DOS program for loading CD's (Typeable)

I wanna load my Windows 95 installation CD but I don't have a boot disk and I don't feel like buying one, so can is there a program I can type in to run this CD? (I do have a USB floppy drive, however it can't install programs past 1.43mb, so that's why I am not counting on this.)

Seeing as Windows 98SE will run any 95 programs I would burn an OEM iso of Win98SE which is bootable. Windows 98SE also has many more hardware drivers on the CD.

https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-98/98-second-edition

Make sure you download the OEM version.

Edit: (I don't believe plop will work for you because the Win95 CD is not bootable) If the above is not an option you can see if Plop boot manager works. Download  plpbt-5.0.15.zip. Unzip to a folder on the desktop. There is a plpbt.iso file. Use Rufus with the iso to create a bootable USB flash drive. This all depends on if the computer supports booting from a flash drive. I'm not sure the following will work but  you  could burn the plop iso file to a CD. Boot the CD and when at the screen showing boot devices eject the Plop CD and insert the Windows 95 CD. Select CD rom from the screen.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/screenshots.html

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

https://rufus.ie/en/

Edited by JohnC_21, 16 May 2022 - 09:10 AM.

Okay so when I I downloaded it and it seems to work, but it seems to be not working properly. I try to load the CD but then get stuck when it says "Waiting for drive". Also to note that this system only has 128mb of ram with only 64 of this usable ram the rest being used for cache. Also it's running a Pentium 2 with a 2GB HDD. The 2GB HDD has a lot of bad sectors, should it be replaced?

If I can remember correctly the Win95/98 CD will do a scandisk before install. If you 2GB drive has many bad sectors it should be replaced.  64MB or Ram for Windows 98 is plenty. 

As far as the maximum size of a Hard drive for Windows 98

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-98-maximum-hard-drive-capacity.html

For questions on older computers Vogons is the forum to use. If you can't find a hard drive there are adapters that use a Compact Flash Card.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=86413

Something I should have mentioned is that it first tries to boot to Windows 95 despite the fact that I wiped it. I should note that when I way wiped, I pressed F5 I think, then hit no to the boot graphical operating system option, then typed in something like Format C: and formatted the drive that way. I will give more details if you need them

Are you trying to Wipe the OS from the HDD. I'm assuming the computer can boot from a CD. You can use a program called Parted Magic to boot and wipe the partitions on the drive. You would need to burn the iso file to a CD.

Do you wish to install Window 95 or the recommended Windows 98SE?

Can this computer boot from a USB flash drive? This computer has a floppy drive?

You can get free boot disks here.

https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

Then use imageUSB to image the iso to the USB flash drive. This will make the USB flash drive bootable. 

It has a floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, and USB ports. It is from 1996. It is an IBM Aptiva E24 2137. It cannot boot from CD or USB I don't think. Also as I mentioned, I cannot put files more than 1.44MB on floppy drive due to the USB floppy drive I use.

You can create a bootable floppy disk using the images at this link. There were two versions of Windows 95, a and b. 

https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/95.html

I'm not sure but I believe the exe files will install the image to the floppy disk. 

For the Img files you can use a utility called DiskWrite.

http://freeextractor.sourceforge.net/diskwrite/

Edit. You can burn the iso of the Windows 98SE I linked to previously using Imgburn. If the computer can boot the CD then that would be the way to go vs installing Windows 95

Edited by JohnC_21, 20 May 2022 - 08:11 PM.

Okay so the program works, Win95 starts installing, but then I get a drive boot sector partition error

Edited by Eevee1, 20 May 2022 - 08:50 PM.

Error SU-0013

Setup could not create file on your startup drive and cannot set up Windows.

If you have HPFS or Windows NT file system, you must create an MS-DOS boot partition. If you have LANtastic server or SuperStor compression, disable it before running Setup. See SETUP.TXT on Setup Disk 1 on the Windows CD-ROM.

Also thank you for your help thus far, I know slightly more about ancient computers now.

Oh no

That sounds like a bad drive. On the Windows 95 boot disk is a program called Fdisk. Run that to delete partitions and create a new partition. I believe Windows 95 only supports FAT, not FAT32.

What made you say Oh No?

I was clearing out files on the computer.

Apparently COMMAND.COM was not something I should've deleted.

Please hold on until I can figure out how to reinstall it.

I won't ask for help YET, because this was a very brain dead mistake.

You should be able to copy the command.com file from the floppy to the hard drive.