Creating an image for a windows xp floppy disk. How to make a copy of a floppy disk with digital signature. What are floppy images used for?

Boot floppy disks (or CDs with a boot area) are used in many cases:

• to change parameters (formatting) of an already used hard drive or when partitioning a newly purchased one;
• to install the Operating System;
• in case of failure of the Operating System (up to refusal to boot at all);
• when restoring the System from an image (for example, Norton Ghost);
• to try to recover a “forgotten” Administrator password;
• as well as in many other cases.

There are a huge number of ready-made BootDisks - boot floppy disks, and many programs (for example, the same PartitionMagic) have the function of generating their own boot floppy disk. As a result, we have a bunch of different boot floppy disks (often double ones to run one program) or ready-made (purchased) boot CDs, and we don’t always remember exactly on which one and what exactly is launched.

I was interested in two main questions:

• have several boot options from one CD;
• have a boot image larger than one standard 1440 KB floppy disk.

The ability to solve both of these issues at once on your own is provided by the CD boot manager Bootable CD Wizard. This is a kind of “designer” of the boot Menu, in which the boot option is selected.

What you need for work

Naturally, the BCDW “constructor” itself is distributed free of charge. There are currently two versions of BCDW commonly mentioned online - 1.50z And 2.0a1. On the official BCDW website, only 1.50z is offered for download. Version 2.0a1 is in an alpha release state and has not been officially released, but is available online. Since it is functionally superior to 1.50z (in particular, it supports loading some ISO images and Windows XP SP2), many people use 2.0a1. You can download version 2.0a1 via a direct link from our website: in a 7-zip archive (84 kb) or in Zip (303 kb). This article covers BCDW 2.0a1 configuration files, however, most problems could be solved using version 1.50z.

With these file settings bcdw.ini available to choose from five options for booting from a CD, loading from a Flopper, or continuing the normal boot, bypassing the Menu, from the hard drive, and if you do not touch the keyboard, the last option occurs automatically after 10 seconds.

All text data can be changed arbitrarily. If you want to toggle different Menu windows (location, sizes, background colors and letters) - read the file description bcdw.ini in the Complete Guide (if you bothered to download it) or on the website. Here are the settings options from OSZone conference participants:

Sections of each option are collected in one text file.

Creating Boot Images

Typically, bootable floppy (IMA) or disk (ISO) images are used.

Boot disk images (IMA)

If there is no ready-made image, we assume that we have a Boot floppy disk and WinImage.

Insert the floppy disk into the computer, select WinImage disk A: , read the floppy disk and save it into an image (with *.IMA extension). The description with pictures is again either in the Complete Guide or on the website. If there are TWO of these floppy disks, the image is made from the first floppy disk, then the image format changes to 2880 KB, and all files (by replacing matching ones) from the second floppy disk are transferred to the image window. During the process, it is advisable to “slightly” adjust the download description. For example, for floppy disks from the package PartitionMagic You can completely remove lines from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file

ECHO.
ECHO Please Insert PartitionMagic Disk 2
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO *** Press Any Key to Continue ***
ECHO.
PAUSE >NUL

Now we don’t need to wait for a replacement with a second floppy disk.

To create an image of an arbitrary size, it seemed to me easiest to take a hard drive (any old one, whatever size you can get your hands on), mark its first partition as active and set the size to 700 MB (and where more?), transfer it to it correctly system files from the boot floppy disk ( Sys A:C: ), copy the remaining files from the Boot floppy disk there, and then dump EVERYTHING that you would like to see after loading there: CD and mouse drivers, DOS test programs, NTFS partition viewer, Norton Commander along with all archivers (ZIP, RAR, ARJ, LHA, ICE and other exotics), and even in general DOS Navigator, the overall size stopped worrying us. Now, having connected this hard drive as the main one, reboot the computer from it and completely configure applications, along with General Settings and Menu NC(or another file manager). It would not hurt to insert the line into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file

otherwise, many DOS programs will not run from the CD; they may also not work if all hard drives, and even the disk itself C:, are marked as NTFS.

