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Hello! I've just unearthed a ton of Windows 95 floppies and I would love some information if possible.
Now I'm guessing they're Win95a. Correct me if I'm wrong of course: Disk one has several files on it that were modified on Saturday August 24th 1996, at 11:11AM. I've been lead to understand some smart people can tell what version it is using that info. Also, if you can tell what version it is, how mnay disks should there be in that set?
Now, after going through them on the comp, I've found that disk 9 is missing, and disk 12, 13 and 21 are all corrupted. To top it off the disks only go as high as 22 (which is the reason I need to know how many disks were in the set). But my main question is, because several of these disks need replacing, I was wondering; I have a windows95a CD-ROM lingering around like something unhygenic. If I whacked that open, could I nick the .cab files from it and put them on replacement floppies to be used with the rest of the floppy disk set? Would it work, providing I got the right cab files on the right floppies?
I will much appreciate all the help I can get here. Thanks!
August 24th 1996, at 11:11AM indicates the 'B' version - if you want to try and replace the bad diskettes, you'd need to use files from the appropriate CD.
The diskettes may be Dense Media Format (DMF) - about 1.7Mb - if so, you'd have to reproduce that in order to accommodate the CAB files.
Likely you would also need the appropriate Product Key.
A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself
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I don't know why you even want to mess with these floppies, if you have at least one good clean '95 CD.
There are several ways you can get around "not having" a CDROM, and of course you can copy the CD and therefore protect against damage and corruption--something that is getting harder and harder, as floppies get older and older.
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>>>But my main question is, because several of these disks need replacing, I was wondering; I have a windows95a CD-ROM lingering around like something unhygenic. If I whacked that open, could I nick the .cab files from it and put them on replacement floppies to be used with the rest of the floppy disk set?<<<
No, because the .cab files will likely not be the same size on the CD as the floppy (2.048MB vs 1.76MB) and they will contain Win95a versions of .dll's, .vxd's , etc. vs. the Win95B versions you have on other disks (as jboy explained above)...
As name mentioned, you could just get around not having a CD (A method I used: span-zip the contents of the Win95 directory on the CD across several floppies, and unzip to the HDD of the machine you wish to install it on, then install from the HDD)...
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Hmm, well further to your info (thanks by the way), I had a quick goosie in my computer nicknack draw. Since I do have several copies of various windows verwsions that are unopened, including about three windows 95 disks. The 95a disk is just the one I use. I discovered that the first one I opened was 95b.
Anyway, I thought I'd check the cab files. There's 28 in total, and the early ones are all the same size as that of the ones on the floppies. The file modified date matches exactly too. I figured they must be identicle cab files, so I tried to stuff the missing ones on floppies I had laying around which were DMF (i've got about a hundred unused ones preformated). Right at this point in time I only have PC DOS 2000 on a computer at hand though, so I used that to create the floppies. Luckily it does have cd-rom drivers so I didn't think it'd be too much of a problem.
Whenever I tried to copy the cab file to the floppy though it gave me a sector not found error. Retrying doesn't work, so I ignored it three times then it finaly copied the cab file to the disk. I checked the size of the cab file compared to the size on the cd-rom and they were identicle so I figured either it's playing silly buggers or it's done something I can't see.
Anyway, I finaly finished making up the missing floppies and tried and install of windows 95 on the pc dos computer. It was running perfectly well until I came to the first disk I had to replace; disk 9. I stuck the disk in the drive and click 'ok' on the promt and it immidiately said something about an exe file was not found and to insert the correct disk...
So, the setup failed and so on and so fourth. I'll probably try again later today, only this time I might try and replace pc dos with ms-dos and attmpt to do it again under that enviroment (not that there's much of a difference, but you never know). By the way, you wonder why I'm bothering; I intend to sell these floppies on ebay. I just thought buyers might be a bit more motivated to bid if I sold them as a complete working set rather than an incomplete set.
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"I stuck the disk in the drive and click 'ok' on the promt and it immidiately said something about an exe file was not found and to insert the correct disk..."
