win2 should start up if you set the reported dos version to 4.0 (i think).
win1 can be made to install and start up, but it's unstable so better
leaving it at "uninstallable".

Is there a command line switch for selecting DOS version? I went through the dosbox.conf file for examples, but I couldn't find any.

Type
"ver"
then
"ver set 4"
then
"ver"

Once again, WD, you are the man with the answers.

Windows 1x and 2x are so small they can even be booted from a 1.44mb floppy in DosBox. I tested this a couple of months ago and they worked. I want to say 2x crashed doing something in Windows though.

They have nice crazy display modes iirc, some didn't even work 😀

Yeah we're talking pre VESA for sure...

I found the following thread on the net to help me get Windows 1.01 working on a clean DOS boot several weeks ago:

http://www.computing.net/windows31/wwwboard/forum/11819.html

The "C:\> SETVER WIN100.BIN 3.40" command followed by a reboot resulted in perfect display and functionality where there had been none before. Is there any way that this info might help DOSBox execution, or are we still at square one?

Dunno, think that .bin file is a regular executable so it should work
with the "set ver x" thing. But working means mostly "will start up",
might not be usable at all.

I have discovered a bootable disk image of Windows 1.01 on line at this location, which is usable with DOSBox:

http://toastytech.com/guis/win101disk.zip

It is necessary to use the "boot" command, and toggle "Num Lock" for everything to work properly, but there don't seem to be any stability issues.

Question: is there a way to force DOSBox to close upon exit, as the standard "-exit" command doesn't seem to work in this mode?

Once something is booted there's no way out besides closing dosbox
the "hard" way. If you type exit at the real-dos prompt it just ignores it
at the outer command.com instance, so it's not helpful (same for the
-exit parameter, only useful in the dosbox-internal command prompt).

Well, it's a small price to pay compared with the overall result. Thanks for the reply.