XPe / MSDOS licensing

[Quentin]

I'm planning on having my customers upgrade their units by booting from
a USB flash drive running DOS that "autoexecs" a batch file that copies
the required new files over the old ones.

My problem is with licensing. If I distribute an application to my
users that installs MSDOS 7.10 on their flash drive would that break
the license agreement? Since my customers will have a valid XPe
license, does that guarantee them a license for MSDOS 7.10?

Quentin.

 

[Gordon Smith \(eMVP\)]

I'm planning on having my customers upgrade their units by booting
from a USB flash drive running DOS that "autoexecs" a batch file that
copies the required new files over the old ones.

My problem is with licensing. If I distribute an application to my
users that installs MSDOS 7.10 on their flash drive would that break
the license agreement? Since my customers will have a valid XPe
license, does that guarantee them a license for MSDOS 7.10?

Quentin.

Let me premise this by saying that I'm a tech guy and not a licensing guy.
However...

I'm 99% sure that if you use MSDOS on your flash drive, you'll need a MSDOS
license. XPE licenses do not grandfather the use of older OSes. If you are
using a solution which uses both MSDOS (to deliver drivers) and XPE (to run
the box), you'll need both licenses (MSDOS + XPE).

If you want a 100% answer, send me an email and we'll follow up with our
licensing guy here at Avnet.

Thanks.

 

[BattleAngel444]

have you considered using free dos? is there something in MSDOS 7.10
that you necissarliy need? I ve been able to get by with free dos and
some free gpl'ed tools

just a thought
-BA4^3

 

[Quentin]

I cannot get FreeDOS to boot from a USB flash drive. If I could get
that to work then I'd be done!

I've tried 4 methods: mkbt, HP format util, makebootfat and FlashBoot
and none of them have gotten past displaying "FreeDOS".

Quentin.

 

[Michael Devore]

I cannot get FreeDOS to boot from a USB flash drive. If I could get
that to work then I'd be done!

I've tried 4 methods: mkbt, HP format util, makebootfat and FlashBoot
and none of them have gotten past displaying "FreeDOS".

What BIOS options are you using to boot the FreeDOS drive? I have to select
USB ZIP device for my machine to boot FreeDOS off a USB stick, otherwise it
does not work. USB-FDD, USB-CDROM, and USB-HDD selections will not boot.
Other users are successful when using a USB mass storage device selection,
should you have that BIOS option.

Of course, obtaining the latest release of the appropriate FreeDOS files is
also a good idea since the past year has seen a number of compatibility
changes directly and indirectly made to associated FreeDOS files which can
affect to USB-booting.

Just to cover all the bases, have you waited longer than seemed necessary or
reasonable after seeing the FreeDOS text? The boot sequence can take longer
off a USB drive than one would normally expect. Not minutes longer, but
certainly several seconds longer than hard drive boot.

For reference sake, what USB drive make and model are you using? Not all
USB drives are reported as hardware compatible with the boot process.

 

[Quentin]

I'm running an Intel D865GBF board and I'm trying to boot from a
SanDisk Cruzer Micro (256 MB).

My BIOS is setup like so:
USB Boot - Enabled
1st Boot Device = SanDisk Cruzer Micro
2nd Boot Device = Hard Drive

I cannot find any settings for USB-FDD, USB-CDROM, or USB-HDD. To be
honest I'm not sure what those different options mean, althought I have
seen them throughout my USB flash drive boot research. I think your
right; this could be my problem. I'll need to look more into this.

It is possible that I am using an older FreeDOS version. I got my
FreeDOS boot disk from http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/ and not from
http://www.freedos.org/. I'll look into this a little more.

I'm pretty sure I've waited long enough; 30 minute should be enough eh?


Since you're gotten FreeDOS to boot from a flash drive, that gives me
new hope! Any more advice I can get on how to get this to work, would
really help!

Quentin.

 

[Michael Devore]

I'm running an Intel D865GBF board and I'm trying to boot from a
SanDisk Cruzer Micro (256 MB).

I use a Lexar JumpDrive 256M for the FreeDOS booter, but a Cruzer should
work fine. Only time I've read of problems, it was an off-brand or an older
USB stick.

My BIOS is setup like so:
USB Boot - Enabled
1st Boot Device = SanDisk Cruzer Micro
2nd Boot Device = Hard Drive

I cannot find any settings for USB-FDD, USB-CDROM, or USB-HDD.

This just means you have a newer BIOS that can directly detect the USB
stick. Theoretically that should make it more compatible with USB stick
booting rather than less (or at least one hopes so).

Since you're gotten FreeDOS to boot from a flash drive, that gives me
new hope! Any more advice I can get on how to get this to work, would
really help!

It's been a while since I created the bootable stick, but I remember it
being somewhat painful at the time. I directly formatted the stick to FAT16
under XP, and then used Bart's mkbt to copy over a FreeDOS boot image. The
painful part was manually patching the boot image to match what it should
be, since there was field or two in the stick's version of the loader which
didn't seem correct after mkbt'ing to it. Rinse and repeat for a few
iterations, while learning the basic boot loader structure. I believe the
FreeDOS boot images have been updated so this should no longer be necessary.