How to boot MS-DOS from an USB stick or from the Hard Disk

This could be useful someday if you think about it, like in a actual computer when the performance of DOS is better than in older machines. I'll write step-by-step how to do it. Here goes the limitations and risks:

-In DOS the disk limit was of 8 GB, with this metod will be 128 GB (You may cannot work with large HardDisks)
-DOS could crash if there is more than 2 or 4 GB of RAM, I'm unsure of how much because I have only 1 GB
-I'm yet testing this metod, so don't try important changes like using FDisk on your primary HardDisk from DOS (I've deleted my entire HardDisk 2 or 3 times playing with this)
-Follow step-by-step this guide because if not you can leave unbootable your computer!

Advantages:
-You can run old DOS games with the best performance possible
-You can install Windows 3.1, (Windows 95 is not-installable due to hardware issues with newest hardware) 98, Me and soon I'll write how to install NT (If someone does not it first)
-If you're only searching to fix an old computer, you can boot from the USB, It works like a SuperFloppy with DOS, even when supported by the BIOS

Specifications:
-We will use DOS 8 (like Windows Me)
-It has incorporated a Extended Memory Manager (Replacing HIMEM.SYS avaible in DOS 7)
-There are some SATA drivers for DOS ONLY (I don't know about the drivers for Win9x)

Let's begin!:
-First we will download Rufus (I know many people from here may know Rufus)
-We will make a bootable DOS USB drive and here is an advantage of using Rufus: It has a patched version of IO.SYS that supports large HardDrives (I have a 232.88 GB large HardDrive and DOS boots from there!)
-Be aware of that you need an empty USB Drive (Or one full, just make a backup of what is in the USB Stick in the HardDisk because all the contain of the USB Stick will be deleted)
-Note: DO NOT use FreeDOS, it is an alternative open source but is not DOS from Microsoft (FreeDOS needs to be configured and this tutorial is pretended to be the most simple possible)

After the process finished, reboot the computer and choose to boot from the USB Drive/Stick

Done! The basic is complete. If you want to run the Games, just copy them to the root of the drive or to one folder (for expale DOS, Games , etc.) If you want to install Windows to the USB, just copy the installation files or all the contain from a Windows cd to a folder and start the setup program typing the folder you've made next type setup.exe. Example Windows Me:

cd "setup"
cd "win9x"
setup

Example Windows 98:

cd "setup"
cd "win98"
setup

Example Windows 3.1:

cd "setup"
setup

Just remember that the characters that you can put are a maxium of eight. If you want to copy MS-DOS to boot from the HardDisk use Partitioning Software I recommend to use Partition Wizard from MiniTool but you can use anything what you want, just shrink your partition that is on the MBR (The first partition on the disk) to the disk space you want and copy the partition from your USB stick to your HardDisk and make it use all the empty space. Later you can add the boot entry to dual boot with Windows 7. Later I'll post how to do it.

Comments

  • It's like somebody put a how-to in a blender and pressed the mix button.
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