Bypass Windows 95 Setup Startup Disk Creation

During the installation of Windows 95, Setup routinely prompted users to create an Emergency Startup Disk, a step that required a blank floppy disk and added extra time to the setup process. System administrators and power users could completely bypass this prompt by defining automated setup parameters within an installation script—most notably the EBD=0 parameter inside an MSBATCH.INF file—or by leveraging unattended installation utilities to streamline deployment.

The Primary Parameter: EBD=0

The standard and supported method to bypass the Startup Disk prompt in Windows 95 was through an unattended setup script (typically named MSBATCH.INF). Within this file, the setup parameter responsible for controlling floppy creation is EBD (Emergency Boot Disk), placed under the [Setup] section:

[Setup]
EBD=0

Setting EBD=0 instructs SETUP.EXE to skip the Startup Disk creation screen entirely, allowing installation to continue uninterrupted without prompting the user to insert a floppy disk. Setting the value to 1 forces the prompt to appear.

Using the Script with Setup

To apply the parameter during installation, the script had to be passed as a command-line argument to the Windows 95 installer:

SETUP.EXE MSBATCH.INF

If the file was named MSBATCH.INF and located in the same directory as SETUP.EXE, Windows 95 Setup would automatically detect and execute it without needing the file name explicitly appended.

Windows 95 Batch Setup Utility (BATCH.EXE)

Microsoft provided a deployment utility on the Windows 95 installation CD named Microsoft Batch Setup (BATCH.EXE), located in the \ADMIN\NETTOOLS\NETSETUP directory. Inside this graphical utility:

  1. Open BATCH.EXE.
  2. Navigate to setup options.
  3. Uncheck the option labeled Prompt for Startup Disk.
  4. Save the configuration to generate an MSBATCH.INF file containing the EBD=0 flag automatically.

Command-Line Switches in Windows 9x

While Windows 95 heavily relied on the MSBATCH.INF method for automation, later revisions in the Windows 9x family (such as Windows 98) introduced direct command-line flags such as /ie to bypass startup disk creation directly from the prompt:

SETUP.EXE /ie

In standard retail releases of Windows 95, passing /ie was not consistently documented across all OEM Service Releases (OSR), making the EBD=0 parameter in a batch script the definitive, universal mechanism to eliminate the startup disk creation step.