dual boot setup 6.22/W98SE

[fenix]

I'm repartioning a drive and need to put 6.22 on it for an old game the kid brought home. I want to partition the drive 70/30. I've heard that you have to install DOS before 9x, and would like to verify if this is correct.

And also 2 other things:

2. which partition to make active,
3. and which partition to put DOS


I'm on hold in fdisk hoping for a quick reply, thx

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried the game in win98's real dos mode - its should run a dos 6.22 game.

 

[fenix]

Yes I tried that first. I went to C:>Windows DOS and changed it to D:\ but tried 'run' and 'setup' and it said invalid command. Is that the way to do it ?

 

[Blujacket]

The following is quoted from the Windows 98 Resource Kit, page 209 or the CD:

Dual Booting Windows 98 with Windows 3.1x and MS-DOS
You can configure your computer to dual boot with Windows 3.1x as long as the computer has MS-DOS 5.0 or later by using the F4 boot-to-previous operating system feature. To dual boot Windows 98 with these operating systems, your computer’s C drive must be FAT 16.

For more information about how Windows 98 Setup treats disk partitions created under other operating systems, see “Partition Requirements” in Chapter 2, “Setting Up Windows 98.”

Important

To take advantage of the Windows 98 dual-boot capabilities, the entry BootMulti=1 must be set in the Windows 98 Msdos.sys file in the root directory. For more information, see “Msdos.sys: Special Startup Values” earlier in this chapter.

To set up dual-boot capabilities for a new installation of Windows 98

During Windows 98 Setup, when you are installing Windows 98 for the first time, make sure you specify a new directory that does not already have another version of Windows in it.
Windows 98 Setup makes all of the necessary changes to preserve your existing version of MS-DOS, Windows 3.1x, or Windows for Workgroups 3.1x, and your current Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files.

If you have already installed Windows 98 without dual-boot capabilities, you can follow these steps to allow MS-DOS to dual boot with Windows 98. However, you will not be able to dual boot with your previous version of Windows.

To set up dual-boot capabilities after Windows 98 has been installed

On a bootable floppy disk that starts MS-DOS 5.0 or later, rename the Io.sys, Msdos.sys, and Command.com files on the disk to Io.dos, Msdos.dos, and Command.dos.
Create two empty text files named Config.dos and Autoexec.dos. You can customize these now or later to be appropriate for the MS-DOS version you will be adding.
Caution

You must rename the MS-DOS versions of these files before copying them to the root directory. Otherwise, you will destroy your Windows 98 installation.

Copy all the .dos files to the root directory of the boot drive. This is usually drive C. Make duplicates of these files on your host drive if you want to use disk compression.
Mark the .dos files in the root directory of the boot drive with the hidden, system, and read-only attributes (attrib -r -s -h *.dos).
Change the Msdos.sys on the boot drive to include the line bootmulti=1. Instructions for making changes to Msdos.sys can be found earlier in this chapter.

 

[edfair]

With the following restrictions:
Drive size under 2.1g with fat16.
Bootmenu=1 in msdos.sys

6.22 on first and get it working, then add your w3.1
Have himem.sys and emm386 noems loaded and active
rename your config.sys and autoexec.bat to something else so 98 doesn't use it to create one for itself using the 6.22 version
And put the 98 in another directory as Blujacket mentions.

The bootmenu entry is added after 98 is fully in.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Blujacket]

It's probably been said but can bear repeating, MS-DOS 6.22 and earlier can't 'see'/work with FAT32 formatted partitions, Win98 can.

 

[wolluf]

fenix - 'Yes I tried that first. I went to C:>Windows DOS and changed it to D:\ but tried 'run' and 'setup' and it said invalid command. Is that the way to do it ?


Did you do this in a dos box in windows? If it needs to run in dos, that's no good. You need to shutdown to dos - and try it there. You can create custom pif's in 98 that will restart in dos mode running autoexec.bat & config.sys that you specify just for this (so, for example if game needs sound & mouse support, & access to CD drive, you've make sure relevant drivers are loaded in these custom files). Its been a long time since I've done this in 98 - so can't advise in detail (and it will depend on the app, what you need to do to get it working).