Hello. I have installed MS-DOS on my computer as a second operating system. I installed it for the purpose of playing old DOS games. The version of this DOS is 7.1, and I installed it by creating an emergency startup floppy disk in Windows 98 (first edition, not SE), and then I used that disk to install DOS on a 2 GB fat32 partition that I created for this purpose on my first HD. It's been cool playing old games like Master of Orion and Dinopark Tycoon. However, I recently decided I should take this one step further and install Windows 3.1 so I can play old 3.1 games like Myst and Megarace (although Myst can be played from Windows XP, it requires some doing). I know that Windows 3.1 was primarily installed on DOS 5.0-6.22, but is it possible to install it on DOS 7.1? I've heard that the DOS 7.1 from Windows 95 OSR2 has some command embedded in I0.SYS which prevents booting of other versions of Windows, but I do not know if this is true of the DOS 7.1 in Windows 98. I think it'd be cool to have Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 7.1 because then I could utilize my Fat32 partitions while in Win 3.1, as opposed to just Fat16. Is installing Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 7.1 possible?

download "3xstart.exe" from http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/download/3xStart.exe it is a self extracting zipfile created using winzip unzip the contents to a temporary directory ( this will have to be done under windows ) it contains a file named W3xstart.exe boot into your dos 7.1, get into the directory containing the extracted files, type "w3xstart" ( no quotes ) and press enter. the program will look for your io.sys and make necessary modifications, and then will display a message saying it has done so. now reboot your dos will now be ready to run windows 3.x i wanna be a hacker

an after thought. to be on the safe side it would be better to reformat your dos 7.1 drive as fat16, reinstall dos the way you did previously, run w3xstart and then install windows 3.x ( i understand you have win98 in a different partition ) dont forget to read the readme that comes with the download i wanna be a hacker

It's not necessary to change to FAT16 - Win31 won't care, as it's dependant on the DOS installed We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true

Thanks, I may just download that 3startx.exe, if I ever actually get a copy of Win 3.1. I wasn't planning on getting it until I was sure there was a way for it to work with DOS 7.1. Abdul, I don't have Win98, I instead have XP. I also have a second hard drive with a 5 GB Fat32 partition for DOS (Win 3.1 in the future). I probably won't wind up getting Win 3.1 until I'm required to get Windows Vista (as Vista has no Win 3.1 or DOS compatibility whatsoever), as I don't want to have to part with older games. When that time comes, I'll follow all of the advice you guys gave. Thanks!

I didn't quite clarify what I meant about that 5 GB partition. I meant that I use it for extra DOS (and Win 3.1 in the future) filestorage, not the OSes themselves. DOS itself is on a 2 GB partition.

Just for the heck of it, I just got done doing an install of the hacked-up "Weingar" DOS thing, and the "Winstart" file wasn't the problem in my case. In my case, THIS http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MMER-3XRMZG was the solution, and it WORKS!!