No mouse driver for DOS in Windows XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter FUBARinSFO
  • Start date Start date
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FUBARinSFO

Hi:

In the course of formatting a bootable system diskette in Windows XP,
I noted that no mouse.com driver was included on the resulting
diskette. I was rather surprised then to find no mouse.* driver on my
installed XP system, nor could I find it in the Support\Tools folder
on the distribution CD.

Did I overlook something, or is no DOS mouse.com/.exe/.sys installed
or available with Windows XP? If not, is there a recommended default
driver/mouse.com executable people pull in to add to their boot system
floppy?

Thank you in advance for your help.

-- Roy Zider
 
I've used mouse.exe for some boot floppies, but I had it before (from my
Win98SE and DOS setup). If you look for it online or on a Win9x CD, you
can still find it.
 
FUBARinSFO said:
Hi:

In the course of formatting a bootable system diskette in Windows XP,
I noted that no mouse.com driver was included on the resulting
diskette. I was rather surprised then to find no mouse.* driver on my
installed XP system, nor could I find it in the Support\Tools folder
on the distribution CD.

Did I overlook something, or is no DOS mouse.com/.exe/.sys installed
or available with Windows XP? If not, is there a recommended default
driver/mouse.com executable people pull in to add to their boot system
floppy?

Thank you in advance for your help.

-- Roy Zider
Click to expand...

If you manufactured a WinXP boot diskette then you won't need
a mouse, hence there is no mouse driver.

Perhaps you explain what you expect your boot diskette to do
and why you want a mouse driver.
 
Pegasus said:
If you manufactured a WinXP boot diskette then you won't need
a mouse, hence there is no mouse driver.
Click to expand...

IF you ONLY want to boot up, that may be true, but some of us may run some
other utilities on a boot up disk, too. One such example is being able to
access the NTFS volume, folders, and files *outside* of Windows, and with a
File Explorer like interface, where a mouse is pretty essential. And -
there are other such examples.
 
Bill in Co. said:
IF you ONLY want to boot up, that may be true, but some of us may run some
other utilities on a boot up disk, too. One such example is being able
to access the NTFS volume, folders, and files *outside* of Windows, and
with a File Explorer like interface, where a mouse is pretty essential.
And - there are other such examples.
Click to expand...

Most DOS boot diskettes, e.g. those from www.bootdisk.com, have
mouse drivers. You can also download mouse.com from this location
for a limited time:
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1312353_2nrfp/mouse.com.
Type mouse /? to see the various options.

You would get far more replies if you posted your question in a Win98
newsgroup since the core of your question relates to DOS/Win9x, not
to WinXP.
 
There is no MSDOS in XP to run mouse.com. This is true of the entire NT
branch of Windows.
 
Colin said:
"There is no MSDOS in XP to run mouse.com. This is true of the entire
NT branch of Windows."

Thank you, Colin. That was the confirmation I was looking for.

I'll get the mouse driver I need from earlier versions of Windows.

Thank you all for your help.

-- Roy Zider
 
Oops, spoke too soon. That wasn't exactly the answer I was looking
for, but it will have to do. I know there's no "MSDOS" in XP as such,
so if you're going to be literal about it, there's no need for
mouse.com since XP handles the mouse by itself.

However, if any of you have the occasion some time to create such a
floppy yourself from XP, you will note that the Format options specify
as one of the selections "Create an MS-DOS startup disk". That's MS-
DOS to me, not some stripped-down XP idea of MS-DOS without a mouse
driver.

Indeed, examining the files it does put on the diskette, it certainly
is reminiscent to me anyway of an old-timey DOS diskette -- which is
why I was surprised to find no mouse driver. When was the last time
any of you saw more.com or display.sys, let alone three EGA drivers
and five keyboard drivers on a boot diskette?

In any case, as I said I'll add the driver myself, or rather use a
boot disk creator, and will be careful about using XP to create any
boot floppies in the future. Sombody ask me for a DOS boot diskette,
don't want to give them one without a mouse driver.

