end of the line. Among the reasons: Nearly all laptops and desktop PCs have a
CD drive capable of holding at least 600MB of information. And in any case,
the boot information itself has become so large that it will not fit on a single
floppy. Finally, laptop makers already sell computers that no longer have
floppy disk drives, a move that is in the process of being adopted by desktop
makers.Microsoft has officially announced that it will no longer support booting sys-
tems from a floppy disk drive past the current versions of Windows XP Home
and XP Professional. However, a number of third-party utility makers, includ-
ing Symantec and its Norton Utility series, offer ways to create an emergency
boot disk as part of their recovery process from system failure. For informa-
tion on how to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks from Microsoft, go to the
Knowledge Base at http://www.microsoft.com and search for article number 310994,
which is helpfully titled, “How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks.”If your computer is attached to an Ethernet and configured with a network
interface card, that includes the ability to boot from files stored on a server
in the network. (Those boot files have to be for Windows XP. Also, your
system has to be set up to allow this sort of remote startup and usually
requires a site license for the operating system software; this is an advanced
technical process and should involve an MIS department or consultant.)Employing the great migration strategy..........................................
If your goal is merely to find a way to squeeze 4.1 or more gigs of stuff onto a
4GB drive, another solution is to use a cloning process. The trick here is to
use a software utility that makes an electronic snapshot of a drive’s full con-
tents, including the operating system, applications, settings, and data. Later
that snapshot is copied back to a new drive.The advantages of cloning include:You do not need to reinstall the operating system and find the original
installation disks for all of your applications.
All updates and patches that you have applied to the drive over time are
maintained.The same folder and subfolder names and whatever logic you applied in
creating them are kept.
All of your data, including backup copies and earlier versions plus tem-
porary and fragmentary files, is retained.The disadvantages of cloning may or may not be of consequence to you:264 Part V: The Software Side of Life