Win XP and DOS dual boot

[jmr061]

I would like to setup a laptop with WIN XP and DOS on separate partitions to do a dual boot. I have accomplished this but XP isn't letting me see the DOS partition as a drive like Windows 2000 will. I want to be able to access the dos drive stuff while in XP and when its time to do the actual read/write to the radio re-boot into DOS.

Does anyone have any answers to getting the dual boot setup with WIN XP and DOS and still have the DOS drive available while in XP?

Thanks

Jason

[Tom in D.C.]

If your objective is to run a Motorola DOS RSS you might have a problem if
the CPU is running at a very high speed, as most of the XP machines do.
Different people get different results, often depending on whose main board is
being used, but the consensus would probably be that a speed of 75 mHz is
about the safe maximum for an old DOS RSS.

[jmr061]

I am well versed in dos and rss. I currently run my 900mhz centrino doing programming.

Thanks

Jason

[wavetar]

I've never tried dual-booting XP & DOS, although I've done XP & Win98 with no problems.

I'm thinking XP might only recognize FAT32, not FAT16 or FAT12.

Does XP show it's drive as C or D?

Go to the 'run' field & type in "diskmgmt.msc". It should start the XP Disk Management program. See if it shows both your DOS & XP partitions in there, and see if it recognizes the DOS FAT filing system.



Todd

[kf4sqb]

No problem at all. I use this nifty little program called System Commander, which is a partition/boot manager. You could, theoretically, install almost all operating systems currently available on one system with this program, and simply select which one you want to run at boot (that would be one huge HDD! ). That, of course, would be a bit of overkill, but it illustrates the point that it will easily do exactly what you want to do.

[jmr061]

I dont know if I am confused or someone else is. I have the dual boot working but I want to be able to access the dos partition files while working in XP. It wont let me see the partition as a drive so I can't access the files while in XP. I want to know how to access the files while working in XP. The XP disk manager lets me see the partiton but I can't access it. Partition Magic shows the dos partition to be hidden when I am in XP.

Same setup in Windows 2000 allows access to the dos partition as a drive.

Jason

[wavetar]

I dont know if I am confused or someone else is. I have the dual boot working but I want to be able to access the dos partition files while working in XP. It wont let me see the partition as a drive so I can't access the files while in XP. I want to know how to access the files while working in XP. The XP disk manager lets me see the partiton but I can't access it. Partition Magic shows the dos partition to be hidden when I am in XP.

Same setup in Windows 2000 allows access to the dos partition as a drive.

Jason

Ok, you can see the partition in diskmanager...does it identify the filing system for the partition, or does it list it as "unknown", or "unformatted"? If it shows it as either one of those, then XP doesn't recognize FAT12/16 DOS filing systems (even though 2000 does)...and there probably isn't much you can do about it if that's the case. But like I said, I haven't dual-booted DOS & XP, so I don't know if not seeing the DOS partition is normal or not. Oh, and you didn't mention if XP shows it's own drive as C or D.

Todd

[jmr061]

Its showing as unknown and the XP drive is drive C.

Sounds like I will be staying with 2000 then.

Jason

[wavetar]

Its showing as unknown and the XP drive is drive C.

Sounds like I will be staying with 2000 then.

Jason

If you really want XP, just dual-boot it with Win98SE, and use the "MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS & XMS Support" icon in the "C:\Windows" folder to boot into DOS. It'll still boot into DOS even after a hard boot, so you'll never have to boot into Win98 again, if you don't want to. That's how I have my laptop set up. I can almost guarantee it'll work every bit as good as the DOS 6.22 or whatever you're using right now, and you'll be able to access the drive from XP.

Todd

[jmr061]

Seeing how when I put the WIN98SE disk in and boot the computer it says it can't find a driver for the CD drive when installing it I guess I am out of luck.

Jason

[wavetar]

Seeing how when I put the WIN98SE disk in and boot the computer it says it can't find a driver for the CD drive when installing it I guess I am out of luck.

Jason

You have the luck of the Irish, don't you?

Boot up with a Win98SE floppy, partition & format your drive, create a folder on the C drive called "wincd" or whatever...copy the entire contents of your Win98 CD to that folder...run setup.exe from that folder, the Windows installation will run from that folder, no CD required.

Todd

[kb0nly]

Its showing as unknown and the XP drive is drive C.

Sounds like I will be staying with 2000 then.

Jason

Must be formatted as FAT16, which is no surprise because Dos 6.22 uses FAT 16.

For what you want to do your best off running a dual boot with 98 and XP. I have one computer here with XP, 98, SuSE, and it used to also have BeOS on it but that partition is messed up right now and i haven't had time to figure out why and fix it.

[440roadrunner]

I don't understand how following wavetar's instructions will help--

If you boot with a '98 floppy, and the floppy doesn't load the correct CDROM drivers, how are you going to copy the "entire contents" of the CD to the hdd?

First, the floppy isn't apparently loading the correct CDROM driver.

