update on this for anyone that s interested and because i like closed threads nothing worse than an infinite while loop is there i ended up formatting a floppy on my flatmate s un networked pNUMBER running fatNUMBER winNUMBER and mcopied the contents of the bootdisk across now i have a fatNUMBER winNUMBER install running alongside slackware and can play metal gear solid when the mood takes me ciaran on wednesday NUMBER august NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER ciaran johnston wrote dublin said if you copy the files from your disk to the c partition and mark it as active it should work yeah i figured that but it doesn t seem to well if that s the case i ll give it another go tonight maybe come back with some error messages just to clarify for those who didn t understand me initially i have a floppy drive installed but it doesn t physically work there s nowhere handy to pick one up where i am and i don t fancy waiting a few days for one to arrive from peats thanks for the answers ciaran you especially need io sys URL and msdos sys your cd driver sys and read the autoexec bat and config sys files for hints on what you did with your boot floppy g p on wed NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER at NUMBER NUMBER ciaran johnston wrote hi folks the situation is this at home i have a pc with NUMBER NUMBERgig hdds and no working floppy drive i have been running linux solely for the last year but recently got the urge to among other things play some of my windoze games i normally install the windows partition using a boot floppy which i have conveniently zipped up but i haven t any way of writing or reading a floppy so how do i go about NUMBER formatting a c drive with system files normally i would use format s c from the floppy NUMBER installing the cdrom drivers my bootdisk i wrote it many years ago does this normally NUMBER booting from the partition i wiped all my linux partitions from the first drive and created partitions for windows hdaNUMBER slackware and redhat i used cfdisk for this i made the first drive hda bootable i then installed the windows partition in lilo and reran lilo installed in mbr i copied the contents of URL to my new windows partition and tried to boot it all i get is a garbled line of squiggles anyone any ideas i can t think of anywhere in athlone to get a new floppy drive this evening thanks ciaran irish linux users group ilug URL URL for un subscription information list maintainer listmaster URL irish linux users group ilug URL URL for un subscription information list maintainer listmaster URL 