Installing MS-DOS on a blank PC

I honestly never imagined I’d be the one posting a question like this on a forum, but after scouring several different sites and facing nothing but dead ends, I’m hoping someone here might actually show me some mercy...

So, here is the situation: I take a USB stick, turn it into a bootable startup disk, plug it into an empty PC, set the boot priority to the USB, and—presto—I successfully launch DOS.

The problem, however, is that the system only recognizes a single drive—the C: drive—which is, of course, the USB stick itself. Once I pull the stick out, the PC is essentially a paperweight.

How exactly am I supposed to install DOS onto the PC itself? Do I need to manually create partitions first? And if so, what is the proper way to go about that?

(The machine has an SSD in it, though it seems to be failing—it caused things to crash during a previous Windows installation attempt. Still, I’d at least like to get DOS up and running)

I've got a bad feeling about this working out, mostly because MS-DOS 6.22 just doesn't know how to handle SATA drives or any of the newer hardware found on modern motherboards.

Ryan Watson43 said:I honestly never imagined I’d be the one posting a question like this on a forum, but after scouring several different sites and facing nothing but dead ends, I’m hoping someone here might actually show me some mercy...

So, here is the situation: I take a USB stick, turn it into a bootable startup disk, plug it into an empty PC, set the boot priority to the USB, and—presto—I successfully launch DOS.

The problem, however, is that the system only recognizes a single drive—the C: drive—which is, of course, the USB stick itself. Once I pull the stick out, the PC is essentially a paperweight.

How exactly am I supposed to install DOS onto the PC itself? Do I need to manually create partitions first? And if so, what is the proper way to go about that?

(The machine has an SSD in it, though it seems to be failing—it caused things to crash during a previous Windows installation attempt. Still, I’d at least like to get DOS up and running)

I was actually struggling just a few days ago trying to install Windows XP 32-bit as a dual-boot alongside Windows 10 x64. It isn't as simple as it sounds. On newer motherboards, installing any 32-bit OS is almost impossible. When you search online, you get all sorts of advice, like disabling RAM modules because having too much memory interferes with the process and whatnot.

On an older motherboard I have in a museum computer, I managed to pull it off (after I completely messed up my Windows 10 partition), though it took quite a bit of maneuvering. Now I have a new Linux install, Windows 7 64-bit, and Windows XP 32-bit sitting there, and I'll probably put Windows 10 back on once I find the media.
Basically, people recommend physically disconnecting all other hard drives because there's a known bug in the installer where it fails to select the correct partition intended for Windows XP (it picks the wrong one even when you select the right one).
Furthermore, you can't even create or format a partition using anything else; you really have to do it within XP itself. Also, the disk needs to be MBR rather than GPT. And so on.

In short, for your DOS attempt: disconnect every single drive except the one you want to use for DOS, wipe it completely, delete all existing partitions, and then try using the DOS installation disk to create and format the drive.
Naturally, the drive shouldn't be too large; generally, the older and smaller the better. An SSD might work, but I wouldn't bet on it.
After that, proceed with the DOS installation.
Honestly, I don't see much point in doing this, since the system is so ancient that modern hardware can run it at blazing speeds for any demanding task inside Oracle VirtualBox.
Any game from that era will fly just as if it were running on original hardware. Not to mention, for gaming, there is always DOSBox available.

granitecrane2 said:I was actually struggling just a few days ago trying to install Windows XP 32-bit as a dual-boot alongside Windows 10 x64. It isn't as simple as it sounds. On newer motherboards, installing any 32-bit OS is almost impossible. When you search online, you get all sorts of advice, like disabling RAM modules because having too much memory interferes with the process and whatnot.

On an older motherboard I have in a museum computer, I managed to pull it off (after I completely messed up my Windows 10 partition), though it took quite a bit of maneuvering. Now I have a new Linux install, Windows 7 64-bit, and Windows XP 32-bit sitting there, and I'll probably put Windows 10 back on once I find the media.
Basically, people recommend physically disconnecting all other hard drives because there's a known bug in the installer where it fails to select the correct partition intended for Windows XP (it picks the wrong one even when you select the right one).
Furthermore, you can't even create or format a partition using anything else; you really have to do it within XP itself. Also, the disk needs to be MBR rather than GPT. And so on.

