If WIN95 decides that it no longer wishes to work (yes, this does happen), then you need a boot disk to reload WIN95. That is the good case, the worst case is, your hard drive decided it was time to quit, or a virus has taken over your system and no longer boots. You then need to reformat your hard drive and reload WIN95 and restore from your backup. (Don't even tell me you don't have a backup, your running WIN95, you NEED to back up.) If you didn't back up your data, then you need to reinstall all of your software.
The so called, "MAKE EMERGENCY BOOT DISK", is a joke. OK, so you used this to make your boot disk, and then you find out you need to format your hard drive. Only problem is, MEAD (Make Emergency Boot Disk) does not copy over format.com to your boot disk. OK, you copied this over yourself, and know you have a clean hard drive, or maybe you went and bought a new hard drive, and even installed it yourself and the computer even knows it's there (hey I did something right!), you toss in your boot disk and insert your WIN95 CD ROM and.......wait, there is no drive D: ? Thats right, because from DOS (thats where you boot to the C:\) you need DOS drivers to access your CD ROM, and MEBD does not put those drivers on your BOOT disk.
There are a few things that you need before you take on this task. You must have the CD ROM install disk that came with your CD ROM, or know what the driver is called and where it is on your hard drive, if you put it on there. If you don't have either one, you may be in trouble, try getting the right driver from the drive manufacture by looking for them on the WEB, if that fails, you can try a generic driver by clicking HERE, and download it to your hard drive. (Just remember where you put it, And also.....You will need a program to unzip the file, it is compressed in this format to save room.) I will show you what you do with it later. You also need two 3.5 inch floppies. (2? Just remember the word BACKUP) Now would be a good time to explain the background I choose for this segment. See all the coffee cups? Go ahead and get one now, and just think of all the coffee I have saved you from, by making this available to you :-)
Insert one of the 3.5" disks into the
A: drive. Open My Computer,
then right click on the A: drive and select Format. You will get the
FORMAT window.
You then need to select FULL, and also select Copy system files. For Label, I like to put WIN95 EBoot. Select Start and wait for it to finish. Now that the easy part is done, we move on to what else we need to copy over. Here is where we need the CD ROM driver disk, or file. If you are using the Install disk that came with your CD ROM, then you need to be EXTRA careful when trying to get the right file.
{Here is the problem in a nutshell. WIN95 may or may not need the driver(s) that come with the install disk, as a matter of fact, it is better NOT to use them if you can. Some CD ROM's can run without the driver in config.sys, but still need mscdex.exe in the autoexec.bat file. However, if your WIN95 system can run without either of these drivers, you will see a boost in speed as well as free up some memory.}
This paragraph is for people who need to use the install disk that came with their CD ROM, if you are not going to use this method, please continue to the next paragraph. The first thing you will need to do, is make backup copies of your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. First, click on START, scroll up to Programs, then find MS-DOS Prompt, and click on it. This will get you to a blank screen with C:\Windows. Type CD\ then hit your ENTER key, this will take you to the root directory of C: drive. Now type copy autoexec.bat autoexec.bak and hit your ENTER key. If you get the message File Not Found dont sweat it. Next type copy config.sys config.bak and hit your ENTER key again. Once again, if you got the message File Not Found, dont worry. What we have done here is, created a copy of these files, so we can put them back the way they were before we started. Now, put your install disk in, and type A: then hit ENTER. Type install and hit your ENTER key, and follow the prompts to install your CD ROM drivers. (If you get an error message when you type install, refer to your owners manual for the correct way to install your drivers. IMPORTANT, write down the directory where the install program puts your drivers into, as well as the name(s). You will need this to make your Emergency Boot Disk. Once this is complete, remove the install disk and put back the Boot Disk that we started with. Type C: and hit ENTER. We will now put our origanal autoexec.bat and config.sys files back. Type copy autoexec.bak autoexec.bat and hit ENTER, you will get a message overwrite autoexec.bat (Yes, NO, ALL) type Y and hit ENTER. If you get a File Not Found message, dont worry, we will take care of that in a moment. Now type copy config.bak config.sys and hit ENTER, answer Y and hit ENTER. Again if you got the message File Not Found, just hold on. You are now ready to continue making your Emergency Boot Disk. If you got a message FILE NOT FOUND, then we need to delete the file(s) created by the install disk. If you got the message while trying to copy autoexec.bak to autoexec.bat, then type del autoexec.bat and hit your ENTER key. If you got the message while tring to copy config.bak to config.sys, then type del config.sys and hit ENTER. Now lets continue making our BOOT disk.
If you already know where your driver file is, or you downloaded my generic driver file, then we need to copy it to our BOOT disk. Using Windows Explorer, copy the driver file to the BOOT disk you made, to the A: drive. Go back to the MS-DOS Prompt and type cd\windows and hit your ENTER key. ( Notice that I have been saying HIT YOUR ENTER KEY, after typing a command. For the rest of the explanation, I will assume that it is understood that this needs to be done in order to execute the command. In other words, after I tell you to type a command, you must hit your ENTER key to execute the command.) Type copy emm386.exe a: (did you remember to hit ENTER?). Then type copy himem.sys a: (ENTER), then type copy regedit.exe a: We then type cd\windows\command (ENTER). Then type copy sys.com a: and then copy format.com a: and then copy fdisk.exe a: and then copy edit.com a: then copy copy edit.hlp a: then copy scandisk.exe a: then copy scandisk.ini a: then copy mscdex.exe a:
We have now copied all of the most critical
files needed for an Emergency BOOT Disk. All that is left
now is creating our autoexec.bat and config.sys files
needed in order for everything to work. I will now
introduce you to EDIT. EDIT is a DOS editor, that we will
use to create these files. Type A:
(ENTER) and this will put you into our BOOT disk. Type Edit
config.sys (ENTER) and you will be in the
editor. Look at the image below and enter what you see
exactly as it is. 
The next step is a little more difficult.
We need to add our CD ROM driver, you will need to
substitute the correct driver name for the one I am using
(unless you are using my generic driver). You do however
need to keep everything after the driver name (
/D:MSCD000) {those are zero's, not the letter o}. Look at
the example I have below.
We are now done adding what we need for our
config.sys, now press your ALT
key and hold it down while you press your F
key, and let go. You will see a drop box come down where FILE
is at the top right. Select SAVE
and we now have a config.sys file on our BOOT disk. Now
we need to make our autoexec.bat file. Use the ALT
F keys again, and select NEW
and the screen will be blank (except for the blue
background). Now type what you see below EXACTLY as
shown.
Once you have done this, use the ALT F keys again, and this time select SAVE AS, and you will get a new window, just type autoexec.bat and hit your enter key, then use the ALT F keys and this time choose EXIT. Tpye the word exit and hit ENTER and this will close your DOS session.
Congratulations!!! You now have a REAL Emergency BOOT Disk that will actualy work. Remember I told you, you needed two disk's? Well, now you need to create another one, just like you did this one. This is just in case something happens to the the one we just made. If you had problems and dont have anywhere else to turn, you can e-mail me, and I will try to help you as best I can.
Ok, so now you have a REAL Emergency Boot Disk, but how well does it work, or even, did I do it right? Well, lets try it out and see. All you need do is put your new BOOT disk in the A: drive and reboot your PC. Once you get a C:\ on your screen, put in a CD into your CD ROM and type D: (ENTER) and you should be in the D: drive. Type dir (ENTER) and you should get a directory listing of the contents of the CD. If this works, then your all set. If this dosnt work, look to make sure you have the proper CD ROM driver listed in the config.sys.