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Patrice,
Unlike Florian, I have FreeDOS installed on the separate partition. I don't
remember now if
FreeDOS absolutely must be installed on the first primary partition but that's
what I did and
you probably should consider as well, in case one day you decide to try another
version of
DOS. Some DOS versions must be installed on the first primary partition on the
first disk.
You can install FreeDOS next to WinXP but then there is some risk of conflicts
between two
oses, so I didn't want to take chances.
My partitions are as follows:
primary partitions:
- #1: FreeDOS, FAT32
- #2: empty, NTFS 3.1 (one day I'll try Linux here)
- #3: WindowsXP, NTFS 3.1
logical partitions:
- drives D to U, all NTFS 3.1, all visible in WindowsXP and not visible under
FreeDOS
because it can only see FAT16 or FAT32 partitions
- drive V, FAT32, visible in WindowsXP as "drive V" and in FreeDOS as "drive
D". Most
FreeDOS files are here, in \FDOS\BIN
Now the question of the boot.ini.
1) If you installed FreeDOS on a newly formatted partition then to make it
bootable you have
to create the new boot sector using Kernel.sys:
C:\> sys c: c: /bootonly
Now you can boot to FreeDOS.
To see all kinds of other options for "sys" command, at C:\> type SYS and hit
Enter.
2) To make a choice where to boot into (FreeDOS or WinXP) I use this free boot
manger.
Works like a charm and very fast, much faster than System Commander boot
manager
included with Partition Commander:
http://www.boot-us.com/
Hope this helps,
Lester
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