Then we boot in normal mode, attaching this screw additionally to our main one, take the same WinImage(we are now interested in him Professional mode) and, pointing it to this same 700-MB partition, we make an image of the entire partition, saving it as *.IMA. The size of the resulting image is 700 MB. If WinImage indicate " Cut off unused part of the image" - the size of the image file will be determined only by the size of the files that make it up (in my case - about 8 MB), but you can add more files to this image up to its full size, 700 MB. It would not hurt to carry out the operation " Defragment the current image" - then its volume will be even smaller.

Bootable disk images (ISO)

To boot from ISO you need BCDW 2.0a1, but it cannot load absolutely any ISO image. Boot images can be found on the network (for example, memtest) or created yourself using the same WinImage (Disk - Create CD-ROM ISO Image). In this way, for example, you can create ISO images of Acronis True Image and Disk Director Suite boot disks.

In general, BCDW recognizes an image not by extension, but by content. So you can rename the extensions of all your images to at least *.APO.

How to register image loading in bcdw.ini

All that remains is to put all your resulting images into a folder and make the appropriate changes to the section of the file bcdw.ini , placing there the names of your download options and brief descriptions of these options. You probably already guessed how this is done by looking at the code above. Just in case, let's explain the format:

; the path to the image; Name; description
; ^ - line feed
\img\Quicker.IMA ; System floppy DOS 7.10; ^ Fast loading without frills
\img\memtest.iso ; Memtest ; ^ Indispensable for thorough testing of random access memory (RAM)

All. Ready to record.

Burning a bootable disc

We will look at creating an ISO image using the CDImage utility, as well as the classic method of burning a bootable disc using programs such as Nero or Easy Media Creator. It is recommended to first play around with a rewritable CD-RW a couple of times, so as not to launch damaged disposable CD-R discs from the balcony towards the horizon.

To begin with, to the root of the Project Boot disk place folders And .

CDImage

CDImage is discussed in more detail in the article Creating a bootable ISO/CD. The kit, which can be downloaded from our website, includes everything you need to create a multiboot disk image based on BCDW (except BCDW, which you need to download separately). The set includes a file Create_ISO_BCDW.cmd , by running which you will get the desired ISO image. Let's take a closer look at the file by opening it in a text editor:

@echo off
TITLE Creating ISO Image of BCDW project
ECHO.

:: Specify the path to the distribution (files of the disk being created)
SET DISTRO=C:\XPCD

:: Specify where to create the resulting ISO image
SET OUTPUT=C:

:: Enter the volume label (no spaces!)
:: It will also be used as the name of the ISO image
SET LABEL=MULTIBOOT_BCDW
:: List of standard tags
:: Windows XP http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=342
:: Windows 2003 http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=355

:: Removing file attributes
ECHO Removing any possible attributes set on %DISTRO% and its subfolders...
attrib -R -H "%DISTRO%" /S /D
ECHO.

:: ISO creation
ECHO Creating ISO...

:: It is assumed that the folder with BCDW is in the root of the disk being created.
:: Change the path to the bootloader (.bin) if necessary.

:: For BCDW 2.0a1
CDIMAGE.EXE -l"%LABEL%" -h -j1 -oci -m -b"%DISTRO%\bcdw\loader.bin" "%DISTRO%" "%OUTPUT%\%LABEL%.ISO"

:: For BCDW 1.50z
:: CDIMAGE.EXE -l"%LABEL%" -h -j1 -oci -m -b"%DISTRO%\bcdw\bcdw.bin" "%DISTRO%" "%OUTPUT%\%LABEL%.ISO"
ECHO.

PAUSE
EXIT

You need to indicate where the project files are located (by default - C:\XPCD) and where you want to save the resulting image (by default - the root directory of drive C). You can also easily change the volume label to your own. We assume that the folder , containing the loader, is located in the project root. If you placed the folder in a different location, then change the path to the downloader. Double click on the file Create_ISO_BCDW.cmd starts creating the ISO image. This is perhaps the simplest and most reliable method of creating a boot disk.

Classic recording method

We specify the file as the boot image loader.bin , we have it (so as not to look for it every time) in the folder . (Note: we are talking about bootloader 2.0a1; for 1.50z please indicate bcdw.bin ). Don't be alarmed, it's really only TWO KiloBytes. File initest.bat we won't need it here.

You can add whatever you want to the remaining space until the CD-R is completely full.

