DOS boot partition

[danielt_39us]

I am trying to get DOS to boot on a Pent IV with a Micro Star 865em2 MB using an Intel 865G/PE chipset. I have made the primary partition active and formated and installed 6.22 but on reboot after installion of DOS I get an non-disk error. Looking at the Micro Star web site it says the only OS's supported are -98SE upwards. Any hope of getting it to recognize DOS? Where can I go to find a list MB's that are DOS compatible?

[GaryRouth]

I'll assume you want to dual-boot the machine? Perhaps with DOS (for old DOS games or programs) and perhaps WinXP?

You might not need DOS at all. There's a compatibility mode in XP that will emulate DOS (sort of a virtual DOS machine), that you can try if that is your main OS.

You can also dual boot Win98se & WinXP. This actually creates a triple-boot, so to speak, because Win98se contains a version of DOS (I think it's called DOS 7) - and you can boot to DOS mode, or simply create a floppy to boot to DOS from the "Startup Disk" utility in Win98's Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.

I'm not that familiar anymore with DOS 6.22 - but it's possible that it installed fine. You might just need to check that you haven't accidentally left disks in your removable drives.
. . . Gary

[. . . and Welcome to the Pc Mechanic forums. . . ]

[danielt_39us]

Gary
Thanks yr reply. Yes, I will use the machine in a multi--boot enviroment ultimately but I have a huge Lotus 1-2-3 (DOS) program I wrote donkeys years ago that I use for accounting purposes and if I access it from a Windows OS I don't get the speed I need. I have not experienced any DOS installation problems in my earlier PII machines so this is a first time for it. No disks accidently left in any drive bays......wish it was that easy.
Dan Cooley

[edfair]

You might want to try a 98 bootdisk and fdisk and format using it to see if the later version OS will work. It is a true DOS but the transient utilities are in short supply.
You should be able to mske one on a machine or get one at www.bootdisk.com. Just put whatever utilities you have in \dos and check your autoexec.bat and config.sys to make sure you aren't calling something that isn't there.

[danielt_39us]

Ed
Thanks for the advice as I hadn't thought of trying that. I will look into it. Actually today my supplier has agreed to take the MB back and find one that is DOS 6.22 compatible so hopefully that will solve my immediate problem.
Just had a cursory look at the site U recommended and it looks very helpful on some other issues such as cleaning out undeletable folders on my desktop! Thanks.
Dan Cooley