I stumbled upon some old operating systems today and i got the idea to put all of them onto a bottable cd-r with dos too now i know this has been done before but not like this idealy i want to put win1.01, win1.03, win 2.03, win3.0, win 3.1, and win3.11 all onto a bootable cd-r with a menu to install dos and then whichever version of windows you want but i dont know where to go from here i have all the floppies already saved on my computer in folders for example win3.1 i saved the floppies as like disk1 disk2 etc in the folder win3.1 and i also copied and pasted the files from each folder in the win3.1 folder just to be safe i have dos 7.1 saved too and i know that 3.1 will work with dos 7.1 but will the other versions of windows work with it? i have a hdd with 3.1 running above dos6.22 i think so i could just deltree c:windows and then copy the dos 6.22 hdd and add that to my compilation anyone have a better idea of how to do this? or how i would make the menu? im pretty much clueless when it comes to this stuff so any help and knowledge is much appreciated thanks in advance what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

Hi, Yes, you could deltree then set up from the copied disks on CD. I think it's quicker, and certainly less tedious, to instal, let's say, wfw3.11 to HD, make an image using Ghost or PQDI etc, then save the image to another drive. When you've got images of drives set up with all the desired flavors, make a boot CD and put the imaging app and all the images on it. Then boot the CD and restaore the OS image you want.

Just make seperate folders for each OS (DOS, 3.1, etc.) and put the setup files in the folder. Make sure the folder names are one word, not spaced. And, it is best to put all Setup files in one folder. Be sure to leave a mark (blank "disk1, disk2, etc.") file. Then if you know how, make it bootable. HTH! :) -Andrew

rather than fighting with install disks for DOS I