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Not that long ago, I got this 3.5 inch floppy disk drive, and I would like to install Windows NT 4.0 on a computer with the floppy disks.

So, how can I get all 3 floppy .img files, onto the floppy disks?

If you have links for software. please tell me, or for Windows NT floppy images.

I have 8 empty floppy disks to use. but I have found a version for only 3.

Raffzahn
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    You would need to find some floppy imaging software that understands the file format you have and that can write those images to your disks. That said, 3 floppy disks have a total capacity of 4.2 MB, and that is definitely not enough for any usable installation of Windows NT 4.0, or pretty much any version of Windows (possibly with the exception of Windows 1.x and 2.x). – Chris Warrick Apr 23 '23 at 16:23
  • @ChrisWarrick how can i boot off the floppy, as non of my old pc's see the floppy in the boot menu (my pc has floppy in first place for boot) and even then, windows NT 4 floppy 1 doesnt have a setup file – Windows-'NT'- Apr 23 '23 at 16:36
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    @Windows-'NT'- If your PC can boot from floppies, and your floppy drive is recognized correctly by your PC, then perhaps the floppy was imaged incorrectly? Files don’t matter, floppies have a boot sector — if you just copied files from an image to a blank floppy formatted with Windows, it won’t boot. Also: these three floppies are useful only to boot the installer, and then you need to install from CD. – Chris Warrick Apr 23 '23 at 17:10
  • @ChrisWarrick I have a feeling it might be because its a USB floppy drive – Windows-'NT'- Apr 23 '23 at 17:18
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    @Windows-'NT'- that’s an important detail, please [edit] it into your question. – Stephen Kitt Apr 23 '23 at 18:17
  • Does your computer have a (non-USB) CD-ROM drive? If so, and if it can boot DOS with CD-ROM support, you could install NT 4 from there without using floppies. – Stephen Kitt Apr 23 '23 at 18:35
  • At some point, the floppies were only needed on a computer that could not boot from CD; you did not even need to boot DOS. Early on, the CD booted in 'floppy emulation' mode. I forget where NT 4 fit in the line of succession. – dave Apr 23 '23 at 19:29
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    If i remember correctly, you can't install NT from the floppies per sey. They are to boot the system so you can install NT from the cd. So long as you can boot the system into DOS, via 6.x floppy, or Win 9x CD, they are pretty much pointless. – camelccc Apr 23 '23 at 21:19
  • The floppy boot procedure for NT had 1 main purpose, allowing to install drivers for unknown hardware like DVD-RAM, RAID controller, network cards etc. The installation of NT4 was always done from a CD or a copy of its content from a hard disk or a thumb drive (I had reserved a FAT32 partition on one of my hard disk where I copied the CD, this allowed me to repair/install drivers/install alternatives etc. without bothering with the CD). – Patrick Schlüter Apr 24 '23 at 06:18
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    @Patrick when NT 4.0 was relevant, there were still lots of PCs which couldn’t boot from CD; I would say that supporting those was the main purpose of the boot procedure. Installing drivers for unknown hardware could be done without booting from floppies. – Stephen Kitt Apr 24 '23 at 13:19
  • @Stephen Kitt not if you wanted to install to or read from said unknown hardware. The only way to install the driver in that case is via the floppy boot sequence. I had the case where I had to install a NT4 server on a RAID-5 configuration with an Adaptec AAA-131U2 controller and the CD had to be read by a DVD-RAM drive connected to this controller. – Patrick Schlüter Apr 25 '23 at 07:17
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    @Patrick right, if the CD itself is inaccessible, you do indeed need to boot from floppies. Note that “Installing drivers for unknown hardware could be done without booting from floppies” isn’t exclusive — all I’m saying is that if it’s possible to boot from the CD, it’s possible to add further drivers (from floppies) after booting from the CD, without booting from the floppies themselves. My main point is that being able to boot from floppies was useful on all the systems that couldn’t boot from the CD, even if no additional drivers were needed later on. – Stephen Kitt Apr 25 '23 at 07:24
  • @StephenKitt i dont have a CD, I thought i can install it just through the floppies, I do not have any spare CD's only DVD's if i had a CD, it would be easier, as i can use my windows 98 dvd to access it from there – Windows-'NT'- Apr 25 '23 at 08:53

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