This sucks...

[bobcat]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/11599.html

[Target]

Surely there will be ways around this...but they aren't making it easy are they?

[gradius]

Ok. I just read the article, twice actually, but I don't understand why Mircosoft would do this? Why not just boot to a pure DOS enviroment and do the upgrade via your hard drive? That's what I have to do b/c my floppy drive is shot and I'm saving up for a 120MB superdisk drive.

[BFlurie]

The beta testers @ winmag.com complained bitterly to MS about this, to no avail. Other OS's are beginning to look better every day.

[BBA]

well...there is a way to make a boot disk with ME and W2K ( I made a ME boot disk just to see if it was possible, it was tricky but it worked, I can email a copy of it to anyone who wants )

The problem is that the average person will not know how to do it ( not that they do already, lol )...and they have not learned the joys of booting from a CD-ROM, of which since NT4 they all have been bootable ( including W98 ).

HP has computers now that ship with NO floppy drive at all! That one was fun to build an image for, since we are reviewing them at work.

[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 06-27-2000).]

[tonym]

This underscores the fact that the computer industry is a continuous chain of "cart driving the horse" events.

Why the hell would you want to take away the most ubiquitous means of data storage (the 1.44MB floppy) from a computer and hobble the operating system to disable rudimentary, but very useful commands?

Stupidity, that's my theory! The industry (read: Micro$oft) decides what's good and bad for us. This week, floppy = bad. So, we won't readily support it any more. You see, they don't give a whit about folks that can actually think and use a computer. They want to cultivate a box where they can manipulate the playing field...the Internet will be your only source for software -- and most likely the rental of software "modules" for temporary use. Sure, CDROM and DVD will exist but the transportability that was once possible with the floppy has to go in order for higher profits to be realized in the future.

And HP ought to have their collective head examined for shipping a box with no FDD! What did that save them? About 10 bucks per box?? Just plain dumb! I for one wouldn't (at this time) buy a box without an FDD uless there was a viable alternative for transportable storage included. Period.

MS does't need the Justice department to break them up. It will be done in time via the hubris and overconfidence of their own marketing. Dumb is as dumb does!!!


Tony

[dkozloski]

If all you're trying to do is update your BIOS it makes no difference what the operating system is that is installed on your computer. Make a boot disc by sysing a formatted disc on any handy system with Win95 or Win98 and install the update files on that. Stick that in the computer in question and power up. The machine starts up, POSTS, picks up the disc in the A drive and you're good to go. The hard drive with Win2K or WinME could be disconnected and in the trunk of your car and it wouldn't make any difference

[DrCorvette]

What I've read about the no-floppy deal is that some corp's want to be protected against accidental inclustion of rogue programs and viruses to their system. Also, the likelehood of theft of data is reduced with no "A" drive. DrVette

[krusty the klown]

That's a nice touch! Cheeeeeeeeeeers Microshaft!

You can always use a Win 98 CD-ROM to boot from, if you need DOS.

That doesn't solve the problem of BIOS upd8s, which need real mode DOS with no drivers loaded (D'OH!!!!!!)

If you copied the BIOS upd8 files into a folder on the HDD, you could use a simple DOS boot floppy, then change directory to C:\BIOS (whatever you called it) and run the awardflash.exe prog from there.

[CMonster]

Looks like DRDOS (http://www.drdos.com) may actually make a comeback.

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 06-28-2000).]

[BBA]

Heres the secret...you can use ME to make a recovery diskette. THen you edit it to remove the automatically load the OS stuff, add cdrom drivers ( sans mscdex and himem.sys ) and boom...you have a booting floppy of ME with CDROM.

W2K ships with a dir on the cd with a program to create a Win95 sys boot floppy.

Either way, if you know what your doing, it's no problem. If you don't, should you be flashing bios's anyway?

I like the floppyless PC actually. The Floppy is outdated. Bootable CD's on CD-RW drives seems just fine to me. No more limit of 1.44M or 2.05M ( with dos utilities ) for a floppy.

[flashngcurser]

Why use a floppy to update bios? (kind of off topic) I have always f8'ed until I'm in that menu (it has a name I'm sure hehe)and then I choose confirmation and I simply confirm nothing. I say no to all the choices. Use dos to find flash utility and then flash the bios from C:. I have never had a problem doing it this way, in fact i thought that is how everyone did it. I did it last night. It seems from what i read above that everyone is using a bootable floppy (ie format a:/s) to do the same. Is there a reason that this method might not work in the future?

[jad1097]

Thats funny because Partition Magic 5.01 use DRDOS now to work with Windows 2000.

[falcompsx]

the F8 menu in winME sucks. No more command prompt only modes or restart in msdos mode at all http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif Stupid M$ controls everything though so we can't get what we want or sometimes even what we need due to the jack@$$es in M$. Oh well.

[wtp]

man, that's messed up. I wonder if you can just send the startup files from the main windows folder to the floppy, and then boot from there.

wtp

[Prospero]

You know, if they aren't shiping a windows cdrom anymore with new computers, that sort of screws the bootable cd option. I guess they don't want us upgrading at all.

[nilknarf]

1. How many home users update their bios on their own?

2. How many home users even know enough to update their bios?

3. How many corporations don't have either on staff tech people, or support contracts with people, that could take care of bios updates?

4. Other than system recovery and bios updates, does anyone actually need to be able to make system disks with floppies?

5. I've done bios updates which don't require any OS boot at all. Just put the bios in update mode, put floppy with bios image in drive, reboot. Why doesn't everyone do this?

6. How many users, home, corporate, or otherwise, actually know what to do with command line functions?

7. Yes, MS is stupid for trying to remove DOS functionality from their OS. I have a lot of software which requires it. I know a lot of software companies that still use the DOS interface because they don't need high-res graphics and text based programs tend to work faster because they are less complex.

8. MS is not the only SW company out there. If you don't like what they are doing, complain to them about it, or go elsewhere.

9. Anyone who needs a command prompt, system floppy, or floppy drive, already has means to take care of it, or knows someone who does. Anyone who doesn't have the means, probably doesn't have the need either.

10. We are all entitled to our opinions. A little advice though; make sure that, in addition to posting your opinions here, you post them where they will do the most good, i.e., with MS, Intel, IBM, or whoever you have an opinion about. Because, they can't change anything if they don't know what people think.


Just my $.02

Tim

[alpha]

Well, years from now, when everyone's lost there system disks, I'll have never got enough money to fix my system and I'll be rolling out DOS 6.22 system disks at a small profit to all the people who need bios updates. hehhehheh j/k http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Funny, I've always supported non MS-DOSes, a lot were superior to MS-DOS and it seems they could finally get there break.