The only way I could think of would be to install Dos 6.22 to another hard drive, then swap between them in the BIOS.

It is doable if you fromat the C: drive to FAT16. Install DOS 6.22 first. It and the boot drive will need to be on a FAT16 partition. Install Win98. If you don't get the option for dual boot, edit the msdos.sys to "BootMulti=1". Install XP, It should see the the 9x and give you the multi boot option.

If you cannot or do not want to format your C: drive to FAT 16, you could just change which drive to boot from, if the BIOS allows it.

collector wrote:

It is doable if you fromat the C: drive to FAT16. Install DOS 6.22 first. It and the boot drive will need to be on a FAT16 partition. Install Win98. If you don't get the option for dual boot, edit the msdos.sys to "BootMulti=1". Install XP, It should see the the 9x and give you the multi boot option.

If you cannot or do not want to format your C: drive to FAT 16, you could just change which drive to boot from, if the BIOS allows it.

He mentioned that he has no intentions of formatting, which is why I suggested swapping drives in the bios.

You need 3rd party partition and boot manager. Because MS isn't supporting 2 or more primary partitions on 1 HDD.

The reason is - MS-DOS must be installed on a primary FAT16 partition starting within firts 8 GB. So - the partition size limit is 2 GB.
Win9x must be installed on a primary partition within 8 GB.
WinXp can be installed on logical partition (with boot loader on a primary).
The choice is - install MS-DOS, Win9x and Xp bootloader on an 2 GB primary FAT16 partition. Or just create an another primary partition without the 2 GB limit.

There is another way - create MS-DOS FAT16 primary partition on 2nd HDD and just select this HDD as bootable.

Gamecollector wrote:

You need 3rd party partition and boot manager. Because MS isn't supporting 2 or more primary partitions on 1 HDD. […]
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You need 3rd party partition and boot manager. Because MS isn't supporting 2 or more primary partitions on 1 HDD.

The reason is - MS-DOS must be installed on a primary FAT16 partition starting within firts 8 GB. So - the partition size limit is 2 GB.
Win9x must be installed on a primary partition within 8 GB.
WinXp can be installed on logical partition (with boot loader on a primary).
The choice is - install MS-DOS, Win9x and Xp bootloader on an 2 GB primary FAT16 partition. Or just create an another primary partition without the 2 GB limit.

There is another way - create MS-DOS FAT16 primary partition on 2nd HDD and just select this HDD as bootable.

Hi, firstly thanks for the replies guys.

I already have 2 x 3rd party partition software, those being Acronis Disk Director and Paragon Partition Manager. I used Acronis Disk Director to partition the drive through Windows XP as I tried using Paragon Partition Manager but didn't like it very much. In terms of boot managers....which ones do you recommend?

If I do go down the path of formatting the C Drive, using the MS Dos 6.22 floppy's, wont this create a 2GB FAT16 Partition automatically? Then what will happen to existing FAT32 Partition where Windows 98 SE is installed? After Dos 6.22 is installed within the 2GB FAT16 Partition, I'm just a little confused on how I'm supposed to install Windows 98 SE again using C Drive as I was under the assumption that Windows 98 also needed to be installed on the C Drive? Wont Windows 98 ruin the Dos 6.22 Installation? Or are you talking about doing all of this through a 3rd Party Boot Loader?

Sorry if I'm sounding a little dumb here 🙁 just trying to get my head around it.

I used to use GRUB4DOS as a boot manager. A boot manager isn't necessarily required, though – if you have each of XP, 98SE, and 6.22 on a different primary partition, all you need is something that can change which of the three partitions has the "active" flag. (XP can do this directly in Disk Management.) The trouble with boot managers is that when something goes wrong, you can't boot up your computer at all anymore.

borgie83 wrote:

I'm just not sure how to go about it because Dos 6.22 apparently needs to use Drive C which Windows 98 SE also requires.

It's true that they both need to be run from "drive C", but the drive letters are assigned by the OS at boot time. If you change the boot partition it will just rearrange the letters: depending on your setup, your MS-DOS partition will become drive E (for example) when you boot Windows 98, and your Windows 98 partition will become drive E when you boot MS-DOS.

Of course, if your Windows 98 partition is FAT32, MS-DOS probably won't see it at all, unless you use an appropriate FAT32 driver (like drfat32).

Windows XP assigns drive letters differently and is unaffected by which partition is active. You only might run into problems with XP if you start rearranging the order of partitions on the drive; I'm a little hazy on the details.

