Install a program on floppy with no floppy drive

Floppies Suck !

I need to install a program that is on floppies onto my laptop with no floppy drive. The program instists on being installed from floppies. I have tried to copy the files to the hdd and installing. I have also tried to share a floppy drive from another computer over my network.

To add insult to injury there is a demo version of the program that when unzipped makes three directories one for each disk and includes a batch file that must be run to do the install. When I try to just run the setup included with the demo I get an error that setup must be run from the floppy drive.

Here is what the batch file contains
cd .\disk1
setup /p hdd
cd ..
exit

I tried to copy the floppies to the hdd and use the batch file to do the install I get setup must be run from the floppy drive.

Is there a program that would fake out the program I know there are ones that do this for cd-rom but I can't find anything for floppies.

I've seen some of those USB pen drives that have a switch that converts their firmware to be in "floppy" mode instead of "harddrive" mode. maybe that would work for you.

you forgot to specify what platform this is on.. mac or windows?

Mac's can use floppy images natively, or through some sort of floppy software emulator

Is it just that it wants to be installed from A:? If so, you can connect A: to a network location and try that.

You might need to map the network drive using the command line "net use" command, though.

Sorry it's WinXP.

Do you know of any drives that have that feature I kinda want one of those anyway.

You should be able to use the SUBST command. I haven't done it in a while, but I believe you can just put the files in a directory and run subst A: \path\to\directory then go to the newly created A: drive and run the install/setup. But don't quote me on that.

That did it Roger is a genius ! I didn't have to use net use just the map network drive wizard in explorer.

Thanks.

I bet that would have worked too thanks.

I've made it work in the past (VB 3.0) by creating a series of file folders named "disk1", "disk 2", etc. Copy the contents of the floppy into them, and then run setup from the first one.

You got it already of course, but throwing out what's worked for me in case anyone comes back one day trying this again

It was a Windows 95 from floppy install wasn't it? What was that, 27 disks? I miss those days like a nail in the foot.

-Zeke

Yeah, those were the days when pirating software took some effort. I seem to remember ripping off OS/2 was particularly painful.

I miss those days like a nail in the foot.

MSDN used to include a copy of Windows 3.11 on CD-ROM. It used to install in under 2 minutes. That was a godsend compared to the floppies.

MSDN used to include a copy of Windows 3.11 on CD-ROM

I still have mine, has every version of 3.1 and 3.11 on there. Some that I think were never even released, like an actual full Windows 3.11, without the WFW component.