blakespot wrote:

I am now using System Commander 7 to good effect in juggling my Win95C partition and my DOS 6.22 partition. And, it's free. […]
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I am now using System Commander 7 to good effect in juggling my Win95C partition and my DOS 6.22 partition. And, it's free.

VCOM was offering System Commander 7, among other legacy apps, on their "Obsolete Releases" page, here:

http://www.avanquest.com/USA/aq-you/support/o … e_releases.html

Sadly, the dl link is dead. HOWEVER, I decided to give Archive.org a shake an - voila! There's the file!

https://web.archive.org/web/20110809022408/ht … e_releases.html

There was a System Commander 8 and 9 (and maybe 10), after - but 7 supports XP, so...it's just fine for my purposes. FYI.

bp

Good to hear you got it working! Nice find on SC 7, I didn't think Wayback Machine would have cached downloads.

@blakespot

I can't get SC7 to install, I always get this error when starting the installer. Tried in Win95C, 98SE and even 98SE inside VirtualBox.

Any clues?

pojo wrote:

@blakespot

I can't get SC7 to install, I always get this error when starting the installer. Tried in Win95C, 98SE and even 98SE inside VirtualBox.

Any clues?

Try with System Commander 8.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Cool and thank you for the detailed explanation!

Might be worth checking out for me if I have the time 😀

Knowing you, you might make a video out of it as well 🤣

I've tried to use the system commander, but everytime I try to boot a system, it freezes after selecting. and show the blue starting box..
Any ideas, what the problem could be?

Honestly, I have no idea, I managed recently (this Summer) to get a dual DOS and Windows boot to work in my Celeron build.
In the end I used XFDISK to format the drive, create the 3 partitions (one so I can "share" files between the two systems, since one hides the other one) and the boot manager as bootable.
I then manually set each one bootable a time, installed the systems and then set the boot manager as bootable, which activates the partition I choose at boot.
Kinda hard to explain textually, but it's actually really simple, I'll eventually make a video of it in the future, if I have the chance to make another dual boot retro machine.

its crazy how difficult is to find a copy of old software from the 90s, and 2000s

i was searching for system commander 8 and ended up on a bunch of china websites that required a china cellphone to register
and today i finally found it

VCOM.System.Commander.v8.13-FOSI

wow, who doesnt remember FOSI , their releases were very known
Im not sure if we can share such a link in vogons, the company is dead by now, i wonder if this can be considered as an abandonware software. but it can be found in google.

I never heard of "FOSI".

I've booted to MS-DOS and Windows 95 on separate partitions before, and here's what I did:

MSDOS.SYS

1;[Paths]
2;WinDir=D:\WINDOWS
3;WinBootDir=D:\WINDOWS
4;HostWinBootDrv=D
5
6[Options]
7BootGUI=0
8BootMenu=1

CONFIG.SYS

1[menu]
2menuitem=MS-DOS, Boot into MS-DOS 6.22
3menuitem=WINDOWS, Boot into Windows
4defaultmenu=MS-DOS,15
5
6[MS-DOS]
7DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM: ON
8DEVICE=C:\EMM386.EXE RAM 16384 D=64
9DEVICEHIGH=C:\XCDROM.SYS /D:CD-ROM
10
11[WINDOWS]
12DEVICE=D:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:ON
13DEVICE=D:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM 16384 D=64

AUTOEXEC.BAT

1@echo off
2goto %config%
3
4:MS-DOS
5lh shsucdx.exe /d:CD-ROM
6lh ctmouse.exe /p
7smartdrv c+
8set path=%paths here%
9*sound card drivers*
10goto END
11
12:WINDOWS
13path=%windows paths%
14lh ctmouse /p
15win
16goto END
17
18:END
19

Drive C is formatted with the system files (boot files) and Drive D is formatted as-is (no boot files) to prevent conflicts.

I've always used XFDISK's boot manager without much problems

Elia1995 wrote:

I've always used XFDISK's boot manager without much problems

Thumbs up for XFdisk. I have used it as a replacement for Os/2 bootmanager, ever since I discovered it, because of drives became too big for Os/2 boot manager. Works more or less the same. Same feel, same look. Just works.

Things differ though. To me, modifying Win98 boot procedure and configuration is just too complicated. A bootmanager is something that I can grasp and wrap my head around. Though at the same time, people usually use the graphical configuration menu for changing settings on a SB16, were as I just edit the CTPNP.CFG by hand, using EDIT.EXE. Well... I guess it all comes down to what personal taste people have.

I'm currently triple booting Dr. DOS 7.03 - OS/2 - Windows 98 in my Celeron rig with XFDISK

Yeah.... And to be honest, unless you are using a real bootmanager with each operating system on its own partiotion. Then you are not really dual/tripple/multi booting at all. Its like calling Win98 task manager for pre emptive multitasking. It's not.