Installing MS DOS on a previous Win 10 computer.

Installing MS DOS on a previous Win 10 computer.

I am trying to use an older computer, but a much more modern one than MS DOS 6.22 ran on, to install MS DOS 6.22. It is a Windows 10 computer normally. I am not having any luck with that DOS installation. I need any advice that may get me to my goal of just running DOS and nothing else but Lotus 123 on it. If I can get the DOS prompt to display, I think I would be fine. After the DOS installation and its reboot, I am only getting a totally black screen with no command line, which will not accept any DOS commands like DIR. It is as if the computer is not even turned on.

Here is what I have and have done so far.

I have a 3 ½” external floppy drive that MS DOS’s installation disks work in and the computer recognizes them. The BIOS is set to boot to that drive first.

The computer has;
a new, unused, 500 GB SATA hard drive.
8 Gig of ram.
A video card that uses an HDMI cable to connect it to the monitor.

Out of the box, DOS formatted the hard drive and installed MS DOS 6.22. After a reboot there was no command line to do anything with DOS, just a black screen.

I searched and came up with I probably should have used “fdisk” to create an MS DOS primary patrician. So, I booted up to the DOS installation disk again and used the wrong “fdisk” command. I made an extended DOS patrician instead of a primary one. But I let it install DOS again and of course the screen was still black with no command line.

I booted it up to the DOS installation disk once again. I reformatted the drive. Then I used FDISK 1/PRI:100 to create a 100 MB DOS primary partition, doing nothing with the remainder of the 500 GB drive but wasting it. Once again, it installed DOS, rebooted, and still no command line to use DOS since the screen was still black. In every case, the DOS installation said it had installed DOS in the C:\DOS directory but I have no way of getting to it since there is no command line.

I thought it could it be that my screen resolution is set too high using the HDMI connection, but I don’t think that is the case. So, I did a little experimenting and I have no idea what it means.

I booted to the DOS installation disk and paid attention to what drive it said it was in. It did not give a drive letter. I typed C: to change it to C: Drive. Again, it did not list a drive letter but I did a DIR and it listed the contents of, I guess, C: Drive. To be sure I changed it to DOS directory using CD \DOS and it said it was in \DOS directory and listed the contents of that directory when I did another DIR.

Like I said, I have no idea what this means other than it did install DOS, but it won't tell you what drive it is in. Also, it still will not boot up to a screen that is DOS with a command line. I don’t believe the HDMI is the cause of this.

This is crazy, but it makes me wonder if I would be able to start up to a bootable floppy using the external floppy drive, change to C: Drive, and run DOS that way. I think I would need to know the drive letter of that floppy drive to install any program though. I suppose I could keep typing drive letters until that floppy drive was recognized, hopefully it is A:.

Are there any ideas on how I can get the DOS prompt on boot up so I can use this computer as a DOS computer?

Samuria said:

Have you tried from install floppy sys c: or fdisk /MBR. It might be simpler to boot a free partition software delete all partitions and then create partition and try again just booting install and doing sys c: should make it bootable

Thank you for the reply. I have not done what you asked about but I need a bit of clarification since I'm a bit confused. The only disks I have been working with are the MS DOS 6.22 installation disks. I know the fdisk /MBR is a command I can run from the first installation disk. I am not sure what sys c: is and if that is the actual command that I'd run from the installation disk, as well. So if I do this would I first format the drive again, run fdisk /MBR, then run fdisk 1/pri:100, then sys c:, and then install DOS again?

Samuria said:

Fdisk / MBR just writes to boot sector it doesn't format sys will be on the disk or one of the disks. You may have problems with to much ram as there wasn't much ram back in the day deskview could use it you need some other things in config.sys to use extra ram

Thanks but if I used fdisk /MBR wouldn't I have to reformat the drive? Does fdisk /MBR take the place of fdisk 1:/pri:100? Also when would I use the sys c:? I'm sorry but I am into this way over my head.

bro67 said:

See the following Installing MS-DOS on an AMD Ryzen Gaming PC - YouTube Ms-Dos will not boot unless you have a Boot Disk in the A: drive. FreeDos on the other hand will work with modern hardware just fine.

Thank you. I had viewed this video before but missed the part that said a boot disk in drive A: I am going to try to make a boot disk so I don't have to keep using the MS DOS 6.22 installation disks.

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Berton said:

Looking in my MS-DOS book from QUE to refresh my memory, the SYS command is used to transfer the Operating System files to another disk. The MS-DOS 6.22 setup consists of 3 floppy disks. Booting the first disk should recognize the HDD and give choices for installing but there's a possibility the hardware may be too new to be recognized or work properly. [The largest HDD I installed MS-DOS on was 540MB then we got into Win95.]

Comment on Lotus 1-2-3:
I'm able to run the Lotus1-2-3 and WordPro applications in Lotus SmartSuite 98 on Win11 and Win10. I still have that plus SmartSuite 97 [and the older SmartSuite 9.8 and 9.7 that will run on 64-bit Windows but they have to be manually installed from the setup.exe file rather than from the autorun feature].

If wanting something similar that is free I install LibreOffice, much the same as Microsoft Office but does not have an E-Mail client like Outlook or anything like Publisher. Calc is like 1-2-3.

I do have the 3 MS DOS installation disks and it seemed to not only recognize the disk but format it and install DOS. It just didn't work as I expected. Thanks.

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Dos anyone remember the command line command to create a boot disk on a 3 1/2" floppy? The only thing I can find on the WEB wants me to use Windows to create it and I don't have Windows installed on that computer.

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I found it in my old DOS book. Seems it is sys a: Now I'm going to go try it.