And before anyone says "Why use Dos 6.22 when Windows 98 SE comes with Dos 7"....I'm aware of this but I want to dedicate a partition just to Dos with no Windows installation whatsoever. I've also read on several forums that some older games refuse to run on Dos 7 but work on Dos 6.22. I also don't like the fact the when dual booting Windows 98 SE and Windows XP Pro, I cant boot directly to Windows 98 Dos mode. I have to login to Windows 98 and then restart to Dos. On my other Windows 98 computers (Only Windows 98 installed) booting straight to Dos is quite easy using the F8 key and choosing command prompt. But this is not possible using the XP Boot Loader. At least with Dos 6.22 installed. I will have the option to boot straight into a Dos environment.

Do please tell us more about these games that run on DOS 6.22 but not DOS 7. (And do you actually want to play any of those games?) Also, I don't see why the XP boot loader would disable the boot keys.

If I do go down the path of formatting the C Drive, using the MS Dos 6.22 floppy's, wont this create a 2GB FAT16 Partition automatically?

It's best to set up the partitions with something other than MS-DOS 6.22. Then set the partition you want to install MS-DOS onto as Active, and MS-DOS should hopefully see it as Drive C.

DOS does not need to reside on C:, it just needs to boot from C:. Nor does XP. 9x will run on FAT16, so to boot all three without a boot manager C: must be FAT16.

You could make a boot menu in your config.sys on C: and use GRUB4DOS to start all the various operating systems:

1MENUCOLOR=7,0
2MENUDEFAULT=1
3MENU 1 - Load Win98
4MENU 2 - Load WinXP
5MENU 3 - Load DOS
6
71?REM do nothing...
82?DEVICE=C:\GRUB\GRUB.EXE --config-file="root (hd0,1);chainloader /ntldr"
93?DEVICE=C:\GRUB\GRUB.EXE --config-file="rootnoverify (hd0,2);chainloader +1"

And the easiest way to get around the FAT16 limitation in MSDOS is to simply use FreeDOS, IMHO. If you must use MSDOS for some reason you can use the map command in GRUB to hide the FAT32 partitions.

edit: I haven't tested this with 9x, however. If Win9x loads stuff before reading config.sys, then this might not work.

collector wrote:

9x will run on FAT16, so to boot all three without a boot manager C: must be FAT16.

You would need some sort of boot manager to switch between the three of them, as Mr. Jwt suggests.

jwt27 wrote:

edit: I haven't tested this with 9x, however. If Win9x loads stuff before reading config.sys, then this might not work.

Well, yes, it loads IO.SYS and such forth. (In fact, it is IO.SYS that loads CONFIG.SYS and WIN.COM.)

Also, I'm pretty sure without "makeactive", either Win9x or MS-DOS (or both) will not boot with the GRUB lines you suggest. Did you test this with something in particular?

Of course, the Win9x boot menu lets you reboot to a "Previous Version of MS-DOS" when you install Win9x on a partition that has a pre-existing MS-DOS installation – but Mr. Borgie is apparently trying to avoid the use of the boot menu.

1. WinXp disk management can create multiple primary partitions on 1 hdd.
2. You still need a 3rd party software to format FAT32 32+ GB volumes.
3. Test hdd - usb 160 GB hdd (transcend):
1st partition - primary, 1,5 GB FAT16 (for MS-DOS).
2nd partition - primary, active, 10 GB FAT32 (for WinME and WinXp bootloader).
3rd partition - logical disk, 10 GB FAT32.
4th partition - logical disk, all remaining space, NTFS.

All others hdds are disabled, boot devices order is - floppy, CD-ROM, this hdd.

WinXp (boot from a retail cd) see all partitions in order: 2nd (C:), 3rd (D:), 4th (E:), 1st (F:). Xp can make any volume hidden or change the volume letter (with some exceptions).
WinME (boot from a retail cd) see 3 partitionss, 2nd (C:), 3rd (D:), 1st (E:). Disk E isn't working correctly (as the example - dir is generating garbage).
To install MS-DOS - you must set 1st volume as active, then MS-DOS (boot from a floppy) can see only 1st partition as C:.
I have used Norton partition magic (PQBoot) to change active partition.
Theoretically you can use fdisk for this task...
P.S. I have tested the WinME fdisk. It change the active partition, but indicate a volume label/file system incorrectly. Active volume is ok after reboot. Still - I prefer PQBoot.

Jorpho wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

edit: I haven't tested this with 9x, however. If Win9x loads stuff before reading config.sys, then this might not work.

Well, yes, it loads IO.SYS and such forth. (In fact, it is IO.SYS that loads CONFIG.SYS and WIN.COM.)

