Subj : BOOTABLE CD
To   : MICHAEL J. RYAN
From : DON BOX
Date : Thu Jan 10 2002 10:01 pm

MR> > OEM CD's are not bootable. These are the one's usually supplied wi
MR> > newly made clone or purchased over the counter. They come with boo
MR> > floppys. Win98C is the only bootable 9x disk that I know of. It is
MR> > supplied with newly purchased systems from a major mfgr.

MR> I have had OEM 98 cd's since they FIRST came out that have been boot
MR> now if YOUR oem didn't have boot, it may have been a custom
MR> configuration/recovery disk.. or bootlegged.

Not bootlegged... MS had two different CDs. One was over-the-counter 
type of purchase which is also the one used for clone built systems. 
Most bios in those days didn't support a boot to CD, and to my knowledge 
only systems designd for NT had the El Torito standard. The OEM came 
with clones or bought over the counter and also had a MS supplied boot 
disk come with it.

Major mfgrs like Dell, Compaq, Gateway... etc had an arrangement with 
MS, and were supplied with Win98C, which supported a boot from CD. Most 
computer shops supplied the regular (non bootable) CD as their 
arrangement with MS to use that CD was cheaper for them. As the local 
shops usually built systems to spec along with OS and hardware mods, 
this was the easiest way to go. This was explained to me very thoroughly 
by a couple of my favorite shops.

Nothing shady about it. MS had two different full version releases and 
I think we're prolly using OEM to describe different things. OK, let's 
try it like this...

Versions A and B were not bootable. Version C is. Version C is supposed 
to come only with a brand new computer... not everybody follows the 
rules.

DB
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