but the USB boots as a C drive, so I can't partition the hard drive as a C drive.

[dbminter]

Ah, IC.  Hm, that is unusual.  At best, the flash drive should be A: or B:.  A: being the bootable image and B: being the flash drive.  Or A: being the flash drive.  I can't think of a situation where that would occur or how to fix it.

[onespeedbiker]

So I used imgburn to create a bootable iso, emulating a 3 1/2 floopy, using a 3 1/2 floopy boot image, to make a bootable CD with the Windows 95 install files in a separate directory. The CD did boot as an A drive, but using the "dir" dos command only the root directory was present, and not the  Win95 directory I created and installed the Win95 installation files