Windows 95 OSR 2.5 Error Message.

[TheSpiritingPoet]

While detecting plug and play devices, an error pops up saying 'Please insert the disk labelled 'Windows 95 Disk4', and then click OK'.
To my knowledge, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 didn't come out on floppies so why is this message popping up? I have looked on the FTP as well as WinWorld but nothing.
I have tried Windows 95a's disks but no luck.

Offtopic Comment

Yes, I have wasted 2-5 hours installing Windows 95 from floppy disks.

Here is the image.


What is going on?

[AlphaBeta]

Copy the \WIN95 directory from the CD to the VM's hard disk in DOS, then reboot to Windows and point the installer to the copied directory.

[TheSpiritingPoet]

Copy the \WIN95 directory from the CD to the VM's hard disk in DOS, then reboot to Windows and point the installer to the copied directory.

Thank you. That worked.
Although, my question was that why this would pop up?
Was Microsoft too lazy to change the code from the floppy version?

[BF10]

I think it is a bug at that point where setup cannot read the CD-ROM drive at all. Microsoft probably forgot to change the message. No, there was no floppy version of the OSRs or 98SE.

[Overdoze]

I'd say it's more of a design flaw. It works fine before setup asks you to reboot because the CD driver is loaded by the bootdisk. It seems that after the computer restarts, Windows starts from the hard disk and wants to install device drivers, but it needs to get these drivers from the CD, for which it doesn't have the driver installed and loaded yet. So you can get around this by copying the CD contents to the hard disk or using a floppy release. Either way, I'm not sure how this issue got past testing and persisted for so long...

As for the error message itself, it's due to LAYOUT.INF in PRECOPY2.CAB. Apparently they used this file from a floppy release of OSR2/2.1 and didn't actually update it for the CD-only release of OSR2.5, because it works with CD releases anyway. Lazy much?

[ingyu0413]

I think Windows 95 floppy version using DMF format.

[Battler]

For Windows 95 RTM, use this boot disk: http://citadel.ringoflightning.net/BOOT95.IMG - it's a correct period boot disk and the CD-ROM problem does not occur with it.
Still looking for one for 95 OSR 2.x.

[MSUser2013]

Thank you. That worked.
Although, my question was that why this would pop up?
Was Microsoft too lazy to change the code from the floppy version?

In my experience with installing Windows 95 OSR2, this happens when the setup tries to install drivers for hardware that's detected on the second setup stage (but fails to retrieve the files from the CD, because the CD driver hasn't loaded yet), it usually doesn't skip out on any of the operating system's components, if anything, I skip the copying of these files and reinstall the missing drivers via Device Manager after completion of the setup.

In the case of my Celeron-433 build, the driver it tries to install is the driver for my Sound Blaster AWE64's joystick/MIDI port.

[BF10]

Thank you. That worked.
Although, my question was that why this would pop up?
Was Microsoft too lazy to change the code from the floppy version?

In my experience with installing Windows 95 OSR2, this happens when the setup tries to install drivers for hardware that's detected on the second setup stage (but fails to retrieve the files from the CD, because the CD driver hasn't loaded yet), it usually doesn't skip out on any of the operating system's components, if anything, I skip the copying of these files and reinstall the missing drivers via Device Manager after completion of the setup.

In the case of my Celeron-433 build, the driver it tries to install is the driver for my Sound Blaster AWE64's joystick/MIDI port.

Yep, when this error occurs it will likely affect network drivers too as well. It doesn't skip anything vital but it is annoying if your drivers aren't working.

[Battler]

As I said, this is the result of people using inappropriate boot disks, usually the ones from allbootdisk.com . Back in the day, you'd use the boot disk that came with your PC and you wouldn't encounter this problems.

[DVINTHEHOUSEMAN]

Just install the MSCDEX driver for DOS

[sdfox7]

As I said, this is the result of people using inappropriate boot disks, usually the ones from allbootdisk.com . Back in the day, you'd use the boot disk that came with your PC and you wouldn't encounter this problems.

Yes, there were floppy based and CD ROM based boot disks for Windows 95. I've use the floppy boot (http://sdfox7.com/win95/BOOT95A.EXE) and CD boot (http://sdfox7.com/win95/BOOT95B.EXE).

Also, I always found it easier on CD systems to just copy all the \win95 contents to c:\w95\flat. I would then execute c:\w95\flat\setup.exe. It was nice because you wouldn't have to constantly put in and take out the CD ROM.

[Battler]

- sdfox7: It's about that .INF file that period CD-ROM-based boot disks have but the allbootdisk.com disks (that you linked to mirrors of) don't. That causes Windows 95 to not copy over and configure the DOS CD-ROM driver, which means there's going to be no CD-ROM after the reboot until the 32-bit driver is installed.