This is probably due to the diskette name not being there. The label command can set this. Look at an original floppy using the "dir" command. It should list the "name" of the floppy diskette. ie; Disk 1 or similar. The way it's displayed is somewhat different than the way it is assigned however. When using the label command you would type in Diskxxx1 with the "x" representing a space. All eight characters have to be used while naming the diskette. HTH
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If you're trying to rework the original diskettes, you may well be doomed to failure - that can be a pretty iffy proposition even without the added complication of DM Format.
Those 2Mb CAB files are something of a rarity, rather than the rule - I forget the exact release (one of the 'A's I think)
A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself
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Disk names? Hmm, they should have been okay, I'm sure of that. I checked the label of the original disks, and they didn't have spaces between DISK and the number (just DISK1 and DISK2 etc.). I copied it exactly. As for the cab files, they are all 1,716,224 bytes in size. Well all the ones I checked anyway. They should technically fit on the disks I have but as I said before it gives sector not found error when i try to copy them.
I can't figure out why it says "sector not found when reading drive a:\" though. I thought maybe these DMF disks I had aren't formated like I thought they were (or aren't formatted correctly or, something. I did also read somewhere these high density disks can tend to corrupt easily. Well They've all been sitting in a cupboard for several years so it wouldn't surprise me if they had corrupted). I'll just use FDFORMAT to test that out. May well be the problem. If Not, I'll porbably just give up. It's not as if I'd be adding a huge amount of money to the end price of the auction by having a complete set of disks anyway.
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Hmmm - no, I don't think it's the disk labelling convention. Took a look at the upgrade set (13 disks) and those are DISK1, DISK2 etc. although these may be different.
DMF are not repairable by Scandisk, I don't think - as far as being more easily corrupted (?) Of course they are quite an age (1996) but my 1995 set is still in good order
You are here
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Just a point.....
Slim Vision,
"I checked the label of the original disks, and they didn't have spaces between DISK and the number (just DISK1 and DISK2 etc.). I copied it exactly."As I stated in #6;
"The way it's displayed is somewhat different than the way it is assigned however. When using the label command you would type in Diskxxx1 with the "x" representing a space. All eight characters have to be used while naming the diskette."I have to agree with the others as far as the brunt of this topic goes; It's flogging a dead horse. But to each his own.
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I have a CD set up to create those disks at will. Back when 95b was commonly used by teenagers I got a lot of requests to supply replacement disk for the ones they had damaged.
You cannot copy these disks in windows or DOS. You will need another program. I've had a lot of success with maxidisk
Let the program create the copy and it should be fine.
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I'd love to try that but I don't have Windows installed anywhere at this time.
Eh, I give up. Thanks all.
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Hmmm, yes, not having another computer to run it on would cause some difficulty. What's worse, you won't be able to post a question on computing.net to get advice.
Seems that you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
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Are you suggesting I'm lying? Well thanks a lot. Did it not pass through that mind of yours I might actually be posting this at work? Or maybe, just maybe, I have a Macintosh that I use for the Internet. Maybe I'm at an Internet Café... So many possibilities yet you instantly assume the worst.
I came here for help, which I got, and I appreciate it like I said I would. But I didn't come here for critisism on if I'm able to post messages or not on this forum *just* because I don't happen to have a PC available at home that has Windows installed on it.
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Touche!
Maxidisk is small enough to fit onto a floppy. All you need is a PC running any version of windows and a floppy drive. Although you might need to temporarily install the program.
I'm sure that you know somebody who can lend you a suitable PC for an hour or so. I guessed that you might already be doing that but had overlooked the onvious.
If I thought you were lying, I would have been somewhat less subtle.
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"You cannot copy these disks in windows or DOS"
Not quite true - Win9x has no problems reading or writing to DMF disks (although it can't create them) - Maxidisk or the 'Free Formatter' (same diff) are needed for that - I think WinImage can as well.
DOS6xx can work with DMF if you load the SMAX driver (also from Herne, I believe)
You are here
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Okay, get this. The whole disk thing was pissing me off (excuse my French), so I started a fresh. Now I've got the cd-rom working on the comp with uni drivers, I put up with the time it took and installed windows 95b on it from the cd. I then whacked maxidisk onto it and got one of the corrupted microsoft floppies in the drive. I tried to format it as a 1.7mb dmf with 80 clylinders (1680kb). Error, the disk is write protected. Oh, okay, I forgot about that so I took the write protection off and tried again. Error, it's write protected.
