Run win98 off a cd and burn a cd....possible

[Space Between]

i read somewhare last week that you could install win98 on a cd...actually run windows 98 off a cd...without installing it on a hdd at all.....i cant find the page and it is killing me because i want to know and have been searching for hours now...anyways could you burn a cd while running win98 on a cd???im mean if you caould that is ultimate...huge for recovery options...

[Big_Z]

Sound like a plan...will try when i get some time.

PS. swap file must be disabled.
A modified win98 boot floppy would be required to make the cd bootable and start 98 off the cd without prompting....An interesting challenge. I believe it can be done ny removing msdos.sys from the floppy.

[Space Between]

If anybody finds some info to running 98 off a cd post the links..i. cant find them anywhere anymore...please post them,.

[SexyZane]

Uhm, I don\'t think this is possible: win write info too many time on win directory: last login, temp, swap, bootlog, update, registry (ok, many of these path can be changed but not all).

Anyway if someone has got add. info, let me know!

[sam]

Haven\'t tried it, but it looks feasable.
There appears to be lots of other intresting info here as well,
but I haven\'t had time to browse it much. Let me know how it goes.
later,
sam
http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/11/206/

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that link....that is a good one. I\'m pretty sure it can be done now i must try it out...im still hesitating because im not sure how it would be possible to access your cdburner from your cdrom running windows...but there must be a way...thanks again

[sam]

The article refers to the El Torito Spec for booting from a CD.
It is a function of the bios. My 1997 p166 (ASUS) supports it, but a 1995 p100 (Micron) box does not. If yours doesnt, you may be able to dl the bios upgrade if you bios is flashable.All boxes made since 96 or 97 \'should\' be able to boot grom CD or have a bios upgrade available. Look for the feature in your setup at boot time (del key for award/ami and F2[i think] for Phoenix). Good luck
sam

[Space Between]

uh...you must be looking at the wrong article..the one you should be reading is a explanation on how to make a cd to run win9x off of...prefferably win98

[sam]

Look at the end of the article (below the biblio) under the heading Bullfight. This is what I was refering to....
......a sort of \'disclaimer\' for there method I suppose....
sam

[sam]

Guess I should read a little closer myself Space........
Your original post was a two part query.
......as to burning a cd while running 9.x from a cd, hmmm......
Presuming that the method in the article works, and that you have a dual cd® system, and if the object of this proceedure is to not disturb an ill-fated partition and/or os, the question is how big of a ram drive can you create for the burning sw buffer? Being able to burn @16x with less than 300-400meg buffer probably isn\'t realistic. Another thing to consider is the processing time bottleneck due to the read speed of the booted cd, another potential source of buffer underun. All in all, it still seems feasable.
   As an alternative, the object again being mass data recovery (from 32bit/gui mode)using a cdr(w), do you have at your disposal a hd =>500meg or so? My Asus and DFI mbs both allow me to boot to the Secondary Master
                                       IF
the bios for the Primary Master is set to none. Set up in this fashion for normal use allows an auxillary hd (w/9.x and burn sw of course) to be plugged in to the systems Primary Master I/O, configured in bios, and booted to just like it was there all along. The first partition on the hd needing recovery is set as d: and you are set to recover to your hearts desire. Not as diverse as a cd, but I think the lack of ram for the buffer narrows the field of boxes it could be use on anyway.
  Depending on how big your current hd is, a separate primary partition w/9.x etc could be set up and hidden from your everyday os via a partition table mgmt program (I like Ranish PM) however, if the failure is due to a virus, it is possible to loose your MBR data to the viri as well as the data needing recovery. Good Luck.
Reguards,
sam

[Space Between]

Yeh ive read the article myself and thought alot of the same...but what remains unclear to me and still hesitating to try it is that will the actual hdd be recongizable...or just what is on the cd...i mean will the win98 be able to recongize any hardware outside the actual cd....

