Boot from FDD how?

I recently found an old laptop at home (Toshiba Tecra 540 CDT) on which Windows 95 and Windows XP Home Premium were installed in a dual boot system. I tried to start both of them, but with Windows 95 only the typical screen comes up, but nothing starts. Then I thought:

Fortunately, I still have a Windows 95 with a boot floppy disk and CD, … And I went into the BIOS to change the boot priority. This is now on FDD → CD-ROM → HDD
I've also tried the following: FDD → HDD → CD-ROM

I don't know which connection the floppy disk drive has (it's external), but when I plug it in, it only goes to the selection screen for the two operating systems, ignoring CD and floppy. I have already tried out all COM ports in the BIOS. What can I do, how do I get Windows 95 back on? I'm only using it for testing purposes, to see how that was. When I was little we once had a PC with Windows 98SE, but the memory is only very vague.

Hopefully someone can help, thanks!

The problem is that the ports are not yet "active" at the time of booting. This is different with the IDE connections of that time. The Com-Port is such a case. It only becomes active with the corresponding driver. That is almost too early.

The information in the BIOS does not necessarily mean that it wants to control the floppy disk drive that you have connected. It is more likely that it is looking for a floppy disk drive internally, can't find it and therefore ends up in the dual boot manager. So he's doing it right so far.

The laptop itself doesn't have a drive, does it? Maybe you have to open it and connect the floppy disk drive directly, provided it has a connection on the board.

With such old devices, USB is not already supported during booting. If the device does not have a separate connection exclusively for accessories, or if there's no internal FDD drive, you can forget about booting via external USB devices.

It has nothing and unfortunately no space for it, it only has a CD drive, but as far as I know Windows95 CDs were not bootable. : /

He has something with IDE anyway, I'll take a quick look and maybe add a photo of it to the question above.

The way I see it, you made the settings in the BIOS completely correct.

Windows 95 was not issued as a bootable CD at that time - therefore a boot disk is required.

What can theoretically be: The disk is no longer okay. Such a thing can happen with 25 year old technology. 🤔
If you have the opportunity to test the floppy disk on a different device, that would be an advantage.

You can e.g. B. Download https://www.allbootdisks.com/ and save on newer floppy disks.

OOPS! I had skipped over the "external".

In fact, it can't work that way.
Windows 95 already had no USB support - and BIOS systems of that time certainly had no USB boot options.

If "FDD" is selected as the first option in the BIOS, it always refers to the internal FDD drive.

That's the way it is.

The connection shown is the LPT1. This is exactly as described. This connection is not active at the time of booting.

If you just want to see Windows 95, you can do that via an emulator. There's even online: https://win95.ajf.me/

I can understand, however, if you want to get the laptop working because it is there:-)

I even know the emulator. 😅

But it's just a little different than the emulator.

Somehow Windows 95 must have come up with it back then.

Above I have put the available connections in the appendix, maybe there's something there?

It must have worked somehow back then. : /

When I click Setup on the CD in Windows XP, it says I should open the CD in MS-DOS. You could somehow choose how to get into DOS in the extended start options, right?

Yes that's true. But I have to say that I'm at the end of my game.
All I can think of is: Open it up and see if there's a direct connection for the floppy disk drive on the board.

Looks like a suitable accessory FDD. The BIOS also states that the FDD is not available as an IDE FDD as usual. Floppy disks do not last forever. Is it possible to test the floppy on another device? It is possible that nothing can be found on the said start disk.

I will do it, thank you!

I still have a floppy disk drive with USB, into which I put an empty 2.0 MB floppy disk, and then tried to copy something into it on Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10. Unfortunately it didn't work anywhere. The device was installed, but each of the three computers hung up when I tried it. So apparently the USB drive is gone. : / Or I'm just incapable.

I also have a part like that, it actually works great. Something will be defective in your case.