DOS boot/install

Bosh

Doing a bit of legacy pootling (good word that ) and am trying to install Win 3.11 on an old PC.

I have the 3 DOS 6.22 install disks & the 6 Win disks.

BIOS is set to search for FDD drive & A: is set a first boot drive.

It reads the drive but give 'invalid system disk' error.

I've tried booting from a system formatted floppy which gets me to the a: prompt, inserted the DOS disk 1, ran Setup.exe but it tell me to Ctrl Alt Del & boot from the setup disk... which won't boot...

I've attached a screen shot of the Disk 1 contents...what (if anything) is missing?

Torqay

Why don't you get the CD version?

riclad

3.5 inch disks are not reliable ,chances are 1 or 2 files will not be read from the disk,
try copying each disk, to a folder on drive c; as a basic test.
or use a cdrom if you have one.
even a old cdrom is more reliable than a new 3.5inch disk.

Bosh

Torqay wrote: »

Why don't you get the CD version?

'cos I'm an Aul stick in the mud Luddite trying to relieve his painfully formative PC years

riclad wrote: »

3.5 inch disks are not reliable ,chances are 1 or 2 files will not be read from the disk,
try copying each disk, to a folder on drive c; as a basic test.
or use a cdrom if you have one.
even a old cdrom is more reliable than a new 3.5inch disk.

I'll try that.

It really shows how streamlined modern installations have become. Did a Win 7 clean install recently and it was so quick & easy.

Maybe I'm a masochist, it was too easy

Dale Parish

Go to bootdisk.com and get an XP disk (and write it of course...)
boot from disk -
copy *.* c:
Install Windows 3.11
Install 95 after getting frustrated with 3.11 :pac:

riclad

Cant imagine a reason to install win 3.11 ,unless you need to read an old file,disk thats in an obsolete format,
or as a technical challenge,
like trying to use the web using a 33k modem.

Overheal

Dasboot!

/sorry

Gyck

I built a DOS VM a few years back with the intention of using it to run Doom - would love to try install Win 3.11 in top of it...

riclad

Watch win 3.1 videos on youtube, i think its painful to actually run,
it,
BUT then i actually bought a windows 6 phone,
i never figured out how to get the browser working properly on wifi,
just used it as an expensive mp3 player.
IT was the win 3.1 of phone os,es .
there,s probably dos emulators,or dosbox to run programs like doom.

PyeContinental

Dale Parish wrote: »

Go to bootdisk.com and get an XP disk (and write it of course...):

Helps rule out having a dud boot disk, but I would say there will be some version compatibility issues when trying to run some DOS 3 commands under the later environment.

As far as your boot disk goes (1 of 3 in DOS 6.22 set), there is nothing missing.
In fact, all you need are IO.sys, MSDOS.sys and command.com.

Assuming that the floppy disk itself is not the problem (have you tried copying all files, including system and hidden, from it to a folder on your HDD, just as a test of readability?) then I would next check how the disk was made. Is it a disk someone created from scratch, or a copy of a disk, or a genuine original disk with MS printed label?
The reason I ask, is because when creating a boot disk under MS DOS, it was not enough to just copy those three files to a floppy disk. You had to use the SYS command to create a boot disk which would put those files there "in the right way".

Is the message exactly "invalid system disk" and not "non-system disk"?
If so, this would seem to indicate that there is a DOS version mismatch on the disk. This could mean something like the command.com file comes from a different version of DOS or Windows than MSDOS.sys or IO.SYS.

Also to bear in mind, that the activity light may come on briefly on your FDD during power on, but the "invalid system disk" message might be generated from something else. Can you give more details about the machine you are trying to install it on, and what other disks or drives are in it?

Hardware things to try, if the disk and its contents are good or it works on another machine:
Is the FDD connected to a FDD cable or is it a USB one? Is there more than one FDD port on the motherboard? Does the floppy disk drive have a jumper switch for DF0 or DF1? If it's the only FDD, set it to DF0. Is there more than one connector on the FDD cable? Make sure the drive is on the one furthest away, and that the correct end is plugged into the motherboard (it matters which end is connected to the board and which end is connected to the drive).

riclad

I bought a hp pc, cpu 3.oghz,4 days ago.
put in a hardrive,and dvdrw drive.
I removed the 3.5inch floppy drive to make space,
i can,t think of any reason i,d need to use a floppy drive in 2013.
I put drive 80gig, in was 3.5 drive was located.
its just a spare pc,for testing,parts,or web browsing.

Dale Parish

I have a desktop unit dedicated for floppies (both 3.5" and 5 1/4" - 1.2MB and 360k) - running on a 486 naturally :pac:
Never know when you need it....

Rein-in

Here's a screenshot of the contents of a DOS 6.22 install disk #1 which I used last week. It's definitely working.