Also, I'm pretty sure without "makeactive", either Win9x or MS-DOS (or both) will not boot with the GRUB lines you suggest. Did you test this with something in particular?

I use this configuration to dual-boot between FreeDOS and Win2K, with DOS on the C: drive and Windows on D:. Both partitions are FAT32, and marked as active. D is on a separate hard drive in this case, so yes, you'll need to use makeactive if both partitions are on the same drive.

edit: FreeDOS loads it's own kernel before reading config.sys and Win2K does not complain. I assume it just wipes all memory before booting. XP should do the same. Not sure what MSDOS 6.2 would do, if the 7.0 kernel is loaded first. I guess it would either just boot normally, or boot into some mixed 6.2/7.0 FrankenDOS.

Going back to what Mr. Bigmouth said - I'm a big fan of "bios dual booting". Each OS resides on it's own drive and you select which system to run by accessing the bios and changing the boot sequence there. Most bios have something like that - certainly most motherboards that can run XPpro should.

While you don't get a spiffy Boot Menu, you are spared a lot of fussy software gymnastics. I've gotten used to the few extra clicks and consider it the 'easy way out' at this point. Trickiest part is selecting motherboard and hardware that all have the requisite drivers for the OSs, but that's another subject entirely.

DOS=FAT16: can't 'see W9x or XP from within a pure dos session. On a little drive, or small partition on a larger one.
W9x=FAT32: can 'see' dos, but not XP.
XP=NTFS: sees everything, and a good spot to administer your drives from, data transfer etc.

It makes more sense to me to install XP on a FAT32 partition in some cases, particularly in order to retain compatibility with Win9x and to avoid problems with access permissions (which in some situations cause more problems than they solve). NTFS is in theory more robust and more efficient on very large partitions, though.

Anyway, there are free drivers that allow Win9x to access NTFS partitions.

Jorpho wrote:

collector wrote:

9x will run on FAT16, so to boot all three without a boot manager C: must be FAT16.

You would need some sort of boot manager to switch between the three of them, as Mr. Jwt suggests.

Obviously I was referring to a third party boot manager, not just the built in ones with 98 or XP.

Jorpho wrote:

Of course, the Win9x boot menu lets you reboot to a "Previous Version of MS-DOS" when you install Win9x on a partition that has a pre-existing MS-DOS installation – but Mr. Borgie is apparently trying to avoid the use of the boot menu.

It is either this, the BIOS (if his board is new enough to support it) or a third party manager. He has to somehow be able to select which to boot. Of course using what comes with Windows means that you need to first select Win98 from the XP boot menu and then DOS from the 98 menu. This is the route that I always used back when I did a triple boot between DOS/Win3x, Win98 and some flavor of NT.

The easiest way, if you have a floppy drive, is to create or use a MS-DOS 6.22 Floppy Bootdisk. When it boots, it will "see" the FAT16 partition as the only accessible partition and will automatically assign it as C drive.
You can then either install MS-DOS 6.22 to the now "C" drive, or use the SYS command to transfer system files from the bootdisk to the now "C" drive, and copy the DOS files to the hard disk on your own. And while using the boot disk, use FDISK to select this E drive to Set as the Active Partition. The next time you boot, it will directly take you into this new "C" drive.
To go back to Windows98SE or XP, from the FDISK, choose the respective partition again to be Set Active.

The other method is to use a boot manager. I really like Smart Boot Manager, but it may not work properly on newer systems. The other one that I use a lot is PLOP boot manager. Smart Boot Manager is slightly easier to use. If you want to play safe, you can use a boot manager installed onto a floppy and use it to select the boot partiton. It will save the boot info directly on the floppy and not on the hard drive, and will leave the HDD alone.

And yet, one more method is to use the FDISK program while running a certain partition to set the active partition to another one.

some boot manager utilize mouse for easy choice interface,
but some don't support usb-mice/keyboard properly.

PLOP boot manager is simply unbeatable.
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

tons of options, nice gui with gfx/text modes, SAFE partition hiding, restorable if something goes wrong... 😊

I just pull out drives 😀 Got a ton of CF cards and micro drives. I find it more convenient.

Also when putting a CF card into a memory card reader, some partitions don't show up under Windows, but do show under Linux. E.g. if you have 4 2GB FAT partitions.

Plop sounds fun and cute 😀

How does a partition manager affect what happens if you plug such a drive into a HDD dock or CF card reader?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

How does a partition manager affect what happens if you plug such a drive into a HDD dock or CF card reader?

Probably not at all, as long as the drive with the partition manager maintains its place in the drive hierarchy (and isn't looking for partitions on other drives).