For background information see Q148637 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. The solution 
below was found in a DOS newsgroup. I have used it successfully in Windows 98.

As some of you know I have been dealing with a lot of boot sectors
lately.  Something I found that all of them have in common is
a jump instruction with offset occupying the first 2 bytes and an
NOP (90h) following that.  The jump offset sometimes is different
but the NOP is always there, at least in every boot sector I have
examined except PC-Dos 1.0.  Everything else has the NOP at
offset 2 (3rd byte).  That gave me an idea concerning the
VolumeTracking that win9x does.

First I need to explain about the NoVolTrack key in the registry.
The entries in it tell windoze not to use VolumeTracking on
certain disk types.  The entries are usually the OEMNames
entered in this way (numbers are in hex):
     IBM flash disk   03 00 49 42 4d 20 35 20 33 66
The first 2 numbers represent the 2-byte offset into the boot
sector (3) with the order of the numbers reversed keeping with
Intel's way of storing 2-byte numbers.  The remaining 8 numbers
are the ASCII codes for the OEMName.  This is what is used by
windoze to determine whether or not to use VolumeTracking.
If a match is found then no Tracking is used.

Nothing says that the OEMName has to be used.  Why not
use the NOP (90h) at offset 2?  Open the registry to the
following key:

MyComputer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NoVolTrack
and add this binary value:     All disks   02 00 90
And restart your system.

Everything that I have seen in the way of dos versions will
be safe EXCEPT PC-Dos 1.0.  Even NU8's and that simple ALF
boot sector someone posted recently have the NOP at offset 2.

Another thing crossed my mind that would give this a little extra
security. There is something else that boot sectors all have in
common, the signature bytes. They are the last 2 bytes in the
boot sector (offsets 1FE & 1FF) and are always 55 AA (hex).

Add this binary value to the NoVolTrack key:
Every disk   FE 01 55 AA







On Tuesday, April 16, 2002 at 1:56 am, Jack Gulley wrote:
>I have a question about Stop 
>Windows from Altering Floppy Disks:

>The problem of Windows 9x changing the boot record of MS-DOS and non Windows boot 
>diskettes has been a Major problem for me.  I have a number of older programs that 
>I often run from these bootable diskettes. The programs will not run under windows 
>at all.  The diskettes must be writable as files on them get updated.  However, 
to 
>print out these files or send them to someone else I must boot Windows and access 
>the diskettes.  I also have to copy files to the diskettes that have been sent to 
>me, under Windows.  When I do this, the boot record gets modified.  One set of programs 
>check the the boot record for any changes and will lockup.  The others will halt 
>with a divide overflow, when updating the files, usually after an hour or so of 
work.
>

>So setting the write tab as suggested in the article is not a good solution for 
me. 
> Any time I have to update the diskette with files downloaded under Windows, the 
>diskette must be writable.  And I have worn out several diskette write tabs over 
>the years, flipping them back a forth.  I must remember to change the tab or these 
>diskettes get corrupted.
>

>My solution has been to keep an older machine that runs DOS and use a patch program 
>to fix the boot records when they are modifed by Windows. This takes time, usually 
>after I have lost work because I forgot to switch the tab.  There are also times 
>when I do not have a DOS only machine available to fix the diskettes after writing 
>the files to them.  
>

>So I have been looking for a way to turn OFF this "feature" of Windows in ME.  So 
>far no luck.  Has anyone found a way to turn this OFF, short of patching some DLL 
>in Windows ME code?

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