Windows 95 Floppy Disk Download

• Windows 95 Floppy Disk Download Pc
• Windows 95 Floppy Disk Iso Download
• Windows 95 Floppy Disk Download

Ok so I have an old laptop with only a floppy drive. It came with windows 95 on it but suffered from some terrible BSODs that I could not resolve. I figured I would just download some windows 95 install disks and reformat it, but apparently those disks were a special type and format that held more than 1.4mb. All the floppies I have are incapable of being formatted that way.

Is there any other way to make windows 95 install disks that fit onto standard disks? Or is there some way I can split these into smaller files and then copy them all onto the hd and then join them up again and install it that way?

I currently have windows 3.11 installed.

4 Answers

These are Distribution Media Format disks, storing 1.68 MB of data instead of the usual 1.44 MB (on high-density 3.5' disks).

There are a couple of strategies you can use:

1. You can create floppies with the original contents of the installation disks. If you're running Windows, WinImage is supposed to be able to write such images to floppies. Under Linux, you can format DMF disks using fdformat and write the images directly.

2. You can copy the images' contents to a directory (W95INST for example) on the laptop's hard drive, if you have some other way of copying files there, and then run SETUP from the hard drive. To copy the files, you could for example use a serial or parallel cable with INTERSRV and INTERLNK under DOS, or extract the drive from the laptop and connect it to another system. Using floppies to do this is also possible but will be a bit more involved since most of the files on the installation disks are larger than standard floppies, so you'll need to split them.

The W2K Pro disks are zipped images from the MS CD. Best bet is to download them, upzip them to a new folder where you also put makeboot.exe and makebt32.exe into and then run one of the makeboot utils depending on if you're in dos or windows to create the diskset. Need more info about the different versions of Windows 95? This image provides FAT32 support. To use this image simply click here to download it, then just double-click it and follow the instructions. It will ask you to put a new floppy disk into your floppy drive, then it will format the disk, and copy the bootdisk image to it. It still ran on top of DOS, but bundled its own special 'Windows 95' DOS (AKA MS-DOS 7). It could even still make use of DOS drivers. The 95 architecture was continued with Windows 98. Most 95 CDs are NOT BOOTABLE. If a download does not include a boot floppy, please see Microsoft Windows Boot Disks.

You need the disk images that use 21 floppies, not 13. Originally Win95 came on 21 1.44mb disks, and it wasn't until later that it moved to the 13 DMF format disks. However, do you really not have an old external CD drive laying around? That would be far easier.

As Stephen Kitt mentioned, if you have enough floppies, you can make a ZIP file of the installation directory and span it over several floppies. This way you can use whatever disks you happen to have hanging around and don't have to worry if they contain bad sectors as much (those disks simply will hold slightly less.) As the CAB files are already compressed, don't worry too much about compression levels: the difference between level 0 and level 9 will be very small. An additional benefit is that PKUNZIP will tell you if there are errors in the archive, so you don't end up with corrupted installation files on the other end.

However, as you mentioned getting blue screen errors previously, I would look into why you got the the errors in the first place before installing Windows 95, as they could be indicative of hardware issues.

I think you have a bigger problem here.

The expected lifespan of computers is around 5 years. Parts may be designed to last 10 years or so. Your laptop though must be at least 25 years old. I'm frankly amazed that it works at all.

Do you have all the data transferred off the hard drive? If not, do it now! Hopefully you can connect the hard drive to your regular PC, or you can back up files to floppies between BSODs. Either way, get that data somewhere else, because your entire laptop and all its data could die permanently at any time.

And also think about how much you value your time. A new netbook costs peanuts, and even a moderate-spec laptop isn't that expensive. You could spend days fighting this and never have it working, because it's too far gone; or you could just buy another PC. If you're trying to get it working out of curiosity, I suggest you try Ubuntu Linux instead as an extra layer of curiosity, and also because you can get that freely, unlike Windows.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged floppy-diskwindows-95 or ask your own question.

Microsoft's Windows 95 was a huge leap from Windows 3.1. It was the first release of Windows with the Start menu, taskbar, and typical Windows desktop interface we still use today. Windows 95 won't work on modern PC hardware, but you can still install it in a virtual machine and relive those glory days.