There is one pitfall here: not all CD burning programs have the necessary settings (for example Small CD-Writer for our purposes doesn't fit). In the recording settings, you MUST specify the parameters " Emulation mode"="No emulation" And " Number of sectors to download" = 4 . If this is not done, with standard recording of information on a CD with a volume of more than 100 MB, the boot sector of this kind refuses to work. True, less than 100 MB - it works, even when recording via Small CD-Writer.

For those in the tank

Settings (with pictures) for the programs Nero, CDRWin, WinOnCD, Easy CD Creator, Instant CD+DVD, CDImage or mkisofs are all available in the same Complete Guide or on the BCDW website.

If you are not tired, then we still have something to tell you. We offer two examples demonstrating the use of BCDW in real conditions.

Let's simplify it all the way

If there is only one boot image, that is, multibooting is not required (for example, you need to create a boot image of the entire hard drive or just one partition, unless of course it is larger than the volume of a CD-R), then the INI BCDW files are practically degenerate.

The prepared image itself *.GHO the entire hard drive (or just one partition) is transferred directly to the root of the bootloader image No_Ghost.IMA (here you will need exactly the same 700 MB image).

Burn to CD-R folder , which contains two files bcdw.ini And loader.bin (folders are not required here either), and the folder , which contains a single file No_Ghost.IMA . We use the same file as a boot image loader.bin .

Boot from CD-Rom. No input Selection menu, loads immediately Norton Ghost, and, you will laugh, but the file *.GHO (not a bad size) lies right on the disk A:\ . Of course, you can get rid of folders altogether, but this is probably too much...

Making it as difficult as possible

This article uses a disk with five different boot options as an example. If you are not modest and continue to add options, you will have to scroll down the menu for a long time to see them all. In such a situation, the question inevitably arises about a more convenient menu navigation system. You can solve the problem by creating tree menu structure.

Let's say your download options can be divided into several categories: Installation of operating systems, Component stability test, etc. Then you can display these categories on the first screen. The user, having selected a category, will go directly to various download options.

For example, by choosing Creating and changing HDD partitions, we get to a submenu containing PartitionMagic And Acronis Disk Director.

This is even easier to implement than to explain in words. All you need to do is bcdw.ini specify the path to the corresponding INI file that defines the contents of the menu. The format of this INI file is exactly the same as bcdw.ini. In the example described above, we have approximately the following (only sections are given, since the rest will be the same, and the descriptions of the loading options are taken arbitrarily and may not fully correspond to the screenshot).

bcdw.ini

\bcdw\OSInstal.ini ; Installation of operating systems;^ Your description.
\bcdw\Test.ini ; Component stability test;^ Your description.
\bcdw\PrtRstrk.ini ; Creating and changing HDD partitions ;^ Your description.

OSInstal.ini

\i386\setupldr.bin ; Windows XP Pro Regular; ^ Regular installation of Windows XP Professional.
\i386\setupld1.bin ; Windows XP Pro Unattended; ^ Unattended installation of Windows XP Professional.

Test.ini

:Return ; Return to previous menu
\img\memtest.iso; Memtest ; ^ Indispensable for thorough testing of random access memory (RAM)

PrtRstrk.ini

:Return ; Return to previous menu
\img\Part_Mag.IMA ; PartitionMagic & BootMagic 8.0; Allows you to change, divide, merge and convert sections.
\img\adds_10.iso ; Acronis Disk Director ;^ The same thing, but on Linux, the operating algorithms are more optimized.

Menu nesting is not limited to two levels. You can attach a submenu to any menu. The main thing is not to get carried away and not to complicate navigation more than necessary. Naturally, you can make your own design scheme for each menu.

The Bootable CD Wizard is being discussed at the OSZone conference.

It sometimes surprises me that people look for very complex ways to solve simple problems. Moreover, the paths are obviously commercial. I recently came across a paid program for emulating a floppy drive (that is, a floppy drive or floppy disk drive, in short, you understand what kind of antique we are talking about :)). There is an easier way and completely free.

