dnewhous wrote:
Does a pure DOS boot disk accomplish much on Windows XP?
This seams logically obvious: If you want to use a DOS boot disk with Windows XP does Windows XP need to be bootable from the FAT32 partition?
Let's break this problem into smaller pieces. First, if you want to boot your machine from a DOS floppy you will need a primary partition (C:) formatted as FAT or FAT32. Actually, if you want FAT32 you will need a boot disk with MS-DOS 7.x from Windows 95OSR2, 98 or Me, because MS-DOS 6.22 does not support FAT32 partitions.
Second, if your primary partition is FAT32 you can still have Windows XP installed in another partition formatted with NTFS. The only real concern is to make sure that the primary partition is recognized by MS-DOS.
Third, if you boot MS-DOS you may not have all the necessary drivers for your sound card. A lot of modern cards don't have DOS drivers, so depending on your card you may end up with no sound in your games. That's the advantage of using VDMSound under Windows XP: it emulates SoundBlaster, AdLib and MPU-401 for DOS programs, regardless of the actual card you have.
Finally, why not use the search box in the upper right corner and look for previous threads about the games you intend to play? You can check which games are know to work or have problems under Windows XP and plan how much effort you intend to put into your installation (dual boot, DOS boot disk, etc).
Regards,
Major Grubert
Athlon 64 3200+/Asus K8V-X/1GB DDR400/GeForce FX 5700/SB Live! 5.1