Last time we talked about making backup disks for your PC in case calamity comes a'calling (check out the previous 3 newsletters to catch up). The last in this little series concerns adding CD drivers to your backup disks, and (warning for you souped-up Windows users) is only of concern for Win 95 users. Win 98/ME users can cheerfully skip this issue and go watch TV; 95 users, you need this. (How come the 98/ME guys get to go out and play? Well, it's because Uncle Bill and his playmates decided that it didn't make sense for an OS to create backup disks that didn't really back up anything, particularly for those of us who have our original Windows on CD. I imagine that sometime around the 10,000th tech support call that started, "Yo, my system crashed and I can't reload Windows with the emergency boot disks," the gnomes at Microsoft decided to rework the emergency boot disk creation system to add the necessary CD drivers to the boot disk. Of course, that particular upgrade never made it into a Win 95 Service Pack, or I'd be writing this column about something else.)

Naturally, there is no one single way to add the appropriate CD drivers to your emergency backup disks. Why not? Well, there's more than one CD manufacturer out there, and every one of them does things a little differently; specifically each one includes their own DOS drivers to run their CD drives. Here's what you do: first, check the documentation that came with your system (it may be a README file on the CD) to find the CD driver: it will be a .SYS file. Now copy this file to your startup disk (remember that one? you made it as a result of an earlier newsletter). Find the MSCDEX.EXE file in your WINDOWS\COMMAND folder and copy it this disk. You'll need to change CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to reflect that the CD drive is operating from the disk (the A: drive) and not the C:\Windows\ folder. This can be easily done in Notepad; if you have questions, check your documentation. If you just cannot find your CD driver, go to Drivers HQ, find your CD's driver, and download it onto your disk. Remember, it's a DOS driver, not a Windows driver.

Okay, not everyone can handle the above instructions. Either they can't find their CD drivers or they can't figure out how to handle the AUTOEXEC and CONFIG changes. For the latter, take a stroll over to my Creating Startup Disks page and peruse the contents. For those who just can't find their CD drivers, here's a workaround: Open Notepad. Click File from the toolbar, click Open, and type DOSSTART.BAT in the Open box. Save it as A:AUTOEXEC.BAT using File/Save As. Look for a line in the file containing "MSCDEX.EXE" (no quotes) and delete everything up to it; the first words in the line should be MSCDEX.EXE. Delete everything else from the line also. Save the file under File/Save. Next, hunt down the file MSCDEX.EXE in your WINDOWS\COMMAND folder and copy it to the floppy disk. This is where things get tricky. Open CONFIG.SYS in Notepad (it will be in the C: drive folder). Look for a DEVICE= command that might be for your CD-ROM drive. Why can't I tell you the line? Because every CD manufacturer and PC manufacturer has their own way of doing things. Look for the letters "CD" as a clue. Also look for the CD maker's name to be listed, i.e. NEC, Matsui, or whatever. If CONFIG.SYS contains nothing remotely like this, check for another CONFIG.*** file on your disk, such as CONFIG.DOS. When you've found a file that has what you believe to be the right line, save it as A:CONFIG.SYS on your floppy. If the line begins with REM, delete that word. The line should begin with DEVICE= . The DEVICE= line refers to a file by its path and name. A typical Win 95 CONFIG.SYS file might contain the line DEVICEHIGH=C:\PBTOOLS\NEC_IDE.SYS /D:MSCD0001, which tells you I need the NEC_IDE.SYS file from the PBTools folder. Find your file and copy it to the boot disk. Still with me? Now remove the path from the line in your A:CONFIG.SYS file. Example: my line would now read DEVICEHIGH+NEC_IDE.SYS /D:MSCD0001. Now test-drive this floppy by placing (or keeping) the floppy in drive A:, inserting a CD-ROM (not a musical CD, please) in the CD drive, and rebooting your computer. When you get the A: prompt, type DIR D: (or whatever your CD-ROM drive uses for its letter). If you get a file list, you've successfully created a boot disk that not only boots your PC safely, but accesses your CD drive as well. Label this floppy, write-protect it, and put it somewhere safe. However, if you get the evil error message "Invalid drive specification," all is not lost. Go back and try again with a different CONFIG.*** file. One thing to try: Compare the commands in the floppy's CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Each should have a line that starts with "/D:" (no quotes) followed by other letters. If that parameter isn't identical in both files, try changing one to match the other.

Good grief! That was no fun at all! Well, next week's tips won't be quite so labor-intensive, I hope. If nothing else, maybe you 98/ME users will be a little nicer to your friends still working with 95. They have things kind of rough.