startup floppy for Win XP

[Tom Crowley]

A startup floppy (boot disk) can be made from a Win98
PC so that the computer can be restarted in MS-DOS. This
is usually done from: control panel\add-remove programs.
Can a WinXP machine be restarted in MS-DOS? There does
not appear to be a way to make a startup floppy from the
control panel as in Win98. is there another way to do
this?

[R. C. White]

Hi, Tom.

Win9x/ME were based on MS-DOS. WinXP does not include MS-DOS at all.

But, WinXP does allow us to format a boot floppy for MS-DOS. All we need do
is right-click on Drive A: in My Computer, then choose Format... from the
context menu and then choose to Create an MS-DOS startup disk.

Note that this floppy starts MS-DOS. It does NOT start WinXP. To do that,
you need to create a different floppy with the NT-style boot sector and the
<300 KB of WinXP system files, including boot.ini, which will point to the
WinXP boot folder on the HD.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP

"Tom Crowley" > wrote in message
...
> A startup floppy (boot disk) can be made from a Win98
> PC so that the computer can be restarted in MS-DOS. This
> is usually done from: control panel\add-remove programs.
> Can a WinXP machine be restarted in MS-DOS? There does
> not appear to be a way to make a startup floppy from the
> control panel as in Win98. is there another way to do
> this?

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Since all retail and most if not all OEM Windows XP CDs are bootable
with all repair and installation options available from the CD,
Start-up floppies are normally not required.

You can make a MS-DOS Boot Disk (no CDROM support)
Insert blank floppy.
Open My Computer, right click floppy.
Click Format, click MS-DOS Boot Disk, follow prompts.

These can also be made:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q310994

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
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"Tom Crowley" > wrote in message
...
> A startup floppy (boot disk) can be made from a Win98
> PC so that the computer can be restarted in MS-DOS. This
> is usually done from: control panel\add-remove programs.
> Can a WinXP machine be restarted in MS-DOS? There does
> not appear to be a way to make a startup floppy from the
> control panel as in Win98. is there another way to do
> this?