Win 95 ISO download

meb5749

Maybe I'm just having a senior moment. I just downloaded the Win 95 CD file 7-zipped it (Extract) and burned the ISO image to CD. However when I try to boot and install from the CD to an old AMD XP-1500 box I have, nothing happens. I know the CD reads ISO because I just loaded UBUNTU on the other hard drive I have in the system. Currently the UBUNTU HD is disabled in BIOS and the drive that I am trying to load Win 95 on is a CLEAN FORMAT FAT32 drive. What am I doing wrong????

BlueSun

The Windows 95 CD, if memory serves, isn't bootable. You'll need to boot with a DOS bootdisk first, setup your partitions and do a sys C: to make it bootable. Then load the CD drivers so you can launch the 95 installer.

meb5749

Blue Sun,

Thank you, I told you I was having a senior moment. Didn't even dawn on me that the CD was not bootable. Got so use to Win 98, XP, Vista and UBUNTU being bootable from the CD.
Thanks Again

BlueSun

It was fresh in my memory because I recently set up a 95 virtual machine and I ran into this problem. I was also used to having bootable CD's.

meb5749

It's all coming back to me now. If I'm not mistaken there was also the issue of FAT 32 and USB support for the early versions of Windows 95. I guess I better recheck the size of the HD I'm installing this on. I think it's only 20 Gigs (I hope and not 40 Gigs).

rdveu

I suggest you to download and install Win95 at least OSR2 or even OSR 2.5 version. These versions support FAT32 file system so you can install the OS on a large partition and there is also USB support.
You'll need a Win95B or Win98 boot disk (see: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm). Boot your computer with the newly created Win95B/98 boot disk (floppy), create and format a fat32 primary partition, create a folder in this partition (c:\win95 for example) and copy the Windows 95 install CD's contents to this folder. Now enter the directory (cd C:\win95) and run the setup (type "setup" or "setupm" I can't remember exacly). Be sure you have written down the install key you will need it during setup.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95 for more information (the table at the bottom of the page).

BlueSun

That's actually a good idea, to copy the install files to a directory on the hard drive. Especially with how much Windows 95 will ask for the install files every time you install a driver.

meb5749

Good idea about the folder win95cd. I'm running dual hard driveS in this box. The other OS installed is Win 98SE so I already have the Win 95 drive formated to FAT 32. Just have to create the boot disk (floppy) and I think that should do it.

Thanks for everyones help.

Any 1401 Autocoder programmers out there???

BOD

BlueSun wrote:

That's actually a good idea, to copy the install files to a directory on the hard drive. Especially with how much Windows 95 will ask for the install files every time you install a driver.

I always did that with 9x since most of the machines I was installing onto had ass slow CD drives.

BlueSun

I usually did it after being asked for the CD for the umpteenth time.

noone

I did screenshots of Windows 95 setup and post setup for the GUI gallery a long while back and I took who knows how many pictures of error messages over Windows 95 throwing a fit over the cd not being in the drive (when it was). You'd take like 5 tries to get it to see it, then it would bomb on setup if you changed the location of the cd drive for some reason. (usually would then throw VXD errors and stuff on reboot too)

BlueSun

I have mixed feelings when I use 95. I love the UI, the look and feel is definitely one of the better ones. But then you run into crap like the VXD errors.

And these days, after using Windows NT for so long, when I use Windows 9x, I just get annoyed because it doesn't have this or that.

rdveu

My first computer came with Win 98 installed and at school we were still using Win95. I've rarely had problems with VXD errors (Norton sometimes caused such errors after uninstall). A friend of mine that was working for my ISP told me: always keep Win98 installation files on your computer and avoid installing from CD. I've been using Win 98 more that 2 years without re-installing.
I remember the day when I installed XP RTM for the first time... I said wow... I just loved this OS (and I still like XP). But Longhorn changed everything, although Vista is not the product that most of us expected.

BlueSun

I'm still getting used to Windows 7. There's a lot of things I don't like and a few things I do. And a lot of things that I knew how to do under XP and you can still do under 7, but they've moved it somewhere else so you practically have to relearn Windows.