WinXP startup disk - worthless?

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vikenk

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Hi all,

I recently used a Win95 startup disk to format my "C"drive, but it formatted "D" instead. I figured that either because of the 20gb size or the NTFS partition, the win95 startup disk did not recognize my "C" drive.

So I booted up my Win XP Pro computer and, as an experiment, formatted a floppy disk to make a boot disk out of it. I went to "My Computer", chose "Floppy disk" then right clicked and chose "Format" and chose the startup disk option.

When I booted the computer from the startup disk, it did not recognize my "C" drive. Am I missing something here? Why would a 20gb hard drive not be recognized by a Win XP boot disk? I know I can use the Win XP cd as a bootable cd, but is booting up with a floppy disk no longer an option with Win XP systems?

Just Curious...

Viken
 
Well Viken the File System that are recognised from DOS i.e when you boot it from Boot Disk are FAT16 and FAT32.... you will not get the NTFS file system partition recognised when you boot it to DOS.
Work around - get the NTFS2DOS from sysinternals.com or l0pht.com - it gives you complete access even from DOS....

------Still Curious ;) PM me----------
 
I agree dos bootdisks for windows 95 98 and ME will only recognize fat 16 and fat 32 partitions. Also you stated that in windows xp setup it does not see the hard drive? Did you check in bios to see if the hard drive is being recognized there? I am assuming that to this is a drive that you might have been seeing problems with at one point or anouther. Your drive may have crashed and is no longer recognized by the computer anymore.
 
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