Installing Windows 95 From 29 Floppy Disks - An Attempt

One of my first jobs was installing Windows 98 on school computers. Every computer lab and every class room computer needed to be updated by disk. I would start with the first computer on disk one. When it would finish with disk 1 I would start disk 2 and move on to the next PC to get it started with disk one... By the end of the day I would be walking between 6 different class rooms moving discs around as I installed Windows 98 on 100 computers one disc at a time.

This video is PLEASE INSERT DISK 2 TO READ THE REST OF THIS COMMENT.

I remember doing this. A nightmare. Back then, believe it or not, it wasn't how long it took. It was the fear that it would freeze at 98% on day two and you ended up with a brick! No internet, not forums, no google help. And Microsoft wasn't exactly helpful.

FEEL THE TRUE WINDOWS 95 INSTALLATION

In the year 2525, Michael is still installing Windows 95. edit: In the early days, MS had no real copy protection on their products. In most cases, you could totally make up a product key and it would work. For OS and Office software and some other things, you were required to allow the machine to write to the disk during install. This then marked the disc with your name and serial key so that it was loosely tied to you. You could still give out the software to anyone, but it would be personalized specifically to you. I took an old copy of Word for either DOS or Win 3.11 that my father in law wasn't using anymore and during the install, it came up with his name and info. I wasn't a fan of it, so I went back to whatever it was that I was using at the time (probably WordPerfect).

install office 97 proffessional plus from floppy disks there are around 45 of them

I remember trying to install 95 like this on a 386 with my dad and failing. We had no idea what we were doing.

65,536 bytes in bad sectors? I think your hard drive might be failing and need replacing 😞

I was thinking when I saw this video headline that no floppy disk install attempt would be complete without having damaged disks. Thanks for keeping true to historical accuracy. lol...

I'm sure someone told you this already, but just in case: some laptops or computers from that time (thinking of Toshiba Satellite 200CDT/CDS) came with the option of Win95 / Win3.11 and on first launch you had to choose which one you want. It then allowed you to create the setup disks. For this, they usually provided you with the floppy disk stickers for both options, but you obviously had to buy the diskettes yourself. I might still have a set of unused 95 stickers lying around somewhere. If you already knew this, I have a video suggestion: could you recover the setup files for both OSes on one of these computers? What's on the disk before they make you choose?

As for the disks being genuine or not, I think I remember getting computers with the system installed and you had to create the disks yourself as a 'backup'. I don't remember getting labels to stick on them but that might have happened. So you could end up with original labels on a load of odd disks.

I've done that....will never forget how ridiculous it was. I can tell you all the floppys were beige...I didn't have a working CD, so I had no choice but to install by floppy. Now, imagine a 4 hour download of internet explorer over modem and have someone call an hour before completing it and having to download the entire thing all over again.

5:29 I remember you couldn't just copy diskettes with setup files to other diskettes because Microsoft used advanced DMF formatting with 1.68MB instead of 1.44MB and you needed special DOS utility to be able to format or read from that capacity... 8:45 it was not that uncommon that the setup freezes in the middle you could just have restarted your PC, setup was programmed in a way that it knows which part of driver detection/installation caused the PC to freeze and it will bypass that part and continue installation like nothing happened. It may happen even 2 or 3 times but eventually you will get windows installed.

Found in an old forum... GregM August 19, 2005 at 11:16 am My wife got a Digital notebook at one time that came with Windows 95 pre-installed, but didn’t include distribution media. What it included was a set of 30 floppy disk labels, and a utility to create the distribution media on 30 floppies that you provided. We actually created them, just in case. (It was a work computer, so we didn’t have to buy the floppies.) So these actually did exist.

I'm pretty sure when setting up my dad's first PC (from PC World, here in the UK) we had to create installation media as part of the setup on first boot. The computer came with the labels but you had to supply your own disks. Imagine buying a brand new computer and then having to spend all that time writing 30-odd floppy disks!

now install windows 98 from 30 floppy discs

The piracy message and the computer freezing is like one of those anti-piracy creepy videos

I admire the attempt, good sir. Dealing with that many disks is not for the faint of heart. Shame it didn't pan out.

Now, that was a real good incentive for a CDROM purchase! :)

could be humidity and age messing with the diskettes