DOS booting variations

[ustuzou]

My Windows HD is the primary master and my DOS HD is the
secondary master. The Windows HD is FAT32 (yes, I know, I
got it from someone else). To boot Windows, which I do
rarely, I just power up or reset the computer. To boot
DOS, I use a bootable disk with config and autoexec on it,
referencing only system files on the C: drive and setting
comspec to C:\dos. It works fine. But what if I wanted
to put a DOS partition and a Windows partition on the same
hard drive? How would that be done?

Miki
[email protected]

[taylorguitarman]

You would need to partition the drive. You can use utilities like fdisk to do this but you run the risk of losing your data on the drive. So this is really only if you're going to start from scratch. Otherwise, there are products like PartitionMagic that can do the repartitioning safely for you. There are also some restrictions on how the drive must be layed out for everything to work as well. Mainly a 1024 cyclinder restriction for bootable partitions.

[ustuzou]

Originally posted by taylorguitarman
You would need to partition the drive. You can use utilities like fdisk to do this but you run the risk of losing your data on the drive. So this is really only if you're going to start from scratch. Otherwise, there are products like PartitionMagic that can do the repartitioning safely for you. There are also some restrictions on how the drive must be layed out for everything to work as well. Mainly a 1024 cyclinder restriction for bootable partitions.

Thanks. Would I install Windows first, then put the DOS
system files in the extended partition and boot off floppy
with reference to that partition? I don't think DOS would
care where command.com was located