Creating a DOS Boot Disk The most persistent problem with PC troubleshooting is that it can be difficult to boot a system successfully—especially if there are hard-drive problems. This makes it particularly important to have a bootable floppy diskette on hand. The two means of creating a boot disk are automatically (through an existing Windows 95 platform) or manually (through a DOS platform. In either case, you’re going to need access to a running PC with an operating system that is similar to the version you plan to install on the new PC. Windows 95 Windows 95 comes with an automatic Startup Disk maker. If you have access to a Windows 95 system, use the following procedure to create a DOS x startup disk Label a blank diskette and insert it into your floppy drive. - Click on Start, Settings, and Control Panel. - Double-click on the Add/remove programs icon. - Select the Startup disk tab. - Click on Create disk. - The utility will remind you to insert a diskette, then prepare the disk automatically. When the preparation is complete, test the diskette. The preparation process takes several minutes, and will copy the following files to your diskette ATTRIB, CHKDSK, COMMAND, DEBUG, DRVSPACE.BIN, EDIT, FDISK, FORMAT, REGEDIT, SCANDISK, SYS, and UNINSTAL. All of these files are DOS 7.x-based files, so you can run them from the A prompt. The Windows 95 FDISK utility has been reported to have a bug that can cause problems when creating more than one partition on the same drive. Later releases of Windows 95 (i.e., OSR 2) claim to have corrected this issue, but if you encounter problems with FDISK, use the DOS 6.22 version.