There are situations when you need to simulate the presence of floppy disk drives in the system, for example, to install a tricky program on a netbook, the key of which is a floppy disk supplied in retail packaging. Without this floppy disk, an honestly purchased program will have to be broken with cracks, for some this is not the most pleasant way to get the software to work, if not demotivating :). Another option is to work with ancient operating systems in a virtual machine. For example, install and poke around Windows 95 if you suddenly feel nostalgia and want to remember your youth. Or there... if there are floppy disk images made when the floppy disk was still present in the system. Yes, a bunch of possible options may arise, which will require an FDD - floppy disk drive.

Personally, I haven’t used floppy disks for seven years, well, okay, five years exactly, because I remember that when I was in graduate school (from 2002 to 2005), we were required to provide materials on floppy disks and in MS Office format. Cool, right?

Subsequently, I did not feel the need for floppy disks (moreover, my only FDD dates back to 1997, and it had long since unfastened its skis, lying in a dry and dark place). But this did not stop me from using a virtual disk drive, although the need for one arose at most three times a year. But, nevertheless, the very fact of an alternative opportunity to spin the floppy disk is important.

In general, a strange phenomenon, it would seem a long time ago that floppy disks and their support should have disappeared from motherboards and BIOSes, but no, IDE interfaces are disappearing (in general, also correct), being replaced by SATA and eSATA connectors, and the floppick is still at ease feels... Why? Hmm, now it’s fashionable to interpret everything according to base Freudian tendencies, so the act of inserting a floppy disk into the drive probably causes uncontrollable associations...

Even without this vulgarity Floppy disks have their own aesthetic, they are multi-component and complex devices, unlike the smooth, flat and boring as a pancake of an optical disk. There is a certain charisma to the floppy disk, and as the decades pass, there is also some good design, both external and utilitarian, practical, which was hidden and muted by the too frequent, dominant use of floppy disks in years gone by.

Looking into the distant corners of the table, I discovered approximately 35-40 floppy disks in transparent plastic boxes. As far as I remember, one floppy disk cost 75-50 American cents, it was a lot of money, and in the first years of post-perestroika, floppy disks were not a hot commodity and a consumable item. They served until their complete physical collapse, which came unexpectedly, imagine - a dozen and a half floppy disks filled with linked volumes of archives (remember, console blue-and-white RAR), and two of them died for a long time... And at least cry, at least... :)

But, enough ranting. So, three points.

1) If you need boot floppy images for all kinds of operating systems, including, of course, Windows, then you should look here. I personally downloaded a boot floppy disk for Windows 95, which I already threw into a virtual machine. It is sometimes impossible to install old operating systems without a floppy disk; even branded CDs with Windows 95 were supplied without a bootloader - first you had to load DOS, and only then install the system from under it.

3) And finally, an excellent floppy emulation program. It's simply called VFD - Virtual Floppy Drive. It's also easy to use. You can do it in the console, or you can do it in graphics; the latter is more familiar to most users. The program is not just free, it is open source.

I warn you right away, just in case, without posting the version that I use myself: if you have a desire to download, please go to developer website. Although now (2017) I can’t guarantee that everything, one way or another, works at all... And someone needs it... If anything, Google, well, should find it.

How to use?

Unpack ( you can download it from my website using the link)), launch vfdwin.exe and work. [The text files contain detailed help, information about the program and the license, and the other three files are the console version of the program and drivers].

Step 1. Driver tab. Click Install, then Start.

Step 2. Go to the Drive 0 or Drive 1 tab (as you can see, you can emulate 2 devices), click Change in the Drive Letter item - that is, select the letter of the system device (leave the Persistent/Global checkbox so that the disk is not unmounted without a command), usually this is a: or b:, but you can assign any letter not occupied by system partitions. Next, click the Open button, where we select either the floppy image file or the RAM item, which will allow you to create an empty virtual floppy disk in memory. You can simulate any type of 3.5 or 5.25 inch floppy disks. But for some reason there are no 8-inch floppy disks ;).

After this, the virtual drive can be used as if it were a real one, copying or deleting, or formatting everything you need.

If desired, you can build virtual drive items into the context menu (Shell tab) or associate image files with this program (Association tab). This is true - additional functions that do not affect operation.

You can close all this stuff in the reverse order: in the Drive 0 and/or 1 tab, if necessary, click the Save button, save the diskette image with our files in some 12345.img; Click Close (virtually remove the floppy disk). Go to the Driver tab, click Stop (the virtual drive will be unmounted) and, if desired, Uninstall (i.e., remove the driver from the system). That's all. It couldn't be simpler :).

