China DOS Union

Question: how do I make a Win98 boot disk? (It would be best if you could tell me all the methods, thanks!)
How do I make an XP boot disk? (Someone said to do it while formatting, but I don't dare try that method. Is
there any other good way?)
Also, can a boot disk made in a 98 system be used to boot an XP system?
Thanks again, everyone, and please forgive these overly basic questions of mine!

I don't know what kind of 98 boot disk you mean. Can it boot into the Win98 on the hard disk?
Same idea for an XP boot disk?

What do I mean by a boot disk? Isn't a boot disk just something used for booting when you don't want to or can't start the system normally?
I don't know if what I'm saying is right.
I just want to make a boot disk, so that later I can boot from the backup partition and restore the system backup to reinstall the system.
Can you teach me? Thanks!

There are ready-made floppy disks that can back up and restore the system. I once made a rather primitive one like that. At
http://zql3322.3322.net/dos.htm, there should be better ones here too, but if your XP is installed on an NTFS partition, then these functions can't be completed through a DOS boot disk.
Also, an XP boot disk can use a floppy to boot into an XP already installed on the hard disk. When XP has problems and there is a boot-related failure (for example, the boot sector is damaged, etc.), this floppy can also boot into XP in installation mode. That is what I understand by an “XP boot disk”; a 98 boot disk works by the same principle. If XP is installed on an NTFS partition, and the damage is very serious so that even Safe Mode cannot be entered, then this boot disk is no use either.
Usually people make a boot floppy with ghost on it, use this floppy to boot the computer into DOS, then use the ghost on the floppy to package and back up the system on the hard disk. When the system on the hard disk is damaged, they use this floppy to start the computer and restore it from the backup package made beforehand.

A 98 boot disk is fairly easy to make. If your system has 98, after booting normally into 98,
1, in Control Panel, under "Add/Remove Programs," find the option to create a system disk, and just follow the prompts;
2, you can also find makeboot.bat in c:\windows\command (I don't remember clearly, it seems to be that name; if you do dir *.bat you'll know), run it, and you can make one that way too;
3, if you don't have a 98 system, look online; I think this New DOS Era site has it
4, as for the XP boot disk you mentioned, actually there really isn't such a thing, and it really isn't useful. Usually it's only for repairing XP when it has problems, and doing that kind of repair with a floppy is too troublesome; in the end you still have to use a CD, so if you have a CD-ROM drive, just boot from the CD and repair it directly.

I'm a newbie. Can you teach me?

Teach you what?
Wasn't what I said clear enough already?

What you said is too technical, I can't quite understand it. What is an NTFS partition? Is it a backup partition?
What is GHOST?
A little while ago I reformatted and reinstalled the system, and that after-sales service person made an XP backup for me on drive G.
I asked him how to install the system from the backup drive, and he said a boot disk would be needed. I asked how to make one, and he told me that making a 98 boot disk would be enough. Can a 98 boot disk really boot an XP system?
But someone else said that a 98 boot disk is different from XP in format and can't be used.
So what exactly is going on??????

If I use a CD to repair a damaged system, it doesn't matter if it's a pirated XP, right?
The genuine one is too expensive, I can't afford it right now.
Also, to the poster in reply #4, when you said the hard disk was severely damaged, did you mean that after turning on the main unit, nothing shows up on the monitor?
If I can enter the BIOS settings, can I boot the system backup on the backup drive from there? (The
person who installed the system for me seemed to start the installation from there after putting the XP CD into the CD-ROM drive.)
Thanks for everyone's advice!

So you need this much basic knowledge. It seems you should first go read some related basics. Otherwise it's like a car mechanic explaining how to repair a car to someone who has never even seen a car.

Don't always say things that are beside the point. If we're talking about cars, I could explain that to you instead. Didn't I already say I'm a newbie? I want to learn this basic knowledge too, but I just haven't been able to find the corresponding books. Are there webpages about this online? Can you recommend some?
Thanks!

Oh right, there's an MS-DOS7.1 pinned at the top. Can that DD be used as an XP boot disk?

Your main purpose right now is to “restore that backed-up operating system on the hard disk onto the current system.” I wonder if I've made that clear. Actually this is very simple: use a ghost boot disk to start the system, then find the backed-up system on the hard disk and restore it. This site has that kind of boot disk.

But I'm worried whether you know how to make the boot disk image into a boot floppy ?????????

That backed-up system on the hard disk should exist in the form of a file, just like wearing clothes on your body, then making another identical set and wrapping it up in a bundle. That bundle looks like one thing, but actually there are a lot of things inside it. The restoration process is just like taking the clothes back out of the bundle and putting them on again.

The idea of files in dos

A file in a computer is a collection of information. All programs and data in dos are stored on disk in the form of files.
To distinguish these different files, each file must have a name, that is, a filename. To make it easier to
handle different types of files, different types of files are stored in different directories on the hard disk.
To use an analogy, the computer's hard disk is like a filing cabinet, and the different partitions on the hard disk (drive C, drive D, drive E, etc.)
are like different sections in the filing cabinet, while the different directories on the hard disk partitions (called folders in windows) are like file folders
in the different sections of the filing cabinet. Folders can also contain folders.

So how are files on the hard disk represented? This question can be explained with the following example.
For example: on drive C there is a folder called windows, and inside the windows folder there is another folder
called system, and inside that folder there is a file called Abcsda.dll.
This can be written as: "c:\windows\system\abcsda.dll"
Among this, "c:\windows\system\" is called the path of the file "abcsda.dll", while "c:\" is called the root directory
of drive C. There are many files in the system that are used to start the system; they have to be placed openly outside,
and cannot be put in folders. That is, they must exist in the root directory of the boot partition.

Files can roughly be divided into data files and program files. Data files can further be divided into text files and non-text files. Text
files store information that people can directly understand, while non-text files store internal computer information or information that needs
special programs to convert before people can understand it. Program files store computer instructions; by running program
files, the computer can be made to complete a certain specific function. So how can one distinguish the type of a file? This involves file
naming.
Usually a filename is made up of two parts, namely the main filename and the extension. The main filename and extension are
separated by a dot (.). The extension is generally three letters and is used to indicate the file type. The main filename usually indicates
the content of the file, and in pure dos status at most 8 letters (including 0-9) can be used.

The extensions of program files containing computer instructions are com, exe, bat
Among them, bat files are also called batch files, meaning files that execute programs in batches. Their file contents are some computer
instructions and files such as com, exe, bat that contain computer instructions, and at the same time they are also text-type files.

You should read some basic books. No one else can really help you with that; reading them yourself would be better : )

I'm very grateful that you could explain so much to me, really, thank you.
But don't treat me like an idiot either. Although there are some gaps in my basic knowledge, it may not be as lacking as you think.
Can't help it, I came into this halfway through, but I'll study seriously.
Thanks again, and Happy New Year!
Also, could you tell me some webpages for learning basic PC knowledge? Buying books is really expensive.