Mudderoy
02-02-2010, 04:53 PM
Many modern day systems no longer come with floppy drives, so how are you supposed to load a new BIOS, or boot into DOS to run a virus scan, or malware search and destroy tool?
If you have a USB flash drive you can boot from it! Your motherboard has to support this feature of course. Please review your documentation that came with your system on how to activate this feature, or if it is available on your system.
There are a few ways to make a USB flash drive bootable, I'll go over one way that I use.
First grab the free HP Drive Key Boot Utility (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN).
Save this file to your computer and install it.
Now download and extract the contents to c:\win98boot this file (http://xjtalk.com/images/special/win98boot.zip).
WARNING THIS WILL FORMAT YOUR USB FLASH MEMORY DRIVE AND ALL INFORMATION WILL BE LOST!!!
Now run the HP Drive Key Boot Utility. Select the USB flash memory drive, if it is not already selected for you.
http://xjtalk.com/images/special/usb-bootable1.jpg
Browse to where you installed the Win98 boot files. (c:\win98boot).
http://xjtalk.com/images/special/usb-bootable2.jpg
Click the Start button.
The utility is now formatting your USB flash memory drive.
When complete you can copy the contents of C:\Win98boot to your USB drive. If you want to have CDROM support also copy the files from the "cdrom" sub-directory.
Now boot your computer and see if your work, well works.
You can add any DOS based program that was written to run on your processor. MalWareBytes has an excellent DOS utility that scans for malware. AVG from grisoft may be copied here so you can scan for viruses. This is very handy since most viruses/malware are Windows aware and will fight you for control of your Windows based system. Booting to DOS from the USB flash drive gets around the control for MS Windows issue.
If you have a USB flash drive you can boot from it! Your motherboard has to support this feature of course. Please review your documentation that came with your system on how to activate this feature, or if it is available on your system.
There are a few ways to make a USB flash drive bootable, I'll go over one way that I use.
First grab the free HP Drive Key Boot Utility (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN).
Save this file to your computer and install it.
Now download and extract the contents to c:\win98boot this file (http://xjtalk.com/images/special/win98boot.zip).
WARNING THIS WILL FORMAT YOUR USB FLASH MEMORY DRIVE AND ALL INFORMATION WILL BE LOST!!!
Now run the HP Drive Key Boot Utility. Select the USB flash memory drive, if it is not already selected for you.
http://xjtalk.com/images/special/usb-bootable1.jpg
Browse to where you installed the Win98 boot files. (c:\win98boot).
http://xjtalk.com/images/special/usb-bootable2.jpg
Click the Start button.
The utility is now formatting your USB flash memory drive.
When complete you can copy the contents of C:\Win98boot to your USB drive. If you want to have CDROM support also copy the files from the "cdrom" sub-directory.
Now boot your computer and see if your work, well works.
You can add any DOS based program that was written to run on your processor. MalWareBytes has an excellent DOS utility that scans for malware. AVG from grisoft may be copied here so you can scan for viruses. This is very handy since most viruses/malware are Windows aware and will fight you for control of your Windows based system. Booting to DOS from the USB flash drive gets around the control for MS Windows issue.