Trouble with MS-DOS 7.10

M

msdosman622

Member
Hello, I am having trouble using EasyBCD 2.0 for adding MS-DOS 7.10 to my existing Windows XP and Windows 7 multi boot.
I followed the tutorial at
THPC: Dual-Boot (install) Windows 7, Windows XP and MS-DOS 7.10 on your Windows 7 computer
and when I add the entry for MS-DOS 7.10 to the Windows 7 Bootloader, it either:
1. Came up with: Windows failed to start... screen
2.Went to Intel boot helper for booting over network, failed, and said "DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER KEY."
The reason for me wanting to install DOS is due to me wanting to play King's Quest and other DOS games and not wanting to use DOSBox or Virtual PC.
Does anyone know any tips to get this working? Thanks.
 
Hi msdosman622,

You need to install DOS to a FAT16 partition within the first 2GB on the disk, the partition should be under 512MB but it may work if larger. It needs to be the first (in physical order) FAT partition on the drive.

Having done that, use EasyBCD 2.1 from EasyBCD 2.1 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums to add the DOS entry. It has several improvements for MSDOS support.
 
So that would mean I would have to format and reinstall Windows XP and 7?
PS: I would be fine with booting from start up to a VHD of DOS, or would it be easier to install Windows 98SE on my hard drive?
 
Last edited:
Well, I have 2 hard drives,
1: 500 GB drive with 2 250 GB partitions with Windows XP and Windows 7 installed
2: 2 TB drive with storage.
Won't that mean I would have to format XP and 7 and install DOS, then XP, and finally 7?
 
Create a FAT partition at the start of the Data HDD (It's easier to move data and create space for a partition than trying to move your other two OSs), then install DOS to it.
You can then either use EasyBCD to create a boot-menu entry for it, or simply override the BIOS at boot time to boot directly from the DOS disk instead of the W7/XP disk.
 
No. You need to repartition and add a small FAT16 partition to the front of either drive. A good partiton manager (gparted is free) can do this without formatting.

Addendum:

Aaaaaand Terry beat me to it.
 
Last edited:
msdosman622,

“The reason for me wanting to install DOS is due to me wanting to play King's Quest and other DOS games and not wanting to use DOSBox or Virtual PC.”

A major reason this doesn’t come up all that often is it is nearly impossible to run DOS games on the hardware that is in a modern computer. First off the older ISA sound cards and DOS games use/used IRQ (interrupt request line) channel 5 or 7 for sound. When people went to PCI soundcards the IRQ used for the sound card changed to something like 22. That meant that if you can get the game running at all, the game had no sound.

You also have to deal with the drivers in the autoexec.bat and the config.sys files to to get access to the CD-ROM. While this is generally doable it’s a real pain.

Beyond that the game better have its own ability utilize the video card because no DOS drivers for modern video cards are available.

The route I’m going is to have a separate DOS/Windows 9X box for running older games. I’m going to use a Pentium III 1000 GHz processor with an ISA sound card and a really old Matrox Millennium AGP video card. I’ll be limited 128 GB of hard drive space. I should be able to run all of DOS games plus all the games written for Windows 95 and Windows 98.

For a modern computer it’s really best to go with DOS box. I’ve got descent-2 running really well on my 24 inch iMac.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top