Added by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi, last edited by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi on Jan 31, 2008  (view change)

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Dual-Booting Windows Vista and DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME

Microsoft is one of the few companies that attempt to preserve backwards ABI and API compatibility across each version of Windows. For the most part, the majority of the applications out there today that ran under DOS-based operating systems like Windows 9x and Windows ME will run as-is in Compatibility Mode under Windows Vista. However, there are some applications that require an actual DOS-based operating system to run, and as such, you might come across the need to dual-boot Windows Vista and a legacy DOS-based OS.

The instructions on this page will guide you through the procedure of installing DOS to a system with Windows Vista already installed. These instructions can be used to install any Windows OS from Windows 95 to Windows ME with some minor changes along the way.

Installing DOS

Requirements

  • DOS/Windows 9x/ME needs to be installed to a primary partition on the first hard drive on your PC. DOS, Windows 95a, and Windows 95b must be installed to a FAT12 or FAT16 partition. Windows 95c, Windows 98, and Windows ME may be installed to a FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32 filesystem.
  • The DOS partition must start within the first 2GB and 1024 cylinders of the hard drive. The safest, most-assured way of doing this is to place the DOS partition before any other partitions on the hard drive, the Windows Vista partition included.
  • DOS needs to be installed to a standard IDE hard drive attached to a basic ATA controller. SATA drives, RAID configurations, AHCI, and many PCI-to-IDE adapters will not work.

Installing DOS

  1. Partition your hard drive, creating a new FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 primary partition at the start of the drive. See NeoSmart Technologies' guide on disk partitioning for step-by-step instructions and further info.
  2. Insert the DOS/Windows Diskette number 1 or CD into your floppy or optical drive, and proceed to boot from it by either hitting F12 at the BIOS POST screen or configuring your machine to boot first from the floppy/optical drive then the hard disk.