How can a disk be write protected, if I took the write protection tab off?
Bah, anyway, it doesn't matter. I got one of the really corrupted floppies. It must be so corupted that what ever is on these things that tells maxidisk it's write protected when it isn't, is also corrupted. Because I could easily format this disk. Which was a nice surprise, even though it's the only one that does format. Now the really annoying and odd bit. The disk originaly had a cab file on it, 1,716,224 bytes in size. The disk analasis said it was formated as 1680kb. So, I formated the disk as 1.7mb dmf with 80 cylinders which said it was 1680kb in size.
It worked perfectly okay. "Great!" I thought. I went to the windows 95b disc, found the cab file, checked to make sure it was the same size, date etc from my notes I'd written down (it was, 1,716,224 bytes, modified on august 24th 1996 at 11:11). I drag the file to the floppy disc, it begins to copy and... I get an error telling me the disk isn't big enough.
On inspection, I find that when formating the disk I've lost about 20,000 bytes of space on it because even though it said the original was 1680kb in size, it was slightly bigger than that, but only very extremely slightly bigger so it didn't register. Formating with more cylinders doesn't work, it just causes an error 4 and makes the disc completely unreadable.
This has to be the most annoying task I've ever tried to do. Someone said my attempts would be futile, and God damn were they right.
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If you expect failure from the start, that will likely be your reward.
If the floppy media is physically damaged then there is no way to correct that. Damaged disks (or bad drives) can give bogus 'write-protect' messages.
When working with DMF, it's best to format the disk normally first and ensure that it is error free - then convert to DMF. Any bad sectors on the diskette are naturally going to reduce the disk's capacity, and there's not a whole lot to spare.
Also, there are a couple of slightly different 1.6Mb formats - only one is actually 'DMF', and that can make a difference
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I didn't expect failure from the start, I thought this was going to be a piece of piss. I was wrong.
But I'v ebeen doing some hefty analsis of my own here all based on info from the floppies, the cd rom and what you guys have helped me out with and I've come to the conclusion that:
Disk 12, 13 and 21 are corrupted beyond use.
Most of my disks are all to small, and if what you say is correct then they're not DMF. The ones that are work alright but there's the other problem;
I wouldn't be able to make the copies anyway. The reason why I original got that error that said it couldn't find the right disk even though it wa sin the drive with the right cab file on it and with the right label, was because as someone said, the cab file son the cd-rom are different from those on the floppies. Not in size though:
The actual size of nearly all of the cab files on both the cd-rom and floppy isks are identicle, as are the creation dates. But I only just noticed that the cab file on floppy 22 is 600kb smaller than the one on the cd-rom. Indicating it's probably the last floppy in the set.
Now I really have given up, sice I now know the task isn't just hard, it's impossible. Again, thanks all for your help, and if anyone ever sees they have discs 9, 12, 13 and 21 (and any others I missed) from the 95b set (system file date/time stamp is: 24th august 1996 11:11am) then send em down to me at lex underscore vision at tiscali dot co dot uk
Slim Vision
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Well, things rarely go as smoothly as one hopes, but there is no way to restore a damaged floppy - logical errors can be repaired, and bad sectors can be marked and not used, but that's about it.
Quite a few versions and releases of 95 - the majority do use 1,676Kb CABs, and those will fit on a DMF diskette, but it's possible the CABfile contents may differ. You can examine & work with CABs using WinZip (among others)
Copying over my original (& cherished) 95 upgrade set was pretty straightforward - copies and originals remain in good working order
(btw - you can include your plain email address in the appropriate field, which is protected against harvestbots and casual spammers)
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Hmm... Well I've imaged and archived the disks that worked. I'll flog the actual floppies on ebay as they are. I'll probably get at least a quid for them which is good enough for me considering I nicked them from my old school all them years ago... Ah brings back memories.
Slim Vision
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