Windows 98 does have "Real DOS", it's MSDOS v7. 😉
All you need to do is download the drivers.

Also video cards older than a Geforce didn't have a "GPU".
Real DOS is handy even today especially with BUILD engine games (Blood,Redneck Rampage) and later DOS games that are too resource intensive for DosBox .

With Windows 95 and 98 Microsoft makes everyone think that the operating system is Windows when in fact it isn't. It's just like Windows 3.1 it just 'says' it's its own operating system. All you have to do to get it to startup in DOS all the time instead of Windows is edit the msdos.sys file in C:\ and change "BootGUI=1" to "BootGUI=0". Or if it's not there just add it. Now you've got a DOS system! Also, you could add/change "BootMenu=1" to "BootMenu=0" so that the annoying Windows bootup logo animation doesn't show. And if you want to get into Windows just type "win" anywhere in DOS and it'll load it up just like Win 3.1. Although the difference is it won't just let you quit Windows like Win 3.1 will. You have to restart the computer.

I'm currently doing this with my 486 with Win95 and it works like a charm. But I've tried it with Win 98 and it works great, too.

Thanks for the replies! I think starting with Win98 should be fine with me, I'll just try to add the DOS drivers to the AUTOEXEC.BAT - I just hope I remember how to do that! What will I need? Soundcard, mouse, cd-rom and VESA, right?

BootMenu=1 is for showing the boot menu.

Logo=0 will prevent annoying logo from showing.

IMHO Windows98SE contains the best DOS which Microsoft ever produced... I have not ever needed any older version of DOS...
As far as I know normal MS DOSes did not support FAT32. MS DOS 7 supports it...
Just boot into command line (as described above).

Mirek

BootMenu=1 is for showing the boot menu.

Logo=0 will prevent annoying logo from showing.

Oh right....must be a bit different for Win95 and Win98 and I got them mixed up.

MS-DOS 7.x (which is included with Win95, 98, 98SE and, yes, even WinME) is fully-functional as a standalone DOS version. I think it may be a bit bloated with hooks for Win9x/ME (which run on top of DOS, just like Win 3.x and older) but I never had problems except with some Creative AWE64 drivers.

That's all cool to hear! So won't not even be able, to access my old Win95 / Win98 games - I even should be able to run real DOS games in DOS! Hopefully I'll get these drivers working ...

HunterZ wrote:

MS-DOS 7.x (which is included with Win95, 98, 98SE and, yes, even WinME) is fully-functional as a standalone DOS version.

Just to say something here. Windows ME comes with MS-DOS 8, which was the last version of DOS Microsoft ever created (And I've heard mix thoughts about this version too). When you create a boot disk in Windows 2000 or XP, it actually creates a Windows ME boot disk without all the nice features like fdisk or whatever, but it does use the MS-DOS 8.0 system fles for the boot disk. But then you still can't see the NTFS filesystem drives, so what for? Because even XP and 2000 can be created on a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, but it's not recommended and I don't know how to do it. (Ask Mike Meyers!)

HunterZ wrote:

I think it may be a bit bloated with hooks for Win9x/ME (which run on top of DOS, just like Win 3.x and older) but I never had problems except with some Creative AWE64 drivers.

The only time I've came across problems with DOS versions is using the dos driver installation for Creative Sound cards. The Ensoniq Sound Cards are also sensitive to DOS versions too.

Right now I have a real dos box setup with Windows 98 over DOS 6.22, so whenever I feel like I need to go to DOS 6.22 I can just easily access the boot menu of 98 and convert the OS to 6.22 (I have mine setup to prompt the boot menu everytime).

Win98SE have "Real DOS", yes. But this DOS _not_ fully compatible with _real_ DOS (6.22 in my case). A lot of games and progs don't want to run under DOS 7.0. Usually it can be solved with DOSBox (because it's _old_ games. Modern games feels good even under Win98 😀. But if you want so, I think, it have sense to install DOS 6.22 and Win98SE over it.

Alternatively, I think, it's possible to have DOS even without reinstalling Windows. You need system disk for DOS. From that you need four files: autoexec.bat, config.sys, command.com and io.sys (I am not sure about last one, maybe it's only three files?). All this file must be renamed to *.dos (autoexec.dos and so on) and put into c: root. Additionaly, it must be set string "bootmulti=1" in the file msdos.---. After that you must see option "MS-DOS" in loader menu and DOS must load if you select it. 😀

> It's just like Windows 3.1 it just 'says' it's its own operating system.

That's shit, they only use dos for bootstrapping, later they
take over the whole system.