Hello All,
For those who are interested in following Mark, KD4D's
procedure (http://www.trlog.com/DOS_dual_boot_20041207.pdf)
to add a bootable DOS partition to a machine that already
has Windows XP installed here is a description of a slight
variation in the procedure that may be of use to some.
First I want to commend Mark for all the work he and the
others referenced in the procedure did in developing and
testing the published process. It is well written and
accurate. These efforts do make it possible for many folks
who have a newer XP based computer to create a DOS
installation that will work for our older but still favorite
DOS applications. This note simply outlines my experience in
an area that is described as "questionable" in the current
process. The issue is covered in the FAQ section under Item
5 and relates to whether the process will work for a machine
that is already "dual-boot". I will quote that section here
for clarity:
"5. My computer already dual boots Windows and another
operating system (perhaps
Windows XP and Windows 98). Should I use this procedure?
"Probably not. If your computer is currently configured to
dual boot and is meeting your
needs, there is no advantage to re-partitioning your disk
drive using this procedure.
Also, DOS requires a PRIMARY disk partition. There can only
be three or four of these
on a disk. Laptops often have a "maintenance" partition as
the first primary partition and
Windows XP as the second primary partition. If you have
another operating system, you
may not be able to create a primary partition for DOS."
But what if your existing dual-boot configuration doesn't
meet your needs? My situation was addressed in the last
sentence above in that my main machine was already dual-boot
but the two operating systems were Windows 2000 and Windows
XP. (The reason for this combination is job related.) I was
however, eager to get rid of the older "DOS only machine" I
had in my small shack for space considerations and can now
do so due to the dual-boot procedure that Mark and the
others have developed and which I used to create a
"triple-boot" machine in my case. If you are in a similar
situation the following notes may be helpful.
One caution: The quoted section of the FAQ above is
accurate. The limiting factor is indeed the number of
PRIMARY partitions existing on the disk(s). Keep that in
mind as you read the description below.
THE MACHINE
Nothing special... Home assembled unit with a Pentium
processor and lots of memory. The configuration item of note
however, is the fact that the dual-boot configuration was
supported on TWO separate hard drives. What this means on my
system is that I have one drive (the Master on the Primary
controller channel) as the Win2K drive and a second drive
(the Master on the Secondary channel) used for the XP
system. I use the resident Windows multi-boot function to
control the two. When booting I was prompted for either
Win2K or XP. The dual-boot feature (MBR) was resident on the
Win2K drive since that was the OS that was installed first.
This is important as I'll describe later.
HOW TO
I followed the written procedure with the exception of
trying (unsuccessfully) to use my CD burning program (NERO
Version 6) to write the bootable CD from the ISO image. I've
created bootable CD's before from the installed OS but for
some reason I had trouble creating it from the 100 MB ISO
image (I need to check that out further.) I ended up
downloading and installing the Windows XP ISO Recorder
"Power Toy" as described in the procedure and the disk
creation worked just fine via the XP OS. There was only one
other minor, but momentarily heart stopping, problem at the
very end.
THE PROBLEM (and resulting deviation from the procedure)
I shrunk the existing NTFS partition on the Win2K drive,
created the new FAT partition and installed Windows 98 from
a vendor CD I own and that I do not have installed on any
other PC so the licensing should be legal. I did of course
have to deal with loading all the required Win98 drivers
etc. as part of the Win98 installation. The only problem
surfaced when after the numerous reboots required during the
Win98 install that the machine wouldn't boot into anything
other than Win98 despite having made a number of successful
reboots to test the GAG Boot loader previously.
As it turns out the Win98 install apparently overwrites the
multiple boot record (MBR). The solution was simple. I
rebooted one last time via the System Rescue CD and
reinstalled GAG during which I again defined the OS's I
wanted to boot. During this step I created the following GAG
boot options: "1) Floppy", "2) Windows", "3) Win98". Note
that for option "2) Windows" I selected the FIRST NTFS drive
which was the Win2K drive and contained the pre-existing
dual-boot function. Choosing that option via GAG gets me to
the original Windows dual-boot screen and allows me to
select between "Win2K" and "XP". Selecting "Win98" boots the
new partition and allows me to switch to the DOS mode (I use
the "Restart in DOS Mode" option.) TR installed and runs
just fine on the new partition. Without any tweaking of
memory I have "MEMORY = 158,608" for a new empty log which
is way more than my peanut whistle station will ever need.
Life is good. I would of course reiterate the cautions in
the procedure and that pop-up during the partition creation
process that "...your important data should be safely backed
up before proceeding..." but we all do regular backups
anyway - right?
Thanks to Mark and the others for all the good work they
have done in defining this process.
73
Patrick
W7TMT
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