[Anonymous]

I dont see why not, unless the hw (hd) is damaged beyond any possibility of recovery anyway.
   Something strange has happened to me before. I had a hd on one of the ide port set to none in bios, booted to the drive that I wanted to, and when I opened Explorer the drive I \'thought\' was  unconfigured showed up as the last drive letter (before device drivers) in the list. 9.x had apparently located and id\'d the geometry and connected it. It was in \'compatability mode\' but visible and usable nonetheless. Dropped to dos and it was gone, but any app that ran under the control of the gui was able to access it.
  What letter will the cd run os give the existing hd? d: I would imagine. a: and c: are spoken for. If I didnt have so many other irons in the fire, I might sit down and check it out. It will require several hours of uninterupted time which is an unforseeable luxury with 2 teens a 3yr and a 4yr old loose in the house. Not to mention \'The List\'. It would have to move up to inside the first hundred or so things to do to get recognized. When the XYL asks when I\'m going to do this or that, I tell her it\'s on the list. I think she\'s finally catching on after all these years.....
   I would be curious to know how it all goes if you decide to tackle it........
reguards,
sam

[A4R4|{0sS]

Dont think its possible because there are some values to add to register belong to hardware and software configuration.  The cd-rom is read-only so nothing could be add !!

And for the system file ... win98 support FAT16 and FAT32 but it should not run on CDFS (file system for cd rom) well ...

So besides the install disk, i think you cant make a \"bootable OS\" with win98 on a CD-R.

[Anonymous]

as far as the reg goes; that is what the Ram Disk is for - it CAN load all neccesary values into the registry - for that run at least.

as for CDFS; win98 access it when it is running; and should; throughout the use of MSCDEX be able to load from it

[Anonymous]

Using Adaptec Easy CD Creator, it is possible to make a botoable CD using win98 as the boot OS. The short version of the complete instructions:

1) Partition a HD to less that 630 MB.
2) Install Win98.
3) Disable the swap file and set the compatibility options to run the disk drives in compatibility mode.
4) Boot from a DIFFERENT hard drive with Easy CD Creator on it.
5) Using Easy CD Creator, make a \"bootable CD\" and use the hard drive emulation option.
6) Pick the HD that you made is steps 1-3.
7) Burn your CD (preferably a CD-RW because you\'re going to need to tweak it some.)
Boot off your CD.

Have fun!

[Anonymous]

Tip: You could disable hard drive writes in many new bios\'. This would be a great way to test your install before burning it to a cd. The registry is loaded to memory, and dumped to disk quite often, this will be a problem, but may be possible to overcome with some reg hacks. An early copy of the registry to the swap, and redirecting to default path to it may work. I might give it a try later.

[Anonymous]

Anyone here done this yet? having an interesting problem that i cant get around.
Remove the reg files from the windows dir, copy them to the ramdisk folder.
Altered Msdos.sys to point to the ramdrive for the registry;
but when i boot; windows keeps recreating the registry
went so far as to deltree the sysback folder;
but it keeps loading and making new reg files in the windows dir on every boot

[sam]

Did you rename the system and user .dats (registry) of your original os to hide them AND rename the target name in io.sys as the article said? Apparently the startup files look for any valid/usable reg files on any visible partition if they dont like the ones MSDOS point to. I understand that this \'feature\' can also cause problems if one is running multiple primary partitions of the same os without them being hidden from one another.
excerpt \"..., the registry should be renamed. Its name is noted in c:io.sys. ...\"

[Anonymous]

As im running win98; and the article mentioned many problems caused by so renaming the system; i preferred not to do that - It is the only OS installed on here- started from a fresh repartition of the drive so there cant be any other copies as far as that goes -
the \'new\' reg files that it is making are just very basic, no drivers, nothing at all like that - seems to just be restoring a \'first install\' set of reg files
and it is putting them *in* the windows folder w/ win.com and all- which cant happen once i write it out to a CD-R

anyway; im going to be going into dos mode in a few minutes to play w/ the io.sys file
wish me luck http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'\' />

[sam]

luck wished
did you........\"In addition, scanregw.exe must be prevented form being loaded, for example by deactivating it with msconfig.exe in its autostart folder.\".....
That is what is likely responsible for re-creating you basic reg files.........
Damn.......guess it\'s time to get off my dead a** and quit trying to armchair QB my  suggestions and get my hands dirty.........and  I just put the case back on this thing last week.........looks like rain for the next few days anyway.......
.......now what did I do with that ol\' 1.2g throwdown drive......
........I\'ll be baack......(dont ya just luv arnold?).......
sam
ps
you do realize  the W2K/XP users are going WHY???