How to boot from a boot disk?

[Ioanni]

Hi there everyone Im trying to fix my grandpa's computer cause its not booting up. Months ago I created a boot disk. Now I don't know how to boot from it. I pop it in and it says "starting windows 95" which is good then I get a command prompt asking to type the name of the command interpreter but I dont know what to type. I got a free boot disk from bootdisks.com and when it goes to load it says tthe configuration specified in your config.sys istoo large for you memory remove some drivers and then try again.
So I don't know what to do. If anyone can shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated

 

[eyeCpc]

It sounds like a reinstallation of Windows 95 would probably be needed if there is no plan to move upto 98 at least. What you are seeing when booting up with a 95 startup floppy is the dos prompt not command prompt. This is where you will need to get familiar with the old dos commands. One place still seeing information on the older dos and Windows versions can be found at Microsoft Windows 95 help

 

[snypercore]

is it actaully windows 95 that the machine runs?

 

[eyeCpc]

Hopefully it's at least 98 and not 95 since 98 was the first to start seeing some repair tools included. When you had unrepairable problems with 95 or one of the earliest versions oops! You had to reinstall all over again. It's been some years now since even looking at a 95 machine.

That's why I couldn't confirm the command interpreter as win.exe, win.ini, or another file name. When booting from the hard drive to dos you would simply type "win" and press enter to see 95 load. With something preventing that you could rename the Windows folder to something Windows.old and even Programs to Programs.old for a fresh install if 95 and you have the original 95 install disk. Once Windows was running you would then restore files and delete the old folders later.

 

[Ioanni]

is it actaully windows 95 that the machine runs?

Yes it is

 

[Ioanni]

Well to do a fresh install of 95 would be for thebest. However I cannot really get my hands on a copy it. I need a floppy copy of Win 95 casue there is no cd rom drive and I cannot install it in the BIOS so it could bootup from the CD copy I have. I've looked on ebay and they want like 20 dollars for the disks which are claimed to be unopened and unused and they want like another 20 dollars + for shipping and handeling. I've even looked for a 95 torrent file to download but there was even nothing there.
Basically the machine has crashed. And I want to boot the OS from the Boot Disk I made months ago. The boot disk is a floppy. I've tried the following commands:
scandisk.exe (worked)
format.com (did not work)
chkdsk.exe (did not work)
debug.exe (did not work)
fdisk.exe (did not work)
sys.com (did not work)
attrib.exe (did not work)
edit.com (did not work)

I've even tried those boot disks from bootdisks.com and other various sites but what else I don't understand is when I use one of those bootdisks I get off the net, why it gives me and error saying I cannot proceed cause its too big for my memory. What memory is it refering to my HDD or RAM?

 

[eyeCpc]

When originally running 95 some years back I added in a cd drive since I had 95 on cd. But I was under the impression that there were 95 installation floppies at one time as well as for 98, ME, and 2000? But you can still add a cd drive in easy enough on most systems to get Windows running again. How about an upgrade to 98? There were some cd drivers for 95 but 98 startup floppies came with the "with cd dupport" option seen.