About Windows 95

Free downloads of Windows 95 emergency startup boot disk. In 1995, Microsoft introduced Windows 95, which represented the "next step" towards a comprehensive consumer-oriented graphical operating system for PCs (Windows NT had already been created at the time, but was geared towards businesses and servers.) Windows 95 is the great "compromise" operating system. In some respects, it has its own way of handling access to the hard disk, but in other ways it resembles, and even uses, standard DOS. This is how Windows 95 strives for performance while retaining compatibility with older software. Windows 95 in fact includes a version of DOS, that is designed to work with it and its file structures.

When Windows 95 was released, it came with a new and updated version of the traditional FAT file system: VFAT. At the same time, Windows 95 was compatible with older FAT12 and FAT16 partitions and disks The initial version of Windows 95 is now sometimes called "Windows 95A" to distinguish it from later editions, or "Windows 95 Retail" in recognition of the fact that it was the only revision of Windows 95 officially sold to the public. It's important to remember that this version of Windows 95 does not support the FAT32 nor the NTFS file system.

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Re: About Windows 95

On January 25th, 2009 AllBootDisks Visitor (not verified) says:

can i use this boot disk to install a clean copy of windows because i downloaded the setup disk but it comes up with: FATAL! cannot read boot medium! sYstem halted. or can i use it to run the setup.exe off the disk.

the disk is unformatted with no partitions

PLZ help!

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Re: About Windows 95

On June 8th, 2009 potterman76 (not verified) says:

"Invalid Drive Specification. It won't let me create a path to Drive C."

In my experience, the error "Invalid Drive Specification" occurred because (I later realized) I hadn't created a primary Dos partion and then formatted the newly created partition. So, I recommend that you try to get to a command prompt (I hadn't yet installed Windows 95 on my virtual machine and so I was running off a Dos boot disk.) and type fdisk and follow the instructions/options that should create a primary OS partition (Dos in my case). then you go to the actual drive you "created" and format it using format /U (the /U option means the Format program will do a unconditional format versus the quick format (erase); both these options and more, if you didn't know, I found/read about using the /? help option as in: format /? ). You could also do format /U /C which according to the format /? help, tests the clusters on the drive that you are currently on or plan to format for clusters that are currently marked "bad"; which probably a good thing in general and theoretically might solve your ScanDisk program since it seems to freeze at "Cluster 0 Section 0".

So, basically if you have been able to follow what I have been saying or would like to see the suggestions in a different format, here's what I think the person with previously mentioned problem should do:

1. Boot up the computer either in Windows 95, if you can get to that Graphical User Interface (GUI), or DOS (MS-DOS I know for a fact has the fdisk and format programs, I don't know if any of the other Dos systems, like FreeDos, PCDos, or DrDos, have the same or similar programs.)

All the following instructions are performed inside a command prompt window or at a command prompt without any GUI.

2. Change the Directory (if necessary) using C: (where C: is the drive (hard drive/CD-ROM drive/floppy drive; as an example) you want to change to) to change to the directory where the format and fdisk or similar programs are if your Windows/Dos PATH variable hasn't been defined. You can find out if your OS Path variable is defined by typing path or PATH they trigger the same program. If when you type path and it says No Path that means your Windows/Dos Path variable is not or hasn't been defined yet; in which case you definitely need to do this step.

3. After getting to a place where you can access/run these programs type fdisk .

4. After you do that, press 1 to create a disk partition or press 4 for the program to "Display partition information" and you can also note the information the fdisk program displays like the "Current fixed disk drive: " which will display as a number and the fact that you can press Esc to exit the program and later go back one step in the fdisk program.

5. Press the Enter or Return key to proceed after you have made your selection.

6. If you chose #1 to create a disk partition, then follow the options on the next screens you come to (pressing the enter or return key to confirm your choice) to create a primary partition.

7. After you have created a primary partition you should see, if you want to see, a different error message, along the lines of

"
Drive C: is unavailable
Abort, Retry, Fail? "

If you get this message or a similar one (with the drive letter referring to the disk drive you are trying to access) keep typing "a" (without the quotes) for abort because that isn't the only error message you will get for a newly made partition that hasn't been formatted.

Now, type format c: (with c: (colon) referring to the newly made partition drive letter) to format the now partitioned drive.

That should fix your "Invalid Drive Specification" error. If you want to make a certain drive type "sys" (without the quotes) before the drive letter want to make bootable, at least that's what I read I haven't tried it myself yet. Good Luck!