I just formatted the drive and will start over.

Could be a problem with your RAM modules.
Maybe check it with memtest86+

Thank you for the reply.

Um my other drive with Dos 6.22/Win 3.11 comes up and boots just fine with EMM386 loading.

I just tried Jemm386 from Free Dos as it said it was compatible with other versions of Dos, same problem memory error.

The only thing I can think of is that this is a system file problem, with the io.sys or msdos.sys as the other OS's run fine

I have mt86plus loaded on a USB drive that boots up and checks the memory, and it found no problems on this system, this system triple boots, XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, and dos 6.22/win 3.11 all of which run just fine with no problems, it is only Dos 7.1 that is giving me a fit, I had hoped to migrate windows 3.11 to the Dos 7.1 drive, as my dos 6.22/win 3.11 drive is an 80GB formatted to 2GB as per the dos 6.22 limitations, so I was hoping to get win 3.11 working on this drive that is formated to 120GB with 114,xx free because the idea of have over 100GB on win 3.11 is very appealing.

But I have worked on this now for 3 days trying new installs, googling everything I can think of. and I am about to pull this drive, and just order me a 2GB drive and put 6.22/win 3.11 on it as tying up the 80GB drive is unappealing to me.

Why do you want 7.1 anyway? What's wrong with 6.22?
I'm not aware of any major feature improvements.

myne wrote on 2024-05-24, 01:23:

Why do you want 7.1 anyway? What's wrong with 6.22?
I'm not aware of any major feature improvements.

The main reason going for MS-DOS 7.1 is for FAT32 partitions, avoiding the limitation of 8 GB per HDD (and 2 GB per FAT16 partition). Other major features are LFN support thru a VFAT driver such DOSLFN and being able to put FILES, BUFFERS, LASTDRIVE and FCBS into UMB out of the box.

I cannot win for loosing, I just installed freedos 1.3 only to find out the windows for work groups does not run on it, the jemm386 is loading with no issues, oh and there is the disclaimer line "physical hardware networking is not supported at this time" so even if I could get win 3.1 loading in standard mode, there will not be any getting online.

I had the 7.1 cdu installed and it will not load emm386 period, I Remme'd the device=c\dos71\emm386 line and it boots nicely

3 days I have messed with this thing trying to get a version of does that will run allowing me to use this 120GB hard drive to its full capacity.

I am ready just to buy a 2GB HDD off eBay and load it up and call it good. freeing up the 80GB drive for backups.

the system without the 7.1 drive, Vista ultimate boots and runs nice, win XP pro boots and runs nice, dos 6.22/wfw boots and runs nice, I even have sound from an SB live PCI card with dos drivers playing cd-music in wfw, unfortunately I have yet to find an SB live driver that works in Vista.

I was thinking about adding one more drive and booting windows 7 ultimate, but if I cannot get sound in vista, I may not have sound in win 7 either.

Oh well, back to Dos 6.22/wfw at least it runs and when the NIC card with dos drivers gets here I should be able to get it online.

Thanks guys.

Hmm. Fair enough.
It might be simpler to not use the unofficial dos 7.1, but instead just use the standard windows 98 fdisk, format, and sys commands.
Then copy the dos files from a 98 install's c:\windows\command into c:\dos
Then copy your working config/autoexec

Which is essentially what the installer does, but apparently isn't working.

Also, I personally have basically never used emm. Himem has always been enough.

I have windows 95 with USB support, but it does not want to run, I downloaded 98se got it to install but it errored out before finishing, I did have the 98 partition booting but win 98 would not load (was going to delete its directory after I copied the dos files anyway), I tried dos 7.1 from a Chinese install disk, next after formatting, installed7.1 from floppy disks, and then 7.1 cdu, same problem in all three Emm386 cause memory error and locks it up. then freedos 1.3, and now that disk is formatted and out of the system. The point was I wanted it to be all Microsoft, just what I wanted.

I downloaded some dos USB drivers, they are Panasonic, and supposed be universal, I got one driver to load but when plugging in the USB hard drive it did not recognize it, that would be even spiffier having USB in Dos!

Got windows 7 ultimate loaded, and tried something, I reenabled my motherboard sound card and win 7 found it and loaded it giving me sound, also windows vista found it and loaded it, so I now have sound in all 4 OS's just got to install some other drivers, and figure out how to use ghost 5.1c to copy XP Pro from the 500GB drive to a 1TB drive, or some free version of cloning software to copy/move XP, and it will pretty much be done, ill have to install a small slide switch up front to switch between the motherboard sound and the SB live card so i do not have to reach around back plugging and unplugging the 2 sound cards.

I tried hd-clone once but it made the new big drive the same size as the small drive.

Drive 1, win 7 ultimate, drive 2, win vista ultimate, drive 3, win XP Pro, drive 4, 6.22/wfw, waiting on some pieces parts to actually finish this thing, and hope to have wfw online shortly. installed a Sata 4 button power switch in the back, I can turn on all or just one drive and the system with boot from the drive that is powered.

So 6.22 is currently working with all the others?
Try this.
Rename io.sys,msdos.sys,command.com
Replace with copies from 9x/98
Make second dos directory - Eg c\dos7
Copy w9x's Windows\command folder into it
Change path in autoexec to c\dos7

That should effectively "upgrade" it.
If it doesn't work, delete the folder, fix path, rename back iosys, msdossys, commandcom.

Emm386 having issues may be from it clobbering something 'important' in the uma to set up the pageframe.

Try it with
x=a000-afff I=b000-b7ff x=c000-ffff ram noems notr