XP Pro/MSDOS6 dualboot

[Farkyss]

Hi Folks,

I'm trying to solve an awkward little problem:

My girlfriend's computer is installed with XP Professional
on a striped IDE Raid array formatted to NTFS. Within XP
the array is 160Gb and labelled as drive C:, drive D:
being the CDRW/DVD combo drive.

She is extremely keen on some old dos games, so I have
supplied to her a 2Gb FAT16-partitioned hard drive with MS-
DOS 6 on it. Windows XP shows this drive as drive E:

If we choose to boot from the 2Gb first by changing the
boot list in BIOS, we can boot from the 2Gb drive, which
ignores the RAID array and boots into MSDOS as drive C:,
which is fine.

However, we would like for it to be possible to have a
dual-boot system much like I have on my laptop where I
have xp-pro and win98 on two fat32 partitions with a menu
at bootup.

I have tried editting the boot.ini file on the xp
partition to include an extra line:
e:/="MS-DOS_6"
and rightly, a boot menu appears with xp pro and msdos as
the options, however, when ms-dos_6 is selected, the
computer pauses a moment then reboots.

Our work around at the moment involves the use of a boot
floppy to boot straight into dos 6, but this isn't ideal.

If Windows XP can't handle the dual boot, could you
suggest any third party booting software that works with
RAID arrays?

Responses would be handy if emailed, as I have limitted
access here.

Many thanks

Mark/Farkyss

 

[R. McCarty]

Download and try Microsoft Virtual PC. You can create
just about any OS within XP. They offer a 45-day free
trial version.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

 

[David Candy]

Of course it can handle it. C:\ needs to be Fat16 so MSDos can read it's files. All MS OSs boot from C drive. Make a C drive as Fat 16 and install Dos then install XP. Either or both Dos or XP can have most of their files elsewhere, but Dos must be Fat16 or Fat12. I think Fat16 is maximun size of 32 MB.

 

[Kenny S]

Perhaps you shold try
www.osloader.com


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http://www.computerboom.net
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