RELATED:How to Install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox, Set Up Drivers, and Play 16-bit Games

This may be useful if you want to play an old game that doesn't work in Windows 10's compatibility mode, although Windows 98 may be more ideal for Windows 9x-era games. Or you could just do it for a little kick of nostalgia. We wouldn't blame you.

What You'll Need

You'll need two things for this: A Windows 95 ISO file and a Windows 95 boot disk image. Unlike modern operating systems, the Windows 95 installation disc isn't bootable. You must first boot into an MS-DOS environment from a Windows 95 boot disk, which would have been a floppy disk at the time, to get the installation started.

If you have an old Windows 95 CD lying around, you can insert it into your PC and create an ISO file from it. While ISO files of Windows 95 are available online, bear in mind that Windows 95 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can't be legally downloaded from the web. So start digging through those old drawers of yours.

Once you've got your Windows 95 ISO file, you can download a boot diskette image from AllBootDisks. You will probably just need to download the 'Windows95a.img' file. Windows 95b (also known as Windows 95 OSR2) was only available to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), so any Windows 95 disc you have lying around will either by the original Windows 95 release (also known as Windows 95 RTM) or the Windows 95a release (also known as Windows 95 OSR1), which came with Service Pack 1 installed.

Step One: Create Your Virtual Machine

RELATED:Beginner Geek: How to Create and Use Virtual Machines

We'll be doing this in VirtualBox, which is completely free to use and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can do it in other virtual machine programs like VMware, but the process of configuring the virtual machine software will be a little different.

Once you have VirtualBox installed, click the 'New' button to create a new virtual machine.

4 Answers

These are Distribution Media Format disks, storing 1.68 MB of data instead of the usual 1.44 MB (on high-density 3.5' disks).

There are a couple of strategies you can use:

1. You can create floppies with the original contents of the installation disks. If you're running Windows, WinImage is supposed to be able to write such images to floppies. Under Linux, you can format DMF disks using fdformat and write the images directly.

2. You can copy the images' contents to a directory (W95INST for example) on the laptop's hard drive, if you have some other way of copying files there, and then run SETUP from the hard drive. To copy the files, you could for example use a serial or parallel cable with INTERSRV and INTERLNK under DOS, or extract the drive from the laptop and connect it to another system. Using floppies to do this is also possible but will be a bit more involved since most of the files on the installation disks are larger than standard floppies, so you'll need to split them.

The W2K Pro disks are zipped images from the MS CD. Best bet is to download them, upzip them to a new folder where you also put makeboot.exe and makebt32.exe into and then run one of the makeboot utils depending on if you're in dos or windows to create the diskset. Need more info about the different versions of Windows 95? This image provides FAT32 support. To use this image simply click here to download it, then just double-click it and follow the instructions. It will ask you to put a new floppy disk into your floppy drive, then it will format the disk, and copy the bootdisk image to it. It still ran on top of DOS, but bundled its own special 'Windows 95' DOS (AKA MS-DOS 7). It could even still make use of DOS drivers. The 95 architecture was continued with Windows 98. Most 95 CDs are NOT BOOTABLE. If a download does not include a boot floppy, please see Microsoft Windows Boot Disks.

You need the disk images that use 21 floppies, not 13. Originally Win95 came on 21 1.44mb disks, and it wasn't until later that it moved to the 13 DMF format disks. However, do you really not have an old external CD drive laying around? That would be far easier.

As Stephen Kitt mentioned, if you have enough floppies, you can make a ZIP file of the installation directory and span it over several floppies. This way you can use whatever disks you happen to have hanging around and don't have to worry if they contain bad sectors as much (those disks simply will hold slightly less.) As the CAB files are already compressed, don't worry too much about compression levels: the difference between level 0 and level 9 will be very small. An additional benefit is that PKUNZIP will tell you if there are errors in the archive, so you don't end up with corrupted installation files on the other end.

However, as you mentioned getting blue screen errors previously, I would look into why you got the the errors in the first place before installing Windows 95, as they could be indicative of hardware issues.

I think you have a bigger problem here.

The expected lifespan of computers is around 5 years. Parts may be designed to last 10 years or so. Your laptop though must be at least 25 years old. I'm frankly amazed that it works at all.

Do you have all the data transferred off the hard drive? If not, do it now! Hopefully you can connect the hard drive to your regular PC, or you can back up files to floppies between BSODs. Either way, get that data somewhere else, because your entire laptop and all its data could die permanently at any time.

