Help Getting DOS/Win98 Dual Boot Working Again \ VOGONS

Help Getting DOS/Win98 Dual Boot Working Again

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First post, by YesAffinity

Posted on 2026-02-11, 02:09

YesAffinity Offline

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I had my Pentium II rig dual booting DOS and Win98 with no issues. It would boot to DOS, and if I need to get into Windows for something, I would change directory to the Windows directory and type Win to reboot into Windows. I would then restart into DOS mode from within Windows.

I then hadn't touched the machine for a few months, booted into Windows and then rebooted into DOS mode, and now cannot get back into Windows. Don't know what I did, hoping it's an easy fix.

Currently, I boot up the computer and it goes to the Windows 98 startup menu.

If I choose Normal boot there, it takes me into DOS startup selection.

Once in dos, I cd to windows directory, type 'win', choose 'y' to return to normal mode, and the PC reboots to the above.

I've poked around in msdos.sys, autoexec.bat and config.sys, not seeing anything glaring that is out of sorts. But again it's been quite a few months since I dialed this system in and I've already forgotten a lot of the finer details of what I had learned and what I did to get it dialed in.

Seems something is buggered with booting into Windows, but I can't figure out what it is. All help appreciated.

Reply 1 of 4, by NeoG_

Posted on 2026-02-11, 02:37

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This appears to be phil's easy MS-DOS mode shortcut - You must have been experimenting with it before you left the computer for a while. That means your normal config.sys/autoexec.bat files were copied to a backup and temporarily replaced with the easy MS-DOS shortcut settings (windows does this automatically as part of the MS-DOS application compatibility system). It normally would revert those changes when you go back into windows by running win and answering y. It's likely that having both the regular DOS boot (BootGUI=0) method and the ms-dos mode shortcut may have conflicted.

If you look at your C drive, there should be a copy of your original DOS start files as like config.wos and autoexec.wos. If you restore those to their original name it should go back to how it was. Always keep a copy of your current files in case you make things worse (eg rename current config.sys and autoexec.bat to filename.bak or something) and don't reboot the computer until all files are in place with their correct names.

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer

Reply 2 of 4, by nali

Posted on 2026-02-11, 22:46

nali Offline

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Off topic, but is it really a Sun display ?
Maybe from a Blade or circa 2000, I don't think previous had VGA input.

Reply 3 of 4, by YesAffinity

Posted on Today, 14:03

YesAffinity Offline

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nali wrote on 2026-02-11, 22:46:

Off topic, but is it really a Sun display ?
Maybe from a Blade or circa 2000, I don't think previous had VGA input.

Yes, Sun GDM-5410 with one vga input and built in 13w3 cable. Got it for free off craigslist a couple years ago. 😀

^^ thank you, @NeoG_. I'll give your suggestions a try today. Amd, you've jogged my memory further. Yes, it is Phil's easy ms-dos. I believe I had previously been booting into windows bu default and then using the easy ms-dos shortcut for dos action....but had forgotten about that in the months of non-action. When revisiting the pc, I booted into windows then rebooted into dos via the crrl-alt-del restart menu method.

Will report back later today.

Reply 4 of 4, by nali

Posted on Today, 17:54

nali Offline

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YesAffinity wrote on Today, 14:03:

Got it for free off craigslist a couple years ago. 😀

I'm jealous ! 😀
I had a complete Sun IPC 25MHZ, with flat display, optic mouse, external tape, external cdrom and external disk, but gave it to a friend when I moved from France to Canada.
Nice machine, it ran NetBSD perfectly.

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