-- Roy Zider

Volume in drive A has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2A87-6CE1

Directory of A:\

04/07/2001 01:40 PM 9 MSDOS.SYS
05/15/2001 06:57 PM 116,736 IO.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA2.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,753 EGA3.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 21,607 KEYB.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 34,566 KEYBOARD.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,942 KEYBRD2.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,633 KEYBRD3.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 13,014 KEYBRD4.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 29,239 MODE.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 93,040 COMMAND.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 17,175 DISPLAY.SYS
05/12/2008 01:04 PM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT
05/12/2008 01:04 PM 0 CONFIG.SYS
15 File(s) 565,454 bytes
0 Dir(s) 889,344 bytes free
 
It's a legacy provision meant for situations, such as updating a BIOS, where
the computer needs to boot into DOS. The real estate on a floppy is scarce
so files are kept to the bare minimum. I don't think anyone ever
anticipated that a user would use a mouse is such a scenario.
 
The date and time was 5/12/2008 1:13 PM, and on a whim, FUBARinSFO
pounded out on the keyboard:
Oops, spoke too soon. That wasn't exactly the answer I was looking
for, but it will have to do. I know there's no "MSDOS" in XP as such,
so if you're going to be literal about it, there's no need for
mouse.com since XP handles the mouse by itself.

However, if any of you have the occasion some time to create such a
floppy yourself from XP, you will note that the Format options specify
as one of the selections "Create an MS-DOS startup disk". That's MS-
DOS to me, not some stripped-down XP idea of MS-DOS without a mouse
driver.

Indeed, examining the files it does put on the diskette, it certainly
is reminiscent to me anyway of an old-timey DOS diskette -- which is
why I was surprised to find no mouse driver. When was the last time
any of you saw more.com or display.sys, let alone three EGA drivers
and five keyboard drivers on a boot diskette?

In any case, as I said I'll add the driver myself, or rather use a
boot disk creator, and will be careful about using XP to create any
boot floppies in the future. Sombody ask me for a DOS boot diskette,
don't want to give them one without a mouse driver.

-- Roy Zider

Volume in drive A has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2A87-6CE1

Directory of A:\

04/07/2001 01:40 PM 9 MSDOS.SYS
05/15/2001 06:57 PM 116,736 IO.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA2.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,753 EGA3.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 21,607 KEYB.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 34,566 KEYBOARD.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,942 KEYBRD2.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,633 KEYBRD3.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 13,014 KEYBRD4.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 29,239 MODE.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 93,040 COMMAND.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 17,175 DISPLAY.SYS
05/12/2008 01:04 PM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT
05/12/2008 01:04 PM 0 CONFIG.SYS
15 File(s) 565,454 bytes
0 Dir(s) 889,344 bytes free
Click to expand...

Hi Roy,

Get what you need here:
http://www.bootdisk.com/

By the way, older versions of DOS used a compressed CAB file and
RAMDRIVE.SYS for a lot of the system files (chkdsk, fomat, mscdex,
scandisk, etc.) since storage space was at a premium.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
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Terry said:
The date and time was 5/12/2008 1:13 PM, and on a whim, FUBARinSFO
pounded out on the keyboard:


Hi Roy,

Get what you need here:
http://www.bootdisk.com/

By the way, older versions of DOS used a compressed CAB file and
RAMDRIVE.SYS for a lot of the system files (chkdsk, fomat, mscdex,
scandisk, etc.) since storage space was at a premium.
Click to expand...

Well, not ALL of what you need. I needed *mouse.exe* (Microsoft) for
some cases, and got it from an old W98SE installation.
 
The date and time was 5/12/2008 1:51 PM, and on a whim, Bill in Co.
pounded out on the keyboard:
Well, not ALL of what you need. I needed *mouse.exe* (Microsoft) for
some cases, and got it from an old W98SE installation.
Click to expand...

The boot floppies I have use mouse.com. Anyway, both can be found at
the site:
http://www.bootdisk.com/readme.htm
Scroll down to "I want a mouse in DOS"

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
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