And also think about how much you value your time. A new netbook costs peanuts, and even a moderate-spec laptop isn't that expensive. You could spend days fighting this and never have it working, because it's too far gone; or you could just buy another PC. If you're trying to get it working out of curiosity, I suggest you try Ubuntu Linux instead as an extra layer of curiosity, and also because you can get that freely, unlike Windows.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged floppy-diskwindows-95 or ask your own question.

Microsoft's Windows 95 was a huge leap from Windows 3.1. It was the first release of Windows with the Start menu, taskbar, and typical Windows desktop interface we still use today. Windows 95 won't work on modern PC hardware, but you can still install it in a virtual machine and relive those glory days.

RELATED:How to Install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox, Set Up Drivers, and Play 16-bit Games

This may be useful if you want to play an old game that doesn't work in Windows 10's compatibility mode, although Windows 98 may be more ideal for Windows 9x-era games. Or you could just do it for a little kick of nostalgia. We wouldn't blame you.

What You'll Need

You'll need two things for this: A Windows 95 ISO file and a Windows 95 boot disk image. Unlike modern operating systems, the Windows 95 installation disc isn't bootable. You must first boot into an MS-DOS environment from a Windows 95 boot disk, which would have been a floppy disk at the time, to get the installation started.

If you have an old Windows 95 CD lying around, you can insert it into your PC and create an ISO file from it. While ISO files of Windows 95 are available online, bear in mind that Windows 95 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can't be legally downloaded from the web. So start digging through those old drawers of yours.

Once you've got your Windows 95 ISO file, you can download a boot diskette image from AllBootDisks. You will probably just need to download the 'Windows95a.img' file. Windows 95b (also known as Windows 95 OSR2) was only available to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), so any Windows 95 disc you have lying around will either by the original Windows 95 release (also known as Windows 95 RTM) or the Windows 95a release (also known as Windows 95 OSR1), which came with Service Pack 1 installed.

Step One: Create Your Virtual Machine

RELATED:Beginner Geek: How to Create and Use Virtual Machines

We'll be doing this in VirtualBox, which is completely free to use and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can do it in other virtual machine programs like VMware, but the process of configuring the virtual machine software will be a little different.

Once you have VirtualBox installed, click the 'New' button to create a new virtual machine.

Enter whatever name you like and select 'Windows 95' from the Version box. If you name it 'Windows 95', VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct Windows version.

Choose how much RAM you want to expose to your virtual machine. VirtualBox recommends 64 MB, while official Microsoft blog The Old New Thing claims that Windows 95 won't boot if it has more than around 480 MB of memory. You could split the difference and safely use 256 MB, which would be more than enough for old Windows 95 applications.

Continue through the wizard until you're prompted to create your virtual hard disk. VirtualBox will automatically suggest 2.0 GB, and you probably don't want to go over that. The retail versions of Windows 95 only support the FAT16 file system, which means they can't use drives over 2 GB in size.

Windows 95b (aka OSR2), which was only released to device manufactures and never sold at retail, does support FAT32. So, if you were using this version of Windows 95, you could theoretically use up to 32 GB of space.

Don't boot up the machine right after you're finished creating it. First, you'll need to change a few settings. Right-click your Windows 95 virtual machine and select 'Settings'.

Click the 'System' category, click the 'Acceleration' tab, and uncheck 'Enable VT-x/AMD-V' hardware virtualization.

If you leave this option enabled, you'll be able to install Windows 95, but it will just show a black screen when it boots up afterwards.

Next, click the 'Storage' category and select the virtual drive under the Floppy controller. Click the floppy disk button to the right of Floppy Drive and click 'Choose Virtual Floppy Disk File' in the menu. Browse to the boot disk .img file and select it.

Finally, click the Empty disc drive under the IDE controller, click the disc icon to the right of Optical Drive, and click 'Choose Virtual Optical DIsk File'. Browse to your Windows 95 ISO file and select it.

Click 'OK' to save your settings when you're done.

Step Two: Prepare Your Virtual C: Drive

You can now just double-click the Windows 95 virtual machine in your library to boot it up. It will boot to a DOS prompt.

Note that the virtual machine will capture your keyboard and mouse once you click inside it, but you can press the host key—that's the right Ctrl key on your keyboard, by default—to free your input and use your PC's desktop normally. The key is displayed at the bottom right corner of the virtual machine window.

