Win98 Reinstall If Needed: No Cd Drive

Hi! Again, I have a Win98SE at my mother's house, but its CD-ROM drive is broken. Once, I asked about this here and was offered to fix it, but my mother talked me out of it. Now, it has two USB ports, so I could use a flash drive to reinstall Windows if I break the computer. I plan to experiment with my own disk compression software and need a way to reinstall everything if I break it. I downloaded DOS USB drivers and the Win98SE ISO. How do I create a Win98SE system boot disk to start Windows from a USB drive?

 

I use rufus to make bootable usb drives to install the OS. I have never tried with 98. Make sure your PC can boot from USB. BTW, I am the one that said I would fix it for free, you should have sent it to me.
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/rufus.html

 

I'm sorry. I'm at my mother's house right now, but the computer's still in the garage. I don't think it can boot from USB, but, yesterday, I downloaded a DOS USB driver, so I can create a boot floppy. I am familiar with DOS, so I can make out the disk. I can also install the Win98SE setup CD on the flash drive and boot it from there. What do you think?

 

BTW, my mother said the shipping costs would be too expensive to be worth it and suggested that I should get a new one instead. I'll just keep the current one and buy a new one for home, instead.

 

Will the setup CD's contents work from a USB drive? Do I need to do anything special other than copying the CD image's contents to a flash drive and copy needed USB drivers to the floppy? How do I create a boot floppy?

 

http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm - 1.44 disks with CD drivers - I use custom - no RAM drive.

 

Thank you.

 

Can the programs on the CD be run from a flash drive? If so, can I put the contents of the CD in a folder on a flash drive to separate it from the rest of the flash drive?

 

With no CD-ROM and no boot from USB option, how are you loading drivers? floppy? Best try Plop https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

 

I am planning to load the system flash drive drivers from floppy and then run the Windows setup program from the flash drive.

 

Take a look at this and see if it helps you.
https://winworldpc.com/product/dos-usb-support/1x

 

It gave me a good idea: I could make an image of the hard drive, create the boot disk, load the USB drivers and the disk image program and restore the hard drive. Other than that, the site doesn't help, as I have the necessary drivers, and it only talks about a USB hard drive.

 

If you are going to make a custom bootdisk then you need to go to the site foogoo mentioned. Here: https://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

 

BTW, the winworld disk I believe does have support for external hard disks, cd- roms, cd-rw, dvd-rom, zip, jaz, ls-120, and flash memory to ASPI devices. It is in the reading. Read it and see if that is what you get.

 

I have the USB drivers for DOS mode. I can boot the system and drivers from a boot floppy and run a backup program from a flash drive and use that to restore the drive. Any recommendations on a good backup program to do that? Huge images are not a problem, as the hard drive is about 2.1GB, and a dedicated flash drive is about 2.1GB full.

 

I used Ghost Personal edition for win98. It is hard to find these days, but it was free. I have it and can email it to you if needed, along with winimage to make the bootable floppy with and instructions on how to make the disk.

 

Thank you. My e-mail address is <snip>

 

If you have everything configured to your liking and working well, then I would take a full disk image of the entire drive. You could use something like Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect. Then if your experiments go awry, you can restore the entire disk back the way it was before you experimented.

Ideally, you should make a flash drive with the bootable media, so that you can boot from it if Windows becomes unbootable. Edit your BIOS to enable boot from USB. That was possible on my old Win98 box.