nothing but DOS

I know this is likely simple but having little or no experience with DOS and forgetting what I had learned i turn to you.
Someone want me to set up a machine without windows that boots into DOS for the purpose of loading a DOS library record system. I fdisked a machine I had but the only way to restart it is to boot to the windows98 setup disc.
What is the easiest way to get a machine to boot to DOS and what needs to be done. I tried booting to a 6.22 DOS boot disc but got the non system disck error.

thanks
brent

You could install MS Dos or one of the Freeware DOS versions available such as http://www.freedos.org/ .
This said if you booted with disk one of three of version 6.22 and set the bios to boot from floppy it should have enabled you to run setup.

Try this:

1. Get on an internet-capable PC and go to http://www.bootdisk.com.
   
2. Download a MS-DOS boot diskette. (Actually, it's a program that will recreate a MS-DOS version 6.22 boot diskette for you).
   
3. Insert a blank floppy diskette in drive A: then double-click the program you just downloaded.
   
4. Take this diskette to the problem PC and boot from it.
   
5. You should now be running under MS-DOS 6.22. Type:
   
   ver
   
   (and press [Enter]) to see.
   
6. If I'm not mistaken both FDISK and FORMAT are also on that diskette. You can use these to re-partition, i.e.,
   
   fdisk
   
   and then
   
   format c: /s
   
   the hard drive. (Keep in mind that MS-DOS won't run on a FAT32 partition).
   
7. Once you've done that you should at least be able to boot from the hard drive. You won't have all the MS-DOS tools of course but, you will be running the basic MS-DOS, (IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM).

Or in case you are too lazy to wait for the format to complete...

sys c:

?

If you abort the format of a new partition, you'll just have to do it again.

Was just an alternative to format /s

(And yes, I assumed that the disk was already formatted.)

thanks guys
just what the (virtual)DR ordered