First, you'll need to partition the virtual drive you created. Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter:

This process is very simple. You'll be starting with an empty drive, so you just want to create a DOS partition. That's the default option, which is '1'. You just need to accept the default options to go through the fdisk process.

You can just press 'Enter' three times after launching fdisk to create a DOS partition, create a primary partition, and agree that you want to use the maximum size of the drive and make the partition active.

Windows 95 Floppy Disk Download Pc

You'll be told you have to restart your virtual machine before continuing. To do this, click Input > Keyboard > Insert Ctrl-Alt-Del in VirtualBox. Press the right Ctrl key to free your mouse first, if necessary.

You'll now need to format your new partition, which will be available in the virtual machine as the C: drive. To format it, type the following command at the A:> prompt and press Enter:

Type Y and press Enter to agree to the format process when prompted. You'll then be prompted to Enter a label for the drive. You can enter whatever you like, or nothing at all. Press 'Enter' afterwards to finish the process.

Step Three: Launch the Windows 95 Installer

You will now need to copy the files from the Windows 95 ISO file to your C: drive. Theoretically, you should just be able to run the Setup program from the disc drive itself to install Windows 95. However, this produces errors, as the disc drive isn't mounted after the installer reboots, and the installer isn't able to find driver files it needs. Instead, we found it much easier to simply copy the files to the C: drive and run the installer from there.

First, figure out which drive letter your disc drive was mounted as. This is displayed when your virtual machine boots up. On our virtual machine, it's the R: drive. If you forgot and can't see it on your screen, you can always restart your virtual machine once again with the Ctrl+Alt+Delete option in the keyboard menu to view this info.

Run the following command to copy the files from the Windows 95 disc to your C: drive, replacing R: with whatever drive letter corresponds to your virtual disc drive.

When the process is complete, you can now switch to your C: drive and launch the setup program from the INSTALL program, like so:

Press Enter once again to continue when prompted.

The graphical Windows 95 setup program will appear. From here on out, you can do everything graphically without messing with the DOS prompt.

The actual installation process is simple. On most screens, you can accept the default options and speed through the process. You will be prompted to enter your Windows 95 product key before the installation process finishes, however. Different editions of Windows 95 require different product keys, so ensure you're using the correct key.

When you reach the Analyzing Your Computer screen, be sure to check the 'Network Adapter' and 'Sound, MIDI, or Video Capture Card' options to ensure all the virtual machine's hardware is correctly detected and configured.

When you're asked to create a Startup Disk, you can select 'No, I do not want a startup disk' to continue. This isn't 1995 and you're not installing this on a real PC, after all.

The actual installation process will be extremely quick on modern hardware, even in a virtual machine.

At the end of the setup process, Windows will prompt you to reboot and tell you to remove the floppy disk from your computer. To do this, click Devices > Floppy Drive > Remove Disk From Virtual Drive. Click 'OK' to reboot your PC and continue afterwards.

The setup process will continue setting up your hardware. You'll be told you have to provide a workgroup name to continue, but you can enter anything you like here.

Finally, you'll be prompted to provide your time zone and set up a printer. You can just click 'Cancel' in the Add Printer Wizard window to skip configuring a printer when it appears.

Finally, your PC will reboot and you'll be prompted to create a password. You'll then be presented with the Windows 95 desktop. You're done—you now have a Windows 95 virtual machine.

To really get back into the 90's, open Windows Explorer from Windows 95's Start menu and head to the C:InstallFunstuffVideos folder. You'll find music videos for Weezer's Buddy Holly ('Weezer') and Edie Brickell's Good Times ('Goodtime'), which were included on the Windows 95 disc. There's also a movie trailer for the movie Rob Roy, which was also released in 1995.

The videos in the 'Highperf' folder are higher quality than the ones in the main Videos folder, so be sure to watch those—your modern PC can handle them!

Windows 95 Floppy Disk Iso Download

Windows 95 Floppy Disk Download

• › How to Easily Recycle the Old Electronics You Can't Sell
• › How to Check if Your Chromecast Is Still Getting Updates
• › How to Play Adobe Flash SWF Files Outside Your Web Browser
• › Command Lines: Why Do People Still Bother With Them?
• › What to Do When Your Mac Won't Shut Down