nothing but DOS

[coops]

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

[104456]

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.

[Vernon Frazee]

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).

[TeeDub]

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

sys c:

[Vernon Frazee]

?

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

[TeeDub]

Was just an alternative to format /s

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

[coops]

thanks guys
just what the (virtual)DR ordered