Hey fellow PC users! A long time ago, two decades at this point, I took the time to put together a bootable CD with the world's most convoluted series of nested DOS config.sys/autoexec.bat menus to get access to some commonly used utilities, speed up loading an OEM install of Win95/98/ME/2000/XP, etc.
The CD itself also had a pretty large collection of DOS utilities (from the "Windows 98" version of DOS, essentially 7.0) like:
All of this was crammed in just over 1/2 of a standard 650MB CD. There was even a folder with all of the boot files to put onto a standard 1.44MB floppy in case you had a system that wouldn't boot CDs directly. It's been a CD I've used quite a bit for many years.
So, aside from triming out/removing software/tools that are probably not a good idea to "redistribute", I'm wanting to know what other fellow PC'ers think would be a good to include. Sound off and let me know in the comments. Even if there's no suggestions or input, I'm still intending to post a share link here for folks to get a copy of the ISO if they so wish.
Background
Comprised of software available circa 2000-2003 era, this CD was used a lot at the computer repair shop I worked at to do:- Wipe all partitions on a drive and setup a single FAT32 partition
- Wipe all, split into 2 FAT32 partitions (intended to keep Win98SE systems with 30GB max partitions)
- Wipe all, split into 3 FAT32 partitions (intended to keep Win98SE systems with 30GB max partitions)
- Wipe partitions and install (from install files copied locally to the drive):
- Windows XP
- Reboots PC, prompts you to insert your CD to copy files prior to running setup
- Windows 2000
- Reboots PC, prompts you to insert your CD to copy files prior to running setup
- Windows ME
- OEM version cabs already on CD
- Windows 98SE
- OEM version cabs already on CD
- Windows 95 OSR2 (95 "C", "with USB support"), this option has a FAT16 partition setup instead
- OEM version cabs already on CD
- Windows XP
- Same as above but do not wipe partitions/create a single FAT32 partition first
- Run Norton Ghost 2003 to image drives to USB/firewire/local storage
- Run Norton Ghost Walker 2003 to image over a network (long since broken because obvious DOS networking challenges)
- Run Partition Magic 8.0 to adjust partition sizes
- Run Power Quest Drive Image 5.0
- Run Maxtor's Drive Setup software (to add/remove LBA48 translation support)
- Run Maxtor's hard drive test/certification software
- Run Western Digital's hard drive test/certification software
- Run Seagate's hard drive test/certification software
- Run EZ-BIOS to remove it (old utility to allow computers with old BIOSes to use larger hard drives, pre-dates XT-IDE)
- Run Norton Antivirus 2002 to scan/remove viruses
- Run a DOS based NTFS reader to attempt data recovery
- Run MOBOCOP (older utility to display BIOS and chipset info and try and match against a database of motherboard manufacturers for make/model info)
- Boot to a command prompt with generic IDE CDROM drivers loaded
The CD itself also had a pretty large collection of DOS utilities (from the "Windows 98" version of DOS, essentially 7.0) like:
- Gdisk (Norton Ghost disk utility allowing for command line partition creation/deletion with super fast formatting)
- ATTRIB
- xcopy
- XMSDSK (used a few times but allows for on-demand creation of a RAM disk)
- SYS.com to make drives bootable with DOS
- Backpack/LPT CDROM drivers
- Crude USB/USB 2 support for CDROM/hard drives in DOS
- Crude FireWire support for CDROMs/hard drives in DOS
- fdisk
- format
- chkdsk/scandisk
- Norton Disk Doctor
- restart.com (pretty self explanatory I hope)
- edit
- debug
- mscdex
- himem.sys
All of this was crammed in just over 1/2 of a standard 650MB CD. There was even a folder with all of the boot files to put onto a standard 1.44MB floppy in case you had a system that wouldn't boot CDs directly. It's been a CD I've used quite a bit for many years.
Proposed Updates:
It's needing some updates and cleanup work. What I'm wanting to do, at a bare minimum, is:
- Get rid of the WD/Seagate/Maxtor tools.
- They're so out of date and barely support any first gen SATA drives. There's no warranty period left on any of the drives they do support.
- Get rid of the Go Back utilities
- I highly doubt anyone here even knows what Go Back is/was let alone used this piece of masochistic shite spat out from the very depths of a nihalist's wet dream
- Add in SCSI card support (pulling in what I did with the Blue/PiSCSI DOS images)
- Replace mscdex with shsucdx.com (smaller memory footprint)
- If possible, replace Ghost/Ghost Walker/Drive Image with CloneZilla
- If possible, replace Partiiton Magic with parted/gparted/open source utility for partition management
TL;DR/"Why are you posting this?"
The thing about homegrown tools/utilities is they might benefit someone else, especially since there's more and more people tinkering around the Win98+ era "retro" PCs. I figured respinning my old disk to a safer/sharable format to make tasks like partitioning/installing a Pre-Vista version of Windows much easier is probably a good thing, especially for folks who weren't exactly 'steeped in the cesspool of DOS'.So, aside from triming out/removing software/tools that are probably not a good idea to "redistribute", I'm wanting to know what other fellow PC'ers think would be a good to include. Sound off and let me know in the comments. Even if there's no suggestions or input, I'm still intending to post a share link here for folks to get a copy of the ISO if they so wish.