In short, for your DOS attempt: disconnect every single drive except the one you want to use for DOS, wipe it completely, delete all existing partitions, and then try using the DOS installation disk to create and format the drive.
Naturally, the drive shouldn't be too large; generally, the older and smaller the better. An SSD might work, but I wouldn't bet on it.
After that, proceed with the DOS installation.
Honestly, I don't see much point in doing this, since the system is so ancient that modern hardware can run it at blazing speeds for any demanding task inside Oracle VirtualBox.
Any game from that era will fly just as if it were running on original hardware. Not to mention, for gaming, there is always DOSBox available.

Thanks so much! This is far more detailed than I was expecting.

Yes, I also attempted Windows XP 32-bit, and halfway through it either froze up entirely or, during the second attempt, threw a Blue Screen of Death.

So what kind of PC are we talking about here? And how are you even sure the SSD is actually "damaged"?

Ryan Watson43 said:I honestly never imagined I’d be the one posting a question like this on a forum, but after scouring several different sites and facing nothing but dead ends, I’m hoping someone here might actually show me some mercy...

So, here is the situation: I take a USB stick, turn it into a bootable startup disk, plug it into an empty PC, set the boot priority to the USB, and—presto—I successfully launch DOS.

The problem, however, is that the system only recognizes a single drive—the C: drive—which is, of course, the USB stick itself. Once I pull the stick out, the PC is essentially a paperweight.

How exactly am I supposed to install DOS onto the PC itself? Do I need to manually create partitions first? And if so, what is the proper way to go about that?

(The machine has an SSD in it, though it seems to be failing—it caused things to crash during a previous Windows installation attempt. Still, I’d at least like to get DOS up and running)

What question are we talking about? 🤣

I honestly think I could probably recite this whole thing from memory after twenty-five years! 🤣

To get everything up and running, you’re going to need a few specific files: command.com, himem.sys, config.sys, and autoexec.bat. I guess the easiest way would be to just copy those over to the hard drive, and then you'll just need to configure the autoexec.bat so that it loads himem.sys and properly initializes your keyboard. Once you've handled those little details, I imagine you should be all set!

wearymason4 said:I've got a bad feeling about this working out, mostly because MS-DOS 6.22 just doesn't know how to handle SATA drives or any of the newer hardware found on modern motherboards.

👍

To pull off something like this, you’re going to need a machine built somewhere between 2000 and 2008, if you ask me. It isn't just about the limitations of MS-DOS; it's about finding the right drivers for Windows XP for your graphics card, sound card, and everything else. Essentially, the older the better.

For instance, I currently have machines running almost every operating system imaginable, specifically Windows 98 and XP. In my opinion, Windows 98 was an absolute masterpiece—it was incredibly easy to mod and the games were legendary. 🙂 Actually, I even have one sitting in a closet with Windows 95 and a 166MHz processor; I haven't even powered it on in two decades, but I assume it still runs. 😂 I even have an old Dell CRT monitor paired with it, a 15" model.

By the way, why on earth would you even need DOS running on top? 😲

PS: One thing I know for certain is that 1GB of RAM is far too much for Windows 98... the installer won't even function on a machine with that much memory. It just throws a "too much memory" error and offers to abort the installation.

So, did you actually run fdisk?

Try using a > live disk—use their built-in tools to reformat, defrag the SSD, and run a disk check. Honestly, you might have just gotten stuck with a bad batch of silicon and the flash memory is simply failing. In any case, it might also help to try repartitioning the drive; I used to do that back in the day on Windows XP whenever I was dealing with a failing HDD (you split it into two "equal" partitions and then reinstall... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't). As far as MS-DOS goes, unless you're running from a "live disk," you can pretty much forget about it without IDE support.

darkcyclist92 said:👍

To pull off something like this, you’re going to need a machine built somewhere between 2000 and 2008, if you ask me. It isn't just about the limitations of MS-DOS; it's about finding the right drivers for Windows XP for your graphics card, sound card, and everything else. Essentially, the older the better.

For instance, I currently have machines running almost every operating system imaginable, specifically Windows 98 and XP. In my opinion, Windows 98 was an absolute masterpiece—it was incredibly easy to mod and the games were legendary. 🙂 Actually, I even have one sitting in a closet with Windows 95 and a 166MHz processor; I haven't even powered it on in two decades, but I assume it still runs. 😂 I even have an old Dell CRT monitor paired with it, a 15" model.

