The Windows 98 Startup Disk

This article discusses the use of the Windows 98 startup floppy diskand an alternative boot disk to handle troubles in booting up theWindows 98 system.

Most of the discussion here apply equally tothe Windows 95 and Windows ME operating systems (OS) but there areminor differences from one OS to another.

The Windows Startup Disk: If you do not have the Startup Disk for your Windows 98 (or you have misplaced it since you made it when you installed Windows 9x on your system), this is the time to make one. It is conveniently done from Control Panel.

Control_Panel > Add/Remove Programs >Startup Disk

A surprising number of users don't have the startup disk handy and even those who have it have never used it, or do not know what it is for and how useful it is. If you have done it recently, you may remember that the Windows 9x installation steps always provide the option of creating such a diskette --- but never explains how to use it.

What's on the Startup Disk? The diskette is also called Emergency Boot Disk (EBD) is a replica of the contents of the directory at C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD.

The floppy disk is essentially a bare bones DOS 7.x system disk with various disk initialization tools, such as

FDISK.EXE FORMAT.COM SYS.COM

These tools allow you to initialize the hard disk prior to the Win 98 installation. But, in order to read the Win 98 Installation CD-ROM for the setup procedure, you need the capability of accessing the CD-ROM which often needs SCSI device drivers.

ASPI2DOS.SYS ASPI4DOS.SYS ASPI8DOS.SYS ASPI8U2DOS.SYS ASPICD.SYS BTCDROM.SYS BTDOSM.SYS FLASHPT.SYS OAKCDROM.SYS

Surprisingly, there is no software in Startup Disk which allows you to start Windows 98. The tools are good mostly to re-install the Windows 98 operating system from the CD-ROM. Although the Win 98 re-installation procedure would not normally delete user files on the hard disk, it is a very time-consuming process. It should be pointed out that on many occasions, there are steps you can take that are much quicker to make the system disk capable of rebooting into Win 98 system without a complete re-installation of the OS. But, the Startup Disk will not allow you to do so.

The Master Boot Record (MBR):

Every now and then, a Windows 9x system becomes unbootable for various reasons. The most common cause is probably the contents of the master boot record (MBR) of the boot drive (the first disk drive that is enabled) are not configured properly.

FDISK is the official tool to manipulate the contents of the MBR in Microsoft's OSes. The most well known "undocumented" feature (even Microsoft's page documents it) is to refresh the MBR by the following command.

FDISK /MBR

This command runs very quickly without fanfare: it does not even tell you whether or not the operation was successful. Also, it is a good idea to run FDISK (without arguments) and examine the first disk to make sure the first partition is a Primary DOS Partition and it is set as Active Partition.

It is unfortuante that FDISK allows you to make only the Primary DOS parition of the first disk drive an Active partition. So, even if your BIOS configuration menu has a feature to allow you to set the disk volume other than C: as the boot volume, it does not do you any good as long as you use FDISK because it refuses to make any other partition active.

An Alternative Boot Disk:

From time to time, for various reasons, the Windows 98 system disk gets slightly corrupted and becomes not bootable. It take only one crucial file to make the system fail to boot successfully into the Windows 98 environment. Anyway, it is very useful to have a bootable system diskette which allows you to not only boot into a DOS environment, but also reach all the way to the Windows 98 environment even on a volume which cannot otherwise boot itself to the Win98 world. Such a capability is sorely missing from the standard Win98 Startup Disk (a.k.a. EBD).

Note: This technique works with Win98, but NOT on Win ME.

How to make the Alternative Boot Disk:

Perform the following sequence to prepare the boot diskette from a command prompt (in DOS or in a DOS Box).

FORMAT A: /U /S
XXCOPY16 C:\MSDOS.SYS A:\ /H/R/Y
XXCOPY16 C:\CONFIG.SYS A:\ /H
ECHO C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT >A:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

Here, in this example, XXCOPY16 is used because it can be run either in the 16-bit or in the 32- bit environment. But, you may use XXCOPY (the 32-bit version) in a DOX Box of Win9x.

If XXCOPY/XXCOPY16 is not available, you need to perform extra steps (ATTRIB to manipulate the attribute bits first, and copy the file accordingly).

The forth line here is a quick way to make a one-line text file on A:. Of course, you may add other utilities to the diskette such as FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, SYS.COM for your convenience.

If you are not familiar with XXCOPY16, it is available in the XXCOPY Freeware package.

Using the Alternative Boot Disk: This diskette allows you to boot into Win9x where the system disk at C: is not capable of booting itself.

This is usually a result of the partition that is assigned to C: is not an "Active" DOS Primary partition.

Additional note: This technique can be extended to a customized "multi-boot" scheme based on floppy disks.

For instance, I have a Japanese version of Win98SE which is installed on Drive E:. That is, when the particular version was installed, it was deliberately installed to E: so that E:\WINDOWS is the official windows system directory for that environment.

According to Microsoft's official "rule", only one kind of Win9x OS can exist on a system, (the dual-boot is possible with WinNT/2000/XP but not with another Win9x or ME), when I need to boot into the Japanese version of Win98, I use a specially made diskette which has its own unique MSDOS.SYS file which declares that the E: drive is the boot drive. Of course, you may acquire a specialized boot control software such as the System Commander that allows even more flexible booting option among many OSes. But, the alternative boot disk allows you to test the system and see which of the key files are causing a boot sequence problem.

From: Kan Yabumoto