Clever Boot Trick w/o Startup Disk

[Roy]

You can get to the "6 Choice" Startup screen ~ Safe Mode, DOS Command Prompt, etc. ~ without using a Startup Disk or Boot Disk.

Start the machine with any non-bootable disk in the A drive. When the message comes up to replace it, remove it and press F8 twice. This will take you to the Startup screen.

It works with W98, and possibly with W95.

[seti]

Can't you just push Ctrl before windows goes to load? I can.

[Roy]

Maybe so. I'll try it!

[BBA]

All you have to do is press F8 a few times right when the "Verifying DMI data..." shows before the "Starting Windowsxxx" line comes up.

BBA

[Roy]

Thanks, seti and BBA.

I knew there were other tricks, part of the reason for my post was to smoke them out.

The essential point comes from BBA ~ press F8 twice, or hold CTRL when "Verifying DMI Pool Data" comes on the screen. Timing is everything.

[CMonster]

I think you can also specify a number of seconds the system will pause, allowing more time to press F8, by editing MSDOS.sys and adding a Bootdelay= "x" line in there or something like that. I know that "Bootdelay=0" will really make your timing critical.

[Chainsaw]

Tweak UI may give you a small degree of control through the boot also, but probably not the boot timing that you are refering to.