Of course, there are other ways to create virtual drives, but this is the one I like. Nothing superfluous - excesses are harmful, especially when there is no confidence in your actions.

Good luck, thank you for your attention, all the best!

WinImage floppy image creation program

If you read the article on my website “Virtual floppy drive”, then you probably noticed that it also talks about the winimage program. This program is designed to create images of floppy disks, or it can be used in conjunction with a virtual disk drive. You can download it for example Installing it is not difficult, everything is as usual: download, install, enjoy. There is also a localization tool included in the kit. So the program interface can be made Russian. She looks like this:

I don’t see the point in completely analyzing how the program works. The program is designed to create media images and restore information from these images to blank media. This is relevant in the case when simply copying information from floppy disk to floppy disk, for example, does not bring the desired result. I'll show you how to make a floppy disk image. Well, how to burn a floppy disk from an image. The program interface is intuitive, although, as practice shows, not for everyone. There were a couple of calls about the program, but I think that, most likely, people simply did not want to figure it out themselves. For what? If you can call.

So, to make a floppy image, or recover from an image, we need only two menu items. These are "File" and "Disk/Drive". In the picture above, these menu items are indicated by red arrows. Well, let's install a floppy disk (clean) in the drive; if you don't have a floppy drive, then you can use the program , and install the floppy disk in this program. When you click on the "Disk/Disk Drive" menu item, you can see the following picture:

Before reading a floppy disk, you need to make sure that the program will read the floppy disk and not, say, the C: drive. That is, the checkbox is installed as shown in the figure above, opposite the A: drive, and not the C: drive. Are you sure? Then click “Read disk (floppy)”, as shown in the picture above and wait for the floppy disk to be read in the drive. The floppy disk is read track by track, so you have to wait. If the drive is physical, then 3-5 minutes, if virtual, then a few seconds. It should be noted that even if an empty floppy disk is inserted into the drive, reading will still occur, and as a result you can get an image of a “blank” floppy disk. But we don’t need this, so I threw the files into the drive, as shown in the figure below, and read the floppy disk (by the way, I used a virtual drive):

Our task is to make a floppy disk image, so let’s make it by clicking on the menu item “File” --> “Save as...”, see the figure below:

A regular explorer opens, come up with a name for the image and indicate the location on the disk where this image will be stored. I recommend creating a separate folder and putting all your images there, if, of course, you decide to use this program. So, here's what we got:

In general, I prefer to save images in the *.ima format, although in principle it doesn’t matter in what format you save it. This doesn't mean you have to do the same, whatever you want, keep it that way. As a result, we get a floppy disk image file that can be stored on your hard drive:

As you can see from the figure, the file size corresponds to the capacity of the floppy disk, and no matter what information was on the floppy disk, the image will always be the same size. As you already understood, in order to recover from an image, you must first open the image file using the "Open..." menu item (see Fig. No. 4), and then, inserting a blank floppy disk into the drive, write it using the "Burn" menu item disk (floppy disk)" (see Fig. No. 2). Well, that's basically all. Good luck in mastering this program.

© 1993-2002 Gilles Vollant
Partially © Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler (ZLib)
Partially © Christoph H. Hochstätter
Partially © François Liger
Partially © Microsoft™

www.winimage.com

The documentation was translated into English with the help of Joll Demay, Michael Segall, Peter Sohn, Matthew Gardiner and John Buettner.
Translation of documentation into German was carried out with the help of Walter Scheffel.
The Spanish version was translated with the help of Diana M. Galindo P. and Amando Senra.
The Italian version was translated with the help of Roberto Paterlini.
Translation of the Portuguese version was done with the help of Nuno Dionçio and Vötor Bueno.
The Brazilian version was translated by Marcello Elston.
The Dutch version was translated with the help of Geldof Georges and Pyra Lucien.
The translation of the Russian version of the program and quick (sorry!) editing of the help was carried out by Dmitry Erokhin.
The translation of the certificate (and, it seems, with the help of an automatic translator and almost without subsequent editing) was carried out by Vilis Eglitis.
Converted help to HTML format

WinImage 6.10 is fully Year 2000 compatible.

