Subj : BOOTABLE CD
To   : STEWART HONSBERGER
From : DON BOX
Date : Fri Jan 11 2002 11:21 pm

SH>  DB> OEM CD's are not bootable. These are the one's usually supplied
SH>  DB> a newly made clone or purchased over the counter.

SH> I sell OEM equipment, including OEM operating systems, and they are
SH> certainly bootable.

Wait a min... let me remove my foot from my mouth, and please forgive my 
old age.

I saw Win98, but I'm thinking of Win95... which the only bootable 
installs CD's really were version C, and only if the BIOS supported the 
El Torito standard.

Now regarding Win98... when it first came out whether the upgrade 
version or the over the counter release, the typical home and office 
computer (other than business systems intended to run NT) did not boot 
to the CD Rom. Every install CD I ever saw came with a MS boot floppy 
which gave the choice to boot with CD support, or command line only or 
boot directly to CD and autorun setup. This was before Win98SE which came
along about the same time nearly all new systems now had the option in 
the bios to boot to CD.  

AAMOF I still run around with my original 98 install CD and boot floppy 
in my tech kit to recover friend's systems when they've ("oh, was that 
stuff that came in the box important?) mislocated their install and 
driver disks.

As of last year, even full versions of 98SE still came with boot 
floppys as I had to rebuild a couple of friend's boxes using their 
original install stuff, after they hosed their new machines beyond 
recognition. 

BTW, E-machine gave up on the restore disk and is using a bootable 
version of 98 and Millennium delivered by Ghost, now. Still installs the 
cabs on the harddisk for normal screwups.

Sorry for the confusion... I'm getting old!

DB



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