OSR2 Hangs After Booting Previous Operating System

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2

SYMPTOMS

After starting your previous operating system (by pressing F4 when you see the "Starting Windows 95" message, or by choosing Previous Operating System from the Startup menu), when you exit the previous operating system session, your computer stops responding (hangs) when you restart the computer.

CAUSE

This problem occurs with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2). Windows 95 OSR2 is designed to be preinstalled on new computers only, and cannot boot back into Windows 95 from a previous operating system.

RESOLUTION

To enable the computer to boot Windows 95 OSR2 again, the boot drive must be made bootable with the Windows 95 OSR2 Emergency Boot Diskette. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Insert the Emergency Boot Diskette in drive A and restart the computer.

2. At the command prompt, type the following line:

         sys c:
   

3. Remove the boot disk and restart the computer.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2). An update to address this problem is now available, but is not fully regression tested and should be applied only to computers experiencing this specific problem. Unless you are severely impacted by this specific problem, Microsoft does not recommend implementing this update at this time. Contact Microsoft Technical Support for additional information about the availability of this update.

MORE INFORMATION

Because OSR2 is preinstalled on new hard disks, there is no option to start the previous operating system on the Startup menu. However, if you format the hard disk, install MS-DOS and then Windows 95 OSR2, and then boot the previous operating system, you experience the problem described in this article. Booting a previous operating system is unsupported in OSR2.

If you need to reformat the hard disk for any reason, use the Emergency Boot Diskette.