By the way, why on earth would you even need DOS running on top? 😲

PS: One thing I know for certain is that 1GB of RAM is far too much for Windows 98... the installer won't even function on a machine with that much memory. It just throws a "too much memory" error and offers to abort the installation.

If my memory serves me right, 768MB was the limit for 98, hahaha! Though, there was some trick where you could modify the Windows installer to allow 1GB, but I don't see the point if neither the OS nor the games can actually utilize it anyway.

Megan Thomas5 said:So, did you actually run fdisk?

Shouldn't you check if the motherboard BIOS actually supports INT13 first?
I mean, I heard they kept backward compatibility going until pretty recently, right?

Then you could just partition and format the C: disk using the /sys option.

You can install FreeDOS on modern motherboards and SSDs without any issues at all.

fadedorca66 said:So what kind of PC are we talking about here? And how are you even sure the SSD is actually "damaged"?

Well, because I kept running into issues where it would claim a boot file was missing during startup... After about ten attempts, it would finally pull up Windows, though it froze quite frequently. I ended up wiping everything. Its BIOS—or whatever system handles this—ran a disk check and claimed it couldn't find any problems...

Based on previous discussions here, I've decided to give up on MS-DOS altogether.

I did a fresh install of Windows yesterday and everything seemed perfectly fine for the first day, but then this morning, the boot manager was missing again... After a few tries, I managed to get the computer running, and this time, once I was inside Windows, I received a notification saying, "Your disk is corrupted, click to repair." It performed some sort of internal magic, so we shall see how things progress...

Thanks, everyone.

Have you checked your CMOS battery yet? ..if that thing is dying, your BIOS settings are just gonna keep resetting itself.
Maybe take a look at your drive health using something like HWiNFO64. For an SSD, it shows you a percentage—kind of like how mine sits at 80% right now, and I ended up swapping mine out once it hit 69%.

https://ibb.co/k9P79xL

wearymason4 said:Have you checked your CMOS battery yet? ..if that thing is dying, your BIOS settings are just gonna keep resetting itself.
Maybe take a look at your drive health using something like HWiNFO64. For an SSD, it shows you a percentage—kind of like how mine sits at 80% right now, and I ended up swapping mine out once it hit 69%.

https://ibb.co/k9P79xL

Thanks... If I'm reading this correctly, it's showing 100%

https://ibb.co/Yk3XZ0B

Ryan Watson43 said:Thanks... If I'm reading this correctly, it's showing 100%

https://ibb.co/Yk3XZ0B

You should check your BIOS settings—look for UEFI vs. CSM—because that can occasionally cause headaches, especially when you're dealing with an M.2 SSD. Based on SSu, the SSD is actually perfectly healthy at 100%.

James Alvarez63 said:You should check your BIOS settings—look for UEFI vs. CSM—because that can occasionally cause headaches, especially when you're dealing with an M.2 SSD. Based on SSu, the SSD is actually perfectly healthy at 100%.

Thanks.

Even though HWiNFO64 reported the drive is at 100%—though one has to wonder about the reliability of such tools... I seem to recall using Sandra back in the day; does that utility still exist, and is it even trustworthy anymore?—the current situation is that Windows is throwing this error during boot:
"Fixing problem C:\ stage 2..."

If I were you, I'd start by swapping out the SATA cable and checking if there's a firmware update for the SSD:

https://www.kingston.com/latam/suppo...wnloads/111745

What kind of PSU are you running? If it's some cheap, ancient unit, the capacitors might be shot, which could cause unstable voltages and mess with the SSD.

You can't really trust these programs to tell you if an SSD is dying the same way they do with an HDD.
I’ve seen it happen firsthand: the drive shows 100% health, everything looks perfect, BUT you can't actually write anything to it. You delete a file, reboot, and poof—it's all back. Or you try installing Windows, wipe the partitions, let the installation finish, restart, and BAM, it's like you never even touched it 😁 everything is exactly how it was before. And the best part? It'll happily report that it's installing everything just fine.

...you sure you picked the SSD for the install? Or did your win end up landing on the HDD instead?