Installing DOS

[i have no clue what happened to my last post but it removed the original topic and replaced it with a "time" ?!?!) Anyway, I had originally asked some questions as to how I should go about installing DOS on a hard drive as a dual boot with windows nt or 2000. Someone (eyegore?) had responded and asked me for more info...here it is!


I'm looking to install DOS so I can boot to it if necessary to fix an installation of Windows NT or win2000 on the same HD. I usually carry around a floppy disk with some DOS utils on it (edit.com, ntfs-dos, deltree, delpart, cd-rom drivers etc) so I can boot to the floppy and make changes on my windows installation. I just thought it would be easier if I could install DOS on the hard drive and boot to it, this would remove the need to carry around DOS floppies (I usually have about 2.5 mbs worth of DOS utils which means I end up switching floppies in and out of the disk drive to access a certain utility).

I wasn't aware that DOS couldn't be used to access another OS on the same hard drive because of limitations with the boot manager. Are you sure about this?

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Like a stream of bat's piss, I strive to be a gleaming shaft of light amid a sea of darkness

Hi Tobmello,
Unfortunately that is correct. It's as though the other partition doesn't exist.

Others may know more, but I think there is such a thing as a high capacity floppy.

Or maybe a portable zip drive, or putting the DOS programs on a CD?

Good Luck,
Dave

P.S. Yes that post does look weird!

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Check Ledger 2001 *** Help others less fortunate.

A solution to your problem with multiple disks for your utilities may be compressing them. I use Symantec Norton Antivirus Floppy recovery. This currently takes 4 to 5 floppy disks when you create it with the NAV program. I create a Ramdrive at bootup and store the NAV files in ZIP files on 2 floppies. When I boot with the first disk, it creates the RAMDISk and copies its ZIP file and other non-compress files to the RAMDISK. Then it copies the second disk to the RAMDISK and runs the program from the RAMDISK. This performs much faster and you should have access to the hard drives (and whatever else you set up on the boot disk; CDROM, ZIP Drive).

See RAMWIN Windows 95 for the method I used to do this.
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My
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/
Dennis
Politalk

A simple method is to put the DOS files you use in a folder on C drive, then at start up F8 to the menu and go to the C prompt and CD to that folder. You can include the Dosshell files as well as a mouse driver which you execute right from the prompt giving you your mouse to use in Dosshell.

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A Little Brain Damage Can't Hurt!

My help page...

http://rvi.net/~moke/MokeHlp/MAIN.htm

There isn't an F8 option for windows NT or win2000 I don't think. The F8 applies to win95 and '98 right?

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Like a stream of bat's piss, I strive to be a gleaming shaft of light amid a sea of darkness

tobmello - You are probably right - I've never run NT or 2K but the idea is valid just so someway you get to a prompt.

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Black holes are where God divided by zero.

F8 works in Win2k . . . you can get to the promt