I can attest to the wonderful results from using GPARTED and the
instructions on the disk Mark speaks of. I use Win98SE as the DOS OS,
because it can read FAT32 files and has other useful functions. I have
licensed copies available from the many old computers I have in the
basement, and the procedure to get Win98 to open in DOS by editing
MSDOS.SYS is well-established: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/217210
I do find it useful to reinstall all the older DOS utilities, found on
the web as OLDDOS.EXE
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95upg/tool_s/1.0/w95/en-us/olddos.exe.
One note for those new to this process: there are a few pitfalls lurking
in the details of drive naming and file systems. The ability of Win2kPro
and WinXP to multiboot (Microsoft's favored name for the process) makes
it pretty easy to set up dual boot. Microsoft procedures assume that the
installation of OS's will be in the order of their release date, so the
later OS will properly control the multiboot process. See for example
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559
But Mark's referenced procedure does not require this, and so can be
used on computers which already have the more recent OS installed (and
have data you want to keep on the HDD). This is especially important if
the OS came preinstalled, and you don't have the original disk(s). But
you need to pay attention to whether the partition for the newer OS is
set to FAT32 or NTFS. If it's NTFS, then that partition won't be visible
to the DOS/Win98 OS. Some folks prefer to set up a third FAT32 partition
to keep files and data that they want to access from either OS, but the
newer OS can be used to move stuff around.
As an example of a problem I had to resolve, I had a well-used WinXP
machine that I wanted to dual boot to DOS. It happened to have two
HDD's, one for XP and another for Win98/DOS. The WinXP OS was installed
on the C: drive formatted to NTFS and Win98/DOS was installed on the D:
drive formatted to FAT32. When the dual boot process was called to open
in Win98, the C: drive became invisible and the D: drive became
reassigned to C:, confusing the whole process and resulting in an
unresolvable hang. You can reformat a FAT32 drive with data to NTFS, but
you can't go the other way. With a bit of juggling I was able to rename
the drives so that the FAT32/Win98 drive was named C: and the NTFS/WinXP
drive was named D:, after which everything works great.
Using GPARTED you can do a lot of partitioning of existing drives with
data and OS already present, so this is a great piece of work. You will
find it very helpful to have either a floppy or CD with an OS on it, to
save yourself if you get into a blind alley as I did.
I have several other desktop and laptop computers that were formatted to
use FAT32 only, with Win2kPro. These were a snap to set up to dual boot,
even thought the Win98SE OS was installed after the Win2kPro was already
in use. I've been satisfied that Win2kPro is a reasonable compromise to
get most of the modern Windows functionality.
Thanks Mark for bringing this to the attention of the contesting
community. We use all DOS logging software in our HC8 station, and it's
been years since we had any crash or lockup problems in our network
(thanks to our "IT department").
Dave, W6NL/HC8L
Mark Bailey wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:42:10 -0500
> From: Mark Bailey <kd4d@comcast.net>
> Subject: [ct-user] Adding MS-DOS to a WindowsXP Computer
> To: ct-user@contesting.com, TR Log Reflector <trlog@contesting.com>,
> CQ Contest <cq-contest@contesting.com>,
> freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> Message-ID: <45706972.3010708@comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Good day, everyone:
>
> I have updated my procedure and bootable CD for installing
> FreeDOS (or MSDOS) on almost any WindowsXP computer. You can
> install FreeDOS (or MSDOS) beside WindowsXP without damaging
> the WindowsXP installation - using completely free open-source
> tools.
>
> I use this capability to run Amateur Radio contest logging
> programs which are DOS-based.
>
> I did the updated procedure and cd because the free tools to
> shrink the WindowsXP installation have new versions with
> more error checking. There are several changes to the procedure
> to hopefully make it easier to read and follow.
>
> There is a FREE CD which contains everything you need to install
> FreeDOS available for download at
>
> http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/
> Add DOS to preinstalled Windows (see left side)
>
> The PDF file of the updated procedure is also available there or
> directly from
>
> http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/file/fdinst095.pdf
>
> (Thanks to Johnson Lam for providing the server space for this).
> The CDROM image is about 30 MiBytes. The procedure is less
> than 1 MiByte.
>
> I would appreciate feedback from anyone who uses the procedure
> so that I can improve it. All of my computers boot both WindowsXP
> and DOS! I can do this in under ten minutes - it will take
> you a bit longer the first time.
>
> Mark Bailey, KD4D
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:05:57 -0500
> From: Mark Bailey <kd4d@comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [ct-user] Adding FREEDOS (or MSDOS) to a WindowsXP
> Computer
> To: ct-user@contesting.com
> Message-ID: <45706F05.2010200@comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Oops...I meant FreeDOS (or MSDOS). Sorry about the mistake.
>
> 73,
>
> Mark
>
> Mark Bailey wrote:
>
>>Good day, everyone:
>>
>>I have updated my procedure and bootable CD for installing
>>FreeDOS (or MSDOS) on almost any WindowsXP computer. You can
>>install FreeDOS (or MSDOS) beside WindowsXP without damaging
>>the WindowsXP installation - using completely free open-source
>>tools.
>>
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