what utility are you running? Eg, if its a bios flash utility, you want a bootable floppy that gives you a dos environment (creating a boot disk in xp would be fine for this - its actually a cut down ME boot disk). If it needs access to the hard drive - and the hard drive is ntfs, then you'll need additional software/drivers if you use a dos type bootable floppy (this includes win9x/ME boot floppies).
2k boot floppies (4) and XP boot floppies (6) are for starting off an installation/getting access to recovery console if you don't have a 2k/xp install CD.