Copies of OS's for Studying

Hey, I was just wondering where everyone got copies of the various OS's to study with. I have a copy of win98 and win2k for my 2 computers, and my wife's laptop has winME installed on it, however we don't have an install CD for it, just the sony vaio recovery cd's.

I'm planning on picking up an old system right away to start my studies on and i'd like to practice installing the various OS's. Is there such a thing as a trial version of XP/ME that I could use and where could I possibly find copies of win3.1 and the various versions of DOS.

Let me know where you found your study copies, and maybe I can find similar resources around here.

If you had to buy all of them, then i'll just have to try and learn all I can from what I already own and the text, since i'm on a really tight budget for my studies (but then again, who isn't).

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Comments

Kelvin

Also, does anyone know where I could get a copy of DOS 3.0, I have an old NEC PowerMate 286 Plus that I want to install it on.

bellboy

windows xp evaluation is available to download

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=257343f0-a931-4a5e-aaef-08f1cd4b0a80&displaylang=en

if you live in the uk, microsoft provides eval software on cd for free at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/preview/evaluation.asp

carbunkle

Well do a google search for abandonware and you can find dos and win 3.11 and maybe 95a but I dont know how legal any of that is

Kelvin

Thanks for the replies, i'll try out that XP evaluation, unfortunatly I don't live in the UK, and I couldn't find a similar link for Canada for the free CD.

As for DOS and win95, well maybe I can find someone here at work that has an old copy I can have. I do have a user guide from IBM for DOS version 6, as well as an NEC guide for version 5, so I could always read through those.

Ghent

Your recovery cd really just re-installs an iso image that hiddens on the hard drive. You can supposedly use norton ghost, or something like it to rip that image and make your own windows cd.

Kelvin

Hmmm, i'll see if I can get a cheap copy of norton ghost and look into that.

On a side note. I just got back from holidays, where I was able to pick-up an old copy of the Sybex Network+ study guide for $0.99. Does anyone know what the changes were from the N10-001 exam to the N10-002 exam?