Working on the Global Network presupposes that the user has certain knowledge regarding not only the features of personal equipment and the software used, but also safety rules. There are often situations when users neglect to install antivirus programs, which causes the system to be blocked and important information to be lost. As practice shows, attempts to cope with the problem on your own do not give the desired result. In this case Professionals with many years of experience will help you unlock Windows.

It should also be noted that the safety of information is always in the hands of the user himself. So, you can save a disk image in advance to then painlessly restore lost data.

- ASP member -

WinImage is a shareware program. Its author is a member of ASP. You may copy and distribute WinImage provided there is no charge for doing so. It is permissible to charge only a small amount for the cost of floppy disks and delivery. WimImage must be distributed in its entirety and include all original files.

Extract files There are three ways: using the "Image" menu or the toolbar icon, connecting the file by double-clicking on it, or by dragging it into another application.

WinImage allows you to drag and drop an image file from WinImage into another application. Press and hold the left mouse button, move the pointer to another application (the drag-and-drop client), and then release. In this way, you can attach an image to a ZIP or ARJ archive if you are using the WinZip utility, or attach an image to an email message created using Microsoft™ MS-Mail, Lotus™ Notes, or ccMail.

You can run WinImage with the following options
"WINIMAGE [source [destination] [options]]"
"WINIMAGE file.ima" : Load file file.ima
"WINIMAGE file.ima A:" : Load file.ima, write to drive A: and exit
"WINIMAGE A: file.ima" : Load from floppy disk in drive A: and save file.ima
"WINIMAGE /MAKESFX imagefilename.??z imagesfx.exe<опция команды>: Create a file using .wlz or .imz file and here<опция команды>-- this is a standard option for an SFX file.

Options:
/F: Format when writing to a floppy disk from the command line
/E: Extract (second parameter can be destination)
/X: Extract with subdirectories (second parameter can be destination)
/Q: Always exit after an operation from the command line
/H: Hide the main WinImage window
/NX: Do not exit the command line after the operation
/Nxxx: Create a new image (where xxx is DMF1024, DMF2048, 144, 120...)
/Txxx: Convert image size (where xxx -- DMF1024, DMF2048, 144, 120...)
/I xxx: Insert file or directory xxx
/NOASPI: Disable ASPI device checking at startup (this disables the option to create a CD image under Windows 95/98/Me)

On the "Disk" tab in the program settings under Windows 95/98 there are the following options:

If both options are selected Use DMF formatting technology And Use DMF technology to record data, WinImage will use the new 3.0 DMF formatting code as standard.
- If both options are not selected And Use new DMF technology to record data, WinImage will use a slightly revised version of the 2.5 DMF formatting code.
- If the option is not selected Use new DMF formatting technology, WinImage uses the same formatting code as version 2.20.

Some DMF related issues can be corrected by adjusting the disc clearance. To change settings you must edit the registry. Be careful! To do this, you need to change the value of the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinImage\iGap\Dmf. A value of "0" indicates the standard DMF clearance. WinImage users should set the 2.88 drive to "17".

Please report any problems related to gap adjustment (GAP).

Close image

Closes the current image.

Seal
Set up the printer

These options are only available in . They allow you to print the directory of the current image.

Delete file

Removes files from the current image after prompting for confirmation.
If no file is selected, WinImage by default removes all files from the image. Otherwise, only the selected files are deleted.

File properties

Change the file date (professional version only), attributes and name. You can only rename a file if one file is selected.

Change label

Change the volume label of the current image.

Boot sector properties

To edit the properties of the boot sector you need. With this option you can change the disk OEM string, serial number or select the boot sector of Windows NT, MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 95/98 or WinImage systems (Reset button). When you select the WinImage boot sector, you can enter the text that appears when the floppy disk is loaded.

Change format

Resizing the current image.
The new size must be larger than the total size of the files in the image.
For example: a 1.44 MB image can be changed to a 360 KB image only if the size of all files contained in it does not exceed 360 KB.

Defragment the current image

Defragment the current image files.

Image information

Displays information about the current image and the ability to edit a comment for the image.

Disk formatting

Formatting an empty floppy disk.

Create an ISO CD image

Creating and opening an ISO image file from a CD drive.

Compare disk with image

Compare the current image with the disk.

Burn image to disk

Write the current image to disk.

