Thanks for the extensive reply. What I was referring to is this:

jthieme wrote:

It keeps copies of your dos config.sys/io.sys/msdos.sys/autoexec.bat and copies them back over prior to the boot so the computer boots into DOS 6.

I had completely forgotten that Win98 would have the option of booting into the "previous version of MS-DOS". Somehow I thought that by "previous version" it meant its own 7.10. So let's say I have a drive C in FAT16, where I install 6.22 and on top 98SE, with the option of keeping 6.22. I suppose this means that if I later convert to FAT32 then I'll lose the option of booting into 6.22. In order to have 98SE on FAT32 and retain the option to boot into 6.22, I should install 98SE on another partition assigned the letter D. Then I could install XP on an NTFS partition assigned the letter E. This way each OS can see the earlier ones. Correct ?

jemm386 is a trasure!

personally, for pure DOS, I prefer PC-DOS7 , IBM's flavour of DOS... with it you always have ~615kb free conventional mem, without any tweaking!

micmic wrote:

Thanks for the extensive reply. What I was referring to is this:
I had completely forgotten that Win98 would have the option of booting into the "previous version of MS-DOS". Somehow I thought that by "previous version" it meant its own 7.10. So let's say I have a drive C in FAT16, where I install 6.22 and on top 98SE, with the option of keeping 6.22. I suppose this means that if I later convert to FAT32 then I'll lose the option of booting into 6.22. In order to have 98SE on FAT32 and retain the option to boot into 6.22, I should install 98SE on another partition assigned the letter D. Then I could install XP on an NTFS partition assigned the letter E. This way each OS can see the earlier ones. Correct ?

That's what I would recommend, and make sure your CD is set to F or higher on all OS'es as well to keep it the same. NTFS isn't necessary for XP either, FAT32 will work and then Win98 could see the E partion too. NTFS is only needed if you want support for > 4GB files.

To boot into Dos 7.10 under win98 you would hit F8 and choose command prompt only or do a shutdown - restart in MS DOS mode.