Is it possible to run Windows 95 or 98 from a CD?

Question

I have certain old DOS-era programs that expect to be able to bang on hardware directly, specifically, the printer port. These cannot be run in an NTVDM under 2K, XP or later, since the NTVDM environment doesn't give the programs direct access to hardware.

An obvious solution would be to use a derelict PC to run DOS 6.22 or Win 95/98, either of which would support direct I/O access. Problem with this being, I don't have any hardware I want to commit to running such an old OS, essentially just to run a couple of 1990's era hardware utilities.

The next most obvious solution would be to temporarily boot a system into an old OS, just on those occasions when the old utilities are needed. I know DOS 6.22 could boot from a floppy, but the problem with that is finding a machine that still has a floppy drive at all, let alone a reliable floppy.

So the idea occurred, what about running Win95 or Win98 from a CD, like a Linux live CD? And that's my question: first, is it even possible to do it, and if so, how does one proceed? Alternately, any way to run these from a flash drive would be welcome as well.

Some light searching only turned up some dubious looking results. I'm not asking to download a free copy of an OS, here, mind you. I already have W95 and W98 install media on hand, I'd just like to know if there's a way to configure a live CD for either of these. (And I assumed the answer for DOS 6.22 is flat out 'no', since DOS didn't even understand CD drives w/o extensions)

Answer 1

It's possible to boot DOS from a CD if the CD is properly burned with the required "El Torito" extensions and the BIOS supports "floppy emulation" and your BIOS is one of the 3 or 4 out of thousands that isn't buggy in this area.

It sounds like a mess, and the one time I tried to get a DOS CD to boot I had problems and don't even remember how to do it. But it is possible.

Answer 2

I found a Windows 98 "LiveCD" project here:

• http://reboot.pro/10373/
• http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140391-windows-98-live-cd-project-update/

Based on WinBuilder.

This project creates a bootable image of Windows 98 SE, based on Mindows, with only 23MB.

Perhaps you can make some use of it. :)

Answer 3

If you have an image of the DOS 6.22 floppy, several boot managers can load floppy images e.g. GRUB4DOS ( https://sites.google.com/site/grubdos/ and http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/boot.htm#floppy ) or SYSLINUX + MEMDISK ( http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/MEMDISK )

Answer 4

REAL DOS 8.00 capable of starting from HDD without any modifications to its files (io.sys, command.com) is placed on Windows Me OEM CD inside X:\tools\nettools\fac\ltools.dta file, which is CAB file with changed extension, that can be extracted by any CAB extractor, including Windows extract.exe. X is CD drive letter. These two files are slightly different than other instances of themselves in Windows Me, but they works good as supplementary REAL DOS to Windows Me and they can boot to DOS from separate primary HDD partition. This REAL DOS works as is without any patches, etc… NO SYS command needed, simply copy IO.SYS first, next copy COMMAND.COM, all onto freshly Windows Me formatted FAT32 active primary partition

Answer 5

I built it. Download on my links:

https://archive.org/details/windows-95-live-usb-cd

https://compuvisionsinfo.blogspot.com/2023/05/windows-95-live-cdusb.html

Answer 6

You can make a bootable DOS USB, and then install Windows 95/98/ME on it.

Download Rufus from here. You can use Rufus without installation. Make a bootable USB using MS-DOS. After making your bootable MS-DOS USB, copy all Windows installation files to the root of your USB. Restart your computer. Make sure that you set the USB as your default boot device. When you boot from USB, type SETUP into the DOS prompt. Install Windows (do not fear, it will NOT overwrite your existing Windows version, because DOS and WIndows 1/2/3/95/98/ME can not read NTFS partitions). If you did it proper, you should boot Windows 95/98/ME from your USB. If you want just DOS, then do not install Windows.