Using DOS, XP

[Guest]

I recently installed DOS onto a boot disk to use only occasionally, my
primary OS is XP. (Caldera/DR-DOS works fine off the boot disk although it
complains about not recognizing the C: drive) But now when I try to use MS
dos it does not boot at all and all I get is a never-ending flashing cursor.
What files got changed so that I can now no longer boot off the MS dos boot
disk?

 

[Guest]

I forgot to mention that I also installed the NTFSDOS patch as well.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I recently installed DOS onto a boot disk to use only occasionally, my
primary OS is XP. (Caldera/DR-DOS works fine off the boot disk although it
complains about not recognizing the C: drive) But now when I try to use MS
dos it does not boot at all and all I get is a never-ending flashing cursor.
What files got changed so that I can now no longer boot off the MS dos boot
disk?

Your post is a little unclear. When you say "boot disk",
do you mean a floppy disk? Or do you refer to your
hard disk? In a multi-booting environment? And what
exactly do you mean when you say "when I try to use
MS DOS"? Are trying to boot from an MS-DOS floppy
boot disk?

Lastly you ask "What files got changed?" What exactly
did you do between when it worked and when it failed?
How did you make the MS-DOS boot disk (diskette?)?

 

[Guest]

Yes, when I talk about any kind of disks, I mean floppy disks. ((I am trying
to get into a DOS environment, but both MS and others have their
limitations.)) I right-clicked on floppy and chose format, with "create an
MS-DOS startup disk" checkmarked.

I did not do anything other than install the program onto floppies and run
dos mode off of them. Since the boot disk DOES work on a different computer,
I know that either my MFT or a ".sys"-type file must have been altered
somehow.

 

[Jim Macklin]

Did you install that NTFS DOS patch to the Windows system on
the hard drive or just copy it to the DOS boot disk?


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


"soundsgood2me" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
|I forgot to mention that I also installed the NTFSDOS patch
as well.

 

[Guest]

No, I am not using a mutiboot environment, and yes I am trying to boot off
the MS DOS floppy disk. The MS DOS floppy boot disk works on other
computers, just not mine...and it only stopped working AFTER I installed the
Caldera/DR-DOS onto the floppy disks.

So, it appears to me that the Caldera/DrDos installation must have somehow
altered one of those "secret" files inside Windows XP, such as Config.sys,
Boot.ini...something like that. I am hoping that there is someone here who
is knowledgeable enough with the normal booting sequence to be able to
isolate the problem. But I highly suspect one of those normally-hidden files
inside my Windows XP installation as being the culprit.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No, I am not using a mutiboot environment, and yes I am trying to boot off
the MS DOS floppy disk. The MS DOS floppy boot disk works on other
computers, just not mine...and it only stopped working AFTER I installed the
Caldera/DR-DOS onto the floppy disks.

So, it appears to me that the Caldera/DrDos installation must have somehow
altered one of those "secret" files inside Windows XP, such as Config.sys,
Boot.ini...something like that. I am hoping that there is someone here who
is knowledgeable enough with the normal booting sequence to be able to
isolate the problem. But I highly suspect one of those normally-hidden files
inside my Windows XP installation as being the culprit.

Things are becoming a little clearer, but not completely. If I read your
reply above correctly then you have two problems:

a) Your MS DOS floppy boot disk will not boot on your machine.
b) Your WinXP installation will no longer boot. The machine just sits there
with a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner.

I this correct?

 

[Guest]

Well, I THOUGHT I installed onto the hard drive, until I checked just now
and I don't see the folder in either one. So, it looks like it didn't get
installed at all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
simply put, I was using MS-dos (off a bootable floppy) just fine until one
day I installed a different version of DOS and now the MS DOS no longer works.

I'd settle for uninstalling it and continuing to use just MS dos, but I do
not know how to uninstall it (since it evidently installed on MORE than just
the floppy as I had intended).

