boot into DOS?

[Jak Din]

I am running Win2K Pro (SP4) and would like to dual-boot
DOS and Win2K.

I have yet to install DOS because of concerns over things
I have read, but I intend to do so if someone can explain
it in full.

Can anyone help me?
Thank you,
JD

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I am running Win2K Pro (SP4) and would like to dual-boot
DOS and Win2K.

I have yet to install DOS because of concerns over things
I have read, but I intend to do so if someone can explain
it in full.

Can anyone help me?
Thank you,
JD

What is your Win2000 system partition - FAT, FAT32
or NTFS?

 

[Jak Din]

-----Original Message-----


What is your Win2000 system partition - FAT, FAT32
or NTFS?

I have an 80GB drive with 3 partitions.
1st - Win2K as C: (first partition?) and it is NTFS.
2nd - NTFS
3rd - FAT32 (thought to install DOS here)

I have System Commander 7.0 and that is what I made the
partitions with.

Thanks!
JD

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have an 80GB drive with 3 partitions.
1st - Win2K as C: (first partition?) and it is NTFS.
2nd - NTFS
3rd - FAT32 (thought to install DOS here)

I have System Commander 7.0 and that is what I made the
partitions with.

Thanks!
JD

Since your primary partition is NTFS, you must use
a third-party boot manager such as XOSL (free) or
System Commander. To prevent accidental deletion
of your existing partitions, I recommend that you
first familiarise yourself with your chosen boot manager,
using an old small disk, perhaps borrowed.

Your chosen boot manager must arrange it so that
the DOS boot files are located in a FAT partition.
They must not be in an NTFS partition.

I recommend that you use DOS 7 (which is the basis
of Windows 97) instead of DOS 6.22, simply because
DOS 7 can handle FAT32 partitions.

 

[Jak Din]

Thank you both for the information.

Does the FAT or FAT32 partition have to be at the
beginning (top?) of the drive?

thanks again,
Jak Din

-----Original Message-----
Isn't DOS 7 Windows 98? I don't believe you can get a MS-

DOS 7 standalone. He cam get PC-DOS 7 standalone which is
what I use. Not sure about MS-DOS 7 though.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No, it does not. I suspect you should not place it beyond
the first 8 GBytes but I could be wrong.

 

[George Hester]

True DOS

 

[George Hester]

If you want DOS then you use a FAT16. If you are using Windows 98 MS-DOS 7 then FAT16 or FAT32 don't matter. Usually the DOS partition will be your first partition on the primary harddrive. Can be no bigger then 2GB if True DOS. I think FAT32 is restricted to around 30GB. Use your Partition Manager to make sure DOS is installed on C drive. This does not mean you change what you have. It only means that when you install DOS that the active Partition is the partition you want to install in. One thing you need to be aware of is that you may overwrite your boot partition and make Windows 2000 no longer bootable. I hope your boot manager can take this into account. This is one reason why the Boot Manager should be in the DOS partition on a FAT16.

 

[John R Weiss]

I am running Win2K Pro (SP4) and would like to dual-boot
DOS and Win2K.

I have yet to install DOS because of concerns over things
I have read, but I intend to do so if someone can explain
it in full.

Why not just use a floppy to boot into DOS?

Add a DOS directory on one of your HD partitions, and use a COMSPEC statement to
use that command.com after the initial boot to save time accessing the floppy.
You can also use the device drivers (e.g., emm386.exe) on the HD.

 

[George Hester]

True. Wouldn't that imply one less available Primary partition? One for DOS; one for Windows; another for the Boot Manager? If the Boot Manager is in DOS (it definitely should NOT be in Windows) we have two more available Primary partitions. If it is in a Primary partition all its own we only have one more. I suppose you could have Windows in a Extended Partition but that is still three Primary partitions. DOS has to be in a primary partition and on the primary drive. At least I never tried it any other way so whoops could be wrong there.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Yes, the boot manager would indeed use another primary
partition in this configuration. However . . . if you use the
right boot manager then it does not matter. XOSL will
happily boot into logical drives. My test machine runs
Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP. In each case
the boot files reside on the drive where the OS is installed,
which is always visible as drive C:, and most of these are
logical drives. There is a little trick to it but it works extremely
well and extremely reliably.


True. Wouldn't that imply one less available Primary partition? One for
DOS; one for Windows; another for the Boot Manager? If the Boot Manager is
in DOS (it definitely should NOT be in Windows) we have two more available
Primary partitions. If it is in a Primary partition all its own we only
have one more. I suppose you could have Windows in a Extended Partition but
that is still three Primary partitions. DOS has to be in a primary
partition and on the primary drive. At least I never tried it any other way
so whoops could be wrong there.

 

[George Hester]

Yes that is how I would do it. ? Don't you have problems with .RESTORE due to WinME? I mean you'll get .RESTORE all over the place? This is why I removed WinME from my configuration.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

There is no reason why I should have problems with any
part of any OS. When I run WinME then the _Restore
directory is visible on drive C:. When I run a different OS
then a different partition poses as drive C:, and the WinME
partition is invisible and inaccessible. Each OS resides on
its own partition. I believe I could have as many logical
drives as there are letters in the alphabet, hence something
like 24 OSs (although I don't see why I should!).


Yes that is how I would do it. ? Don't you have problems with .RESTORE due
to WinME? I mean you'll get .RESTORE all over the place? This is why I
removed WinME from my configuration.

 

[George Hester]

Oh sorry. "When I run WinME then the _Restore directory is visible on drive C:. When I run a different OS then a different partition poses as drive C:, and the WinME partition is invisible and inaccessible" That was never the case for me. I could see and access all my partitions from Windows 2000. So I guess we had slightly different setups.

 

[Greg Faris]

What kind of DOS do you need?
If you're like me, and you have third-party devices (I'm an engineer, and have
oscilloscopes, analyzers, eprom programers etc) that run in DOS, you probably
want to install a "real" native dos, such as 6.22, as these
devices/applications won't run adequately in a DOS window.

I used Partition Magic to create a small, FAT partition. I installed DOS 6.22
there. I then created a large NTFS partition, where I installed Windows2000. I
can see the DOS partition as "F" when I'm running Windows, but when I boot to
the DOS partition, it's the only partition visible, so it appears as "C".
Partition Magic's Boot Magic application is great. On bootup, I choose the OS
I want.

G Faris

 

[IOStorm]

Just a rant...

Why in hell didn't Microsoft create a command line mode in Windows
NT/2k/XP/2k3 in the first place? Something simple: one or two boot
disks, and the ability to create a completely GUI independent system.

That would have made sense in light of a GUI that can be hosed to the
point of having to reinstall.

 

[George Hester]

Likely security issues.

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

It's called the Recovery Console. But it's not DOS. If you want DOS,
you need DOS.

 

[IOStorm]

It's called the Recovery Console. But it's not DOS. If you want DOS,
you need DOS.

A bit of an error here with common terminology. DOS is a general
term. MS-DOS is a specific term. And MS-DOS does not natively handle
NTFS.

The recovery console doesn't offer a lot of functionality. It would
have been nice if Microsoft had simply left in a base CLI OS. Linux
probably wouldn't be as much of a threat now if they had.

 

[IOStorm]

There is also a Safe Mode Command Line Interface, so I'm not sure what
the tizzy is all about.

A Safe Mode command line where you can use all of your USB devices and
have full network connectivity? Nope.

I'm speaking of an NT/Win2k version of MS-DOS. Either CLI or GUI, you
choose.