A friend asked me if I could help him troubleshoot his Win 95 laptop… it won’t boot.
I went over and had a look… managed to get it to boot in Safe Mode, but that’s it.
I have a Win95 Boot Disk, but his laptop does not have a floppy drive. So, I can burn the boot disk onto a cd… but how do I force the laptop to boot from the CD?
Short answer: You can’t.
Slightly less short answer: Booting from the CD is supported in the BIOS. Either the computer allows it or it doesn’t. If it does you should be able to figure it out by accessing the computer’s BIOS. There is usually a section for Boot Devices where you can select the order (i.e. try to boot from a floppy first, harddrive second, etc.). If CD-ROM can be selected you’re in business. If not then no luck.
Also, simply copying startup files to a CD to make it bootable doesn’t work. CD’s are different creatures and it is harder to make them bootable (a sepcific track needs to be written in a certain way as opposed to just having the data somewhere on the CD). I haven’t done it but I know people who have and they’ve told me it’s a bit of a pain. Let me know if the BIOS supports a bootable CD and I’ll ask my aquaintences for the directions to making bootable CD-ROMs.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jeff_42 *
**
Jeff, I will let you know whatever you want to know about the BIOS.
As soon as you tell me how. 
I’m a Mac-head… I don’t have the first idea how to find the BIOS… the PC won’t boot, remember?
Any help would be appreciated.
The BIOS is the very very first thing you see when booting a PC. The stuff that tells you the RAM installed, IRQ settings (sometimes) and what not is all the BIOS. If you can’t access the BIOS the PC is hosed (BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System and tells the computer how to operate on the most fundamental level…everthing else builds off of that).
To access the BIOS you need to watch the PC as it turns on. If the monitor is slow to warm up you may miss this and need to restart.
When the computer comes on and goes through its startup sequence you shoud see something that says:
Press DEL to enter Setup
or
Press CTRL-ENTER to access BIOS
or some-such thing. You’ll have only a few seconds to do this. If you miss it you need to restart the computer. If you don’t see something that tells you what to do you need to call the manufacturer and ask them.
Once inside the BIOS it’s a simple menu system you have to muddle through on your own. DO NOT change anything you are unsure of.
Good Luck!
Creating a bootable cd is not that bad, but it can be a bit of a pain. Very few win95 cd were bootable, so the one you are using probably isn’t. With ezcd creator, you make a bootable floppy first (with all the cd rom drivers and such loading), then tell cd creator that you want to make a bootable cd. It will ask you to insert that floppy, and then it uses that info to make the boot section of the cd. I made one for work that has 95 a, b, and c, on it, as well as 98. comes in really handy when working on laptops(especially when you dont have the floppy.
Any Windows installation CD or recovery CD should be bootable. You can just hold down F8 when it boots from it to skip the automatic loading of anything.
That is assuming that your laptop’s BIOS supports CD booting as mentioned earlier.
Not so. Only some of the later B and C version were available bootable. A lot of the recoverey cd were bootable, but those are made by the individual manufacturers. The generic Win95 retail cd’s were not bootable.
Ummm…what would it do to have a boot floppy? If you can run it in Safe mode, its already booting a boot floppy sequence…
Booting in Safe mode doesn’t support CD. And it can be crashed to the point of not being able to boot into to safe mode, even the safe mode command prompt.
“Booting in Safe mode doesn’t support CD.”
Yours might not; but mine does.
Safe mode loads only 16 bit drivers. Most newer systems do not have any 16 bit drivers for the CDROM drive installed, and therefore would not have CDROM access in safe mode. If you know the manufacturer and model of the CDROM drive, you can find 16 bit drivers for it on the manufacturer website. Look for DOS or Windows 3.1 drivers.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with booting from a CD, though. Again, that is set through the BIOS. Check the laptop manufacturer website for instructions on entering the BIOS or CMOS setup.
However, if you got into Safe mode the laptop IS booting. Chances are you can solve whatever the problem is once in safe mode. Most OEM installs have all the windows install files on the hard drive. That is, you can rerun Windows setup (or reload drivers or add components or whatever) from the hard drive without a CD. Usually this is under the Windows\Options\Cabs folder. Or, go to START>FIND>files or folders… In the “named” type *.cab, and make sure the location is set to the C: drive, include subfolders. If you find a folder with 50 or more .cab files, chances are they are the ones needed to install Windows. In the same folder, there should be a setup.exe. Running that will reinstall Windows.
And that may not solve the problem either. So what exactly happens when the laptop is powered on?
Glad you asked!
When I turn the machine on, it tries to run ScanDisk. Eventually, it stops with that silliness and shows me a Win95 startup screen.
Then… nothing.
It just sits. The screen eventually goes dark, though this could be the laptop saving power. It just sits, spinning the Hard disk occasionally.
I have left it like this overnight. It never gets anywhere.
Does Scandisk finish running (meaning the yellow bar gets to 100%)? If it does, then this is probably something that can be fixed from within safe mode.
The first thing to think about is any recent changes that were made to the computer. Were any applications, new hardware, or anything added or changed recently? If so, that may be the problem. Hit F8 before Windows starts and choose safe mode from the menu, and uninstall whatever it was.
After that, there are a lot of possible explanations. The laptop could be low on disk space. If that’s not the problem, try choosing step by step confirmation from the boot menu and see what the last thing that Windows tries to load is.
Actually, yes. ScanDisk does finish - that’s how I get into Safe Mode. But, once I shut the computer down in Safe Mode, I am unable to launch Windows properly. I can only boot to Safe Mode.
Well, DUH. 
I though ot that; I am a computer guy, just not a PC guy. But, it’s not my machine and the owner is clueless. 
Thanks for the advice: I didn’t know about F8.
This morning I started a Windows re-install from the Cabs in Windows|Options|Cabs. It’s still running… I will let you know what happens.
Thanks, all, for the help!
Boot to DOS, type:
scanreg /restore
select an earlier registry & viola! it works again. Time to do: 2 minutes.
Or select to crate a bootlog.txt at boot. In safe mode look at it & Viola! youll see what is not loading. Time to do, 5 minutes.
I thought scanreg was new in Win98, but I might be wrong.
I’ve had machines booting to safe mode with bootlog.txt files showing only true type fonts failing to load, and everything else ok. Not exactly helpful, though most of the time it should be.