 

[Guest]

a.) is correct. MS DOS will not boot off a floppy.
b.) is not correct. Windows works just fine.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No, I am not using a mutiboot environment, and yes I am trying to boot off
the MS DOS floppy disk. The MS DOS floppy boot disk works on other
computers, just not mine...and it only stopped working AFTER I installed the
Caldera/DR-DOS onto the floppy disks.

So, it appears to me that the Caldera/DrDos installation must have somehow
altered one of those "secret" files inside Windows XP, such as Config.sys,
Boot.ini...something like that. I am hoping that there is someone here who
is knowledgeable enough with the normal booting sequence to be able to
isolate the problem. But I highly suspect one of those normally-hidden files
inside my Windows XP installation as being the culprit.

In your subsequent reply you said that WinXP works fine. If so
then your second paragraph above is quite misleading:
Caldera/DR-DOS did NOT damage your "secret" files in WinXP,
therefore we can drop this whole paragraph and concentrate on
your floppy boot problem.

Let's do this systematically:

1. Get a floppy disk that you have not used in your previous tests.
2. Format it under WinXP.
3. Turn it into a Win98 boot disk by downloading an image from
www.bootdisk.com.
4. Boot the machine with this diskette.

What do you get?

 

[Guest]

Same thing; never-ending flashing cursor

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

In your subsequent reply you said that WinXP works fine. If so
then your second paragraph above is quite misleading:
Caldera/DR-DOS did NOT damage your "secret" files in WinXP,
therefore we can drop this whole paragraph and concentrate on
your floppy boot problem.

Let's do this systematically:

1. Get a floppy disk that you have not used in your previous tests.
2. Format it under WinXP.
3. Turn it into a Win98 boot disk by downloading an image from
www.bootdisk.com.
4. Boot the machine with this diskette.

What do you get?

Same thing; never-ending flashing cursor

When replying to previous posts, please quote the text you're
replying to so that it is crystal clear what you refer to.

You do not say if your floppy disk spins at all when booting
from it, and neither do you report if you see any messages
at all on the screen. Without knowing this, I can only guess
what's wrong:
- Defective floppy disk drive
- Disk drive cable not connected properly
- BIOS thinks it's a different floppy disk drive than what you
really have.
- You're only thinking that you're booting off the floppy disk
drive but you're booting off something else.
- Your BIOS has lost the ability to boot off the floppy disk
drive (yes, this can happen, I've seen it before!)

You can walk around the problem and burn a bootable
CD off your DR-DOS diskette, then boot off that CD.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, soundsgood2me.

HOW did you install DOS onto your boot diskette?

Boot into WinXP. With a blank (or disposable) diskette in your floppy
drive, click Start | My Computer, right-click on Drive A: and choose Format
from the drop-down menu. Then choose to Create an MS-DOS startup disk.

But, WHY do you want this boot disk? Unless you install a third-party
program, it won't read - or even SEE - an NTFS volume, so it will be of very
limited use to you unless your HD volumes are formatted FAT (16 or 32). The
WinXP CD-ROM is bootable and includes the Recovery Console, a DOS-like
interface that can be handle many disk exploration and repair jobs, which
are what you probably envision using the boot diskette to do. In MS-DOS and
Win9x/ME, we had to boot from a floppy to run FDISK and Format.com,
especially if we wanted to partition our first HD or format Drive C:. In
WinXP, we boot from the WinXP CD-ROM to handle partitioning and formatting
of the "system partition" (almost always Drive C and the "boot volume"
(may also be Drive C, but we do all our other partitioning and formatting
from inside WinXP by using Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).

We can also create a floppy that will let us bypass a damaged Drive C: to
boot WinXP. But this kind of floppy will not boot into MS-DOS because it
loads WinXP's NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini, rather than DOS's io.sys,
msdos.sys and Command.com. (I know nothing of Caldera/DR-DOS.)

So, WHY do you need a boot floppy?

RC