Format the disk and burn the image

Formatting a floppy disk and writing the current image to it.

In Windows 95/98 environment the following options are available:

- UseIOCTL: Tells WinImage to use 32-bit IOCTL operations (excluding DMF formatting, which is not affected by this choice). Enabled by default.

- Use DMF technology: If the option is not selected, WinImage formats the DMF in the same way as in version 2.20. If the option is selected, the new formatting code is used.

- Quick format to 1.44 MB before DMF: If the option is not selected, WinImage performs a quick format on 1.44 MB before formatting it to DMF. Sometimes it is difficult to format an empty floppy disk in DMF without first formatting it as 1.44 MB.
For more information about DMF see.

Image tab

- Selecting a floppy disk format for the image: If this option is enabled, WinImage selects the floppy type that matches the image in memory. (If you are loading a 360 KB image, WinImage selects the 5.25 inch floppy format.)
- Cut off the used part of the image: If the option is selected, WinImage reduces the image size when writing to an image file that is not full.
- Incrementing file names when opening/saving: When this option is selected, WinImage increments file names by 1. For example, after opening (or saving) "DISK01.IMA", WinImage suggests the next disk name as "DISK02.IMA".
- Check the contents of the disk before writing an image to it: If this option is selected, WinImage will ask you to confirm writing to a disk that already contains data.
- Allow files in the CD image to be updated (same file name and size): If this option is enabled, WinImage allows files in CD images to be updated, provided that the new versions have the same names and sizes as those present in the image.
- Compression: Select the compression level when saving a compressed image file.

Extract Tab

- Path for extracted files: This is where you specify where the files should be extracted from the image.

The following options determine the extraction of subdirectories.
- Skip subfolders: When this option is selected, WinImage will not extract the subdirectory(s).
- Extract all files into one folder: WinImage will extract all files into the image subdirectory of the target path.
- Extract files with full paths: WinImage extracts files from the image subdirectory to a subdirectory of the target path.

The following three options control whether a confirmation dialog is shown when extracting files.
- Confirm overwrite when extracting: If this option is selected, WinImage will ask you to confirm the write before starting the operation if there is a risk that the file will be overwritten.

File Tab

The first two options allow you to enable/disable the appearance of a dialog box when inserting files. The third option asks for confirmation when replacing files.
- Confirm file deletion: This option controls whether a confirmation dialog is shown when deleting files in the image.

Notification tab

Selecting sound and message
With this option you can configure WinImage to play audio from a .WAV or .MID file. In Windows 95/98 and NT environments, you can also use .AVI files.

General Tab

- Standard Viewer: Defines the viewer application that is connected when you double-click on a file without an association.
- Use New Item to Browse Folders: Select the control to use when searching the directory.
- Allow dragging in Explorer: Allows the user to extract files by dragging and dropping them from the WinImage window into Explorer (and the Desktop).
- Show icon in taskbar when working: When WinImage is running in floppy mode or batch mode, it displays an icon in the Win9x/NT taskbar. When user input is required, the icon flickers.
- Automatically show WinImage window when user intervention is required: When user intervention is needed (floppy change, error, etc.), the WinImage window automatically pops up on top of other windows. This option allows you to minimize the WinImage window during long operations (floppy disk...) and do not forget about it!
- Options for registered users: cm. .

Material from the Wiki site

What is a floppy image

A floppy image is a file that stores a complete copy of the floppy disk, including information about the file system, files and directories, and the boot sector. Common formats are files with the extensions ima, img, imz (imz is a compressed floppy image)

What are floppy images used for?

It would seem that floppy drives are becoming obsolete; today, floppy drives are practically not installed in new computers. They put it on servers (its own specifics), and even if necessary for compatibility with some dense software and equally dense tax and other accounting organizations. But...
A floppy drive is the easiest and fastest way to flash the BIOS, run a PC testing program (most test programs are distributed as floppy disk images), and even load an operating system onto the machine from a remote computer. Accordingly, for all these operations, you can download (prepare yourself) a floppy disk image and burn the floppy disk to suit your needs. Many old games are preserved as floppy disk images. In addition to a real floppy drive, almost all virtual machines support booting from floppy images. But the most interesting thing in my opinion is to make a 100in1 multiboot flash drive from floppy images :)