I assume that the laptop will boot to a good, clean CD?

So, some questions

WHAT model is the laptop, and have you been to the support site for it, and have you looked for CDROM driver (that you can use on a floppy) specially for the laptop?

WHAT is the '98 CD that you have---some "burned copied" CD's won't read in older CDROM drives.

ONLY the "OEM" '98 cd's will boot---the ones that say on the front "for distribution only with a new CD"

UPGRADE '98 cd's will not boot

RETAIL "store bought" "full version" cd's will not boot.

I haven't tried this, but it appears the problem is that XP won't see a FAT16 partition.

Now, you CAN hack around and get a certain amount of DOS function WITHOUT installing all of '98. A good start would be to "sys" or "format/sys" a FAT 32 partition from a 98 boot device, and then copy the \command directory over from a working 98 machine. If you have the time, you should be able to extract the '98 DOS commands from a '98 cd. SOME of the 6.22 stuff will work, but in other commands you'll get "version" errors. I'm not enough of a DOS geek to figure ways around this.

Also, I've been hearing that there IS some version of DOS, maybe DRDOS that supports FAT32, you might investigat that. There was "some guy" who had a hacked up version of "DOS 7.xx" that seems to be nothing more than what we are exactly talking about--the DOS under WIndows98 He was known as something like "Weingier"

Last, you don't need to "copy the entire contents" of the '98 CD--just the \Win98 folder, and if you do this from a DOS prompt (copy *.*) it will leave out the \ols directory and it's subdirectories, as well as the \tour directory and it's subdirectories----things you don't need for the install, anyhow.


You'll also notice that a few of the DOS progams, like format, scandisk, etc are sitting right there in the \Win98 directory, and if you browze over to \tools\oldmsdos, you'll see more of them yet


Seems to me that chasing down a working FAT32 version of a "pure DOS" partition would be a worthwhile endeavor. I still have a couple of machines here that, even though they run Winhozed98, I've done the simple little mod to get them to boot to C:



AND FINALLY I went and found the "hacked up" DOS7xx install thing, some good info here:


http://www.oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/


which eventually lead us to:


http://www.cn-dos.net/msdos71/



also from the "Powerload" site there is just loads of info, including


http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/msdos.htm


go down the page to the link that says:


OLDDOS.EXE http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/download/olddos.exe


" MS-DOS 7.0 Supplimental Files (For Win9x Includes INTERLINK, MEMMAKER, DOS HELP & Others)"


Also, by the way, to great old programs that I just refuse to get along without are laplink3 (ll3.exe) which is there at Powerloads, and another wich originally came with Xtreegold, called xtlink.com, which is a sort dos based server program, but works better than the incredibly irritating interlink/interserver. The think about xtlink is that you can boot a Winhoed98 machine to DOS, load the xtlink program, then load '98 on top, and then proceed to browze a linked-up DOS machine using Winhozed Exploder.

[kf4sqb]

Pay attention. He said that when he puts the Win98SE disk (not the 3.5" boot disk, but the actual disk), it wouldn't load CD drivers. If that is the case, then the boot floppy may well solve the problem. The boot floppy loads a few generic CD drivers which will work with the vast majority of CD drives out there. The acutal install CD, unlike Win 2000 and Win XP, doesn't load CD drivers when initializing the install.

[440roadrunner]

kf4sqb, you are somehow misinformed. (By the way, how do you "know" that "disk" meant the CD"disk" and not the floppy "disk"?


However, your post about the CD "not loading drivers" is incorrect. An OEM '98 CD when booting loads a virtual floppy drive, just like if you had booted from a floppy. As a person who has made a few "burned" cd's with floppy emulation, I can tell you this----whatever is on the boot sector of the bootable CD loads just like it was a floppy, and in fact, if you made a bootable CD and "forget" to include CDROM drivers on the boot image, then what happens is that the thing boots just fine---to an A: prompt. It won't read the "main" section of the CD.

For the most part, a '98 OEM cd loads the very same CDROM drivers from the boot sector that the average '98 startup floppy loads. In fact, the CDROM startup gives you the menu choice to start with or without CDROM support. If you ever try that, you'll see that you cannot now read the CDROM itself.

[440roadrunner]

An afterthought:


I wonder if you could dual boot DOS 6x (FAT16) with XP except USE FAT32 for the XP system?



What I tried:

Grabbed my Thinkpad 600x "guinee pig" and used '98 bootdisk to remove

FAT32 partition (previous XP install in FAT32)




Created FAT partition "active" of 500mb (test)

Booted with DOS 6.22 "upgrade" floppy, hit "F8" on startup , to get to A:

and select to NOT run autoexec

"Format C:/s"

(This gets around the "upgrade" situation)


Reboot, again with "F8" and select "don't run autoexec"


Run setup/g (in my case ignores creating uninstall files for upgrade

situation)


If you have the DOS 5x or 6x "full" installation, you can run setup asis,

after making a Partition


When DOS installation was done, rebooted with my XP Cd

Waited about a day and a half for all the startup stupidity

Select to install XP at appropriate menu

Select "unpartitioned space"

Select "Format the partition using the FAT file system"

Proceed with XP install, you know the drill


AND IT WORKS. Installing XP using a FAT32 partition DOES allow access to

the DOS 6x partition.

This at least should be one avenue of a solution

[wavetar]

I don't understand how following wavetar's instructions will help--

I assumed he does not have a defective CD, as evidenced by the fact he's loaded XP with it.
Installing the OS from the CD and having the Win98 install fail part-way through and complain about not being able to find the CD drivers is a fairly common occurance, and can be read about in the MS database, although I'm not about to search for it. There's even detailed instructions in the "setup.txt" file included on the Win98SE CD for this issue, an excerpt is below:

Installing Windows 98 Second Edition from Your Hard Disk
---------------------------------------------------------
By copying all the Setup files to your hard disk and
then installing from your hard disk, you can eliminate
most of the problems associated with file copy and disk
I/O issues. You can unload your CD-ROM drivers and free
up conventional memory to assist with low memory errors
in this type of install.

From MS-DOS:
* Make sure you have access to your CD-ROM drive. See
above for more information.
* Free an additional 120 MB of disk space in addition
to what Setup will require. Setup will typically
require 195 MB for an upgrade from Windows 95.
* Create a temporary folder called "W98Flat" on the
drive with plenty of free space to store the Setup
files. To create a temporary directory, switch to
that drive letter and type: MD W98Flat.
* Now, switch to the Windows 98 Second Edition CD-ROM
drive and to the Win98 directory.
* Then copy the Windows 98 Second Edition Setup files to
the temporary directory you just created by typing:
Copy *.* <drive letter>\W98Flat.
* After all the files are copied, restart your system
and perform a clean boot by bypassing your startup
files. See "Performing a Clean Boot" for more
information.
* Switch to the temporary directory you just copied
the files to and start Setup by typing: SETUP.

So, that's how it will help.

Todd

[jmr061]

Ive decided to try the dos 7.10 route. XP is refusing to show the FAT32 drive unless its set as a logical drive which then I can't boot from it. If its set as a primary drive then XP hides it and I can't view it while in XP but I can boot from it. This really sucks.

Jason

[jmr061]

This is the conclusion I have come to (I am using XP SP2 btw):

If I partition a part of the drive as primary with either fat or fat32 It will be visible and I can use it as another drive.

As soon as I put an operating system on it, XP forces the partition to be hidden and I can't access it as a normal drive.

Jason

[440roadrunner]

The method I talked about above does work. I think the whole problem is with XP on NTFS, and DOS is FAT16

If you make a FAT16 partition, install dos, and THEN install XP on a second FAT32 partition that will work

If you install XP on NTFS, it won't

If you can figure out how to "hack" the DOS7.x onto a FAT32 DOS partition, then you should be able to install XP on NTFS, and that should work.

I just burned a CD of the hacked up "weingier" thing, and I'll let you know.

[440roadrunner]

to reiterate:

I'm not sure why you're having trouble, may be mistakes in partitioning. To summarize my first method:

You must us some software to remove ALL partitions--the DOS 6x installer won't

I used a Windows 9x bootdisk (fdisk) to remove all partitions, then established a small PRIMARY DOS FAT16 partition, and "make it active"

Format with the MS DOS 6x installer

Then, install MS DOS 6x normally.

Next, install XP BUT USE FAT32 for XP, NOT NTFS.


When you're done, you can read the DOS FAT16 partition from XP, but you can't read the XP (FAT32) partition from DOS


Now, I've just installed the hacked Weinger thing, on a small FAT32 primary partition, and I'm now reinstalling XP on NTFS. I'll let you know how that does.

[jmr061]

Here is what I have gotten to work:

Using a 3rd party floppy disk manager I was able to format and partition the drive into two segment, one fat(16) partition and one NTFS partition.

I then installed DOS 6.22 into the fat partion. I then did a clean install of XP into the NTFS partion. XP controls the boot function of the entire drive. It will allow me to boot into DOS. When I pick to boot into XP it shows the DOS drive as drive C and the XP drive as E.

Problem appears to be solved. Thanks for all the help.

Jason

[440roadrunner]

Glad you got'er. I don't understand why you had the trouble, but oh, well.


I just go through installing the pirated version that I mentioned in FAT32 (DOS) and then XP in NTFS, and then, for the fun of it, installed Windows3.x in the DOS partition. Boy does THAT run fast. I don't think I'll keep W3x on there.

I really never needed to worry about a separate DOS system until XP came along. I was happy to putz along in Winhosed 98, in DOS mode.

[440roadrunner]

I knew about this:


http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/

lots of great DOS stuff, but while there, I found this:


http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDos.html


claims to be a NTFS/ DOS driver. You might check it out.