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Windows 95 Boot Disk Vs. Startup Disk

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First post, by Syntho

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I've got a couple floppies, one called a W95 Boot Disk and the other a W95 'Startup' Disk. If I remember correctly there were multiple ways to create them, like from inside of the OS, and perhaps from the W95 CDROM files? I forget exactly. You can also find these two images on the net in various places. What I noticed is that the Startup disk has no CDROM drivers. The Boot Disk version has them, so that way I can install W95.

Does someone know the source of these two, and why they are called something so similar?

Reply 1 of 2, by jakethompson1

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OEM copies of the CD-ROM version of Windows 95 came with a gray "CD-ROM Setup Boot Disk." I lost mine long ago, but the idea was that since sound card CD-ROMs were still around at the time, the OEM would have to customize that disk to put the proper driver in CONFIG.SYS--since it wasn't necessarily ATAPI, and because you would need a boot disk anyway since El Torito wasn't in place.

The Startup Disk is created either during setup or through Add/Remove Programs. Either way it does not include CD-ROM drivers, but it does have things like format, fdisk, and scandisk bundled automatically.

And of course you can also use format /s (or the GUI version) to create a bootable floppy that wouldn't have anything but the bare minimum.

Reply 2 of 2, by konc

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The startup disk created from within Windows was meant to help you start your pc and diagnose/fix stuff, boot clean to update BIOS or to remove viruses etc.
The factory-made boot disk that accompanied the CD was meant to help you start Windows installation, hence the CDROM drivers, SCSI etc.

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