I don't know if this can be done, but I'll pose the question. I have a Gateway pentium with two HD running Win98 and an old 486 running Dos. The 486 is only being used with accounting software and is running with dos. Here's the question: with the gateway computer, can I load windows on my d: and dos on my c: in such a way that, during boot, I can specify whether to boot up in dos or windows? If I boot in dos, I do not want windows running at all. Thanks

If you have the 2 drives on the same IDE cable (remember to set one as master, the other slave) and both drives are partitioned as FAT32, then they will see each other, and you can switch between the two. But Windows is FAT32 and DOS is FAT16 so they wouldnt talk to each other. You most likely would have to go into the BIOS during the POST test and set the boot order to whichever drive you want to use. But remember... DOS cannot see a file system bigger than 2GB, so if your drive is bigger than 2GB, you have to set a 2GB active partition, and put DOS there. Hope this helps!

Absolutely! This can certainly be done and there's probably nearly a dozen sane ways to do it. Probably the simplest method of all is this: Install Windows 98. Edit your MSDOS.SYS file so that the Windows environment isn't launched automatically at boot. When your computer boots, it boots real mode DOS. To run windows, type "win" and hit . Not the most elegant method. Basically, you are preventing Windows from launching automatically and launching it manually if you want it. This might not be what you want, but it's certainly quick and easy to set up! Another method: Install DOS. Install Windows. Use the Windows Boot Menu to choose "Previous version of DOS". Not a terribly elegant solution, but it works and is cheap and easy. This method works only if you have Windows NT or are wiling to at least temporarily install it: Install DOS. Install Windows 98. Install Windows NT. Create a boot sector file for DOS and add an entry for DOS in your BOOT.INI to add DOS to the list of options in the NT boot menu. There's even a freeware program from Giles Vollant called "BOOTPART" that can do all this automatically for you. You can then get rid of NT if you want. This is the solution I use. In fact, I use the NT OS loader to boot DOS, Windows 98, BeOS, Linux, and Solaris! This solution may not be the simplest if you don't have NT or don't want to install it just to get the bootloader. Probably the best freeware boot manager on the planet is XOSL - the eXtended Operating System Loader. It really is outstanding. I've used this as well with great success. XOSL can provide a pretty decent solution. There are other freeware boot managers I've come across but I've never used them and don't remember the names--but they're out there. I don't know if I'd trust them as much as XOSL. If you're willing to spend money for a commercial solution, the following products are available (I have used both of them.): VCom's System Commander - Very nice, very powerful, very flexible. Supports damn near any x86 OS on Earth. PowerQuest's Boot Magic - I haven't used this very much at all. It does work, but I am not certain Boot Magic will allow you to boot DOS and Windows 98 separately. These are just a few ideas to hopefully get you started. *DEFINITELY* surf around the 'Net for information about dual-booting DOS and Windows 9x. There's tons of good information out there.

> Windows is FAT32 and DOS is FAT16 Windows 98 is not FAT32. Windows 98 *supports* FAT32. Windows 98 ALSO supports FAT16. I use Windows 98 Second Edition quite a bit and I NEVER use FAT32. DOS is not FAT16. DOS *supports* FAT16. Some versions of DOS ALSO support FAT32. (What do you think Windows 98 is running on top of? If the DOS doesn't support FAT32, neither can the Windows running on top of it!) You can have FAT32 and DOS. You just have to have a version of DOS that supports FAT32. The same thing is true of Windows. You can Windows and FAT32, but ONLY if you have a version of Windows that supports it. All versions of DOS bundled with Windows 95B, 95C, 98, 98SE, and Me support FAT32. I do recommend not using FAT32 for some partitions though, because not everything natively supports read/write access to FAT32. (Earlier versions of DOS, Windows NT, etc.) Also, not all bootstrap loaders and boot managers can work with it. Switching the boot sequence using the CMOS setup utility could certainly work, but it would be less annoying to have a boot menu--and you can certainly have a boot menu to do this.

Just install the accounting programs on the D: drive and have a BAT file there that takes care of the paths you need to setup which are unique to them. Boot up into Win 98 DOS type D:(or what ever the drive is) type the batch file name and your all set. No need to switch to another DOS Win 98 DOS is fine.

I'm with Bill on this. Just use Win98 DOS. It'll do everything good old DOS will. Well except run Windows 3.1 of course... I currently boot my Win98 box to a DOS prompt. To do that, all you have to do is edit the msdos.sys file, and under options change "BootGUI=1" to "BootGUI=0" and it'll boot to a DOS prompt every time. To start Windows you just type "win" at the command prompt. Just like the good old days with Windows 3.1 There's also an easier way to do it. All you have to do is setup a shortcut that will exit Windows to a DOS prompt. To do this, you just make a shortcut to c:\command.com and then open up the shortcut's properties and under the "program" leaf you want to click on the "advanced" button, and from there you can tell it to "MSDOS Mode". After that, all you have to do is click and it'll close out Windows and present you with a DOS prompt. Then to restart Windows, you just type "exit". That's probably the easiest way for you to do it. No editing, no mess, just a little shortcut.

> Well except run Windows 3.1 > of course... Who told you that? Not only can MS-DOS 7.1 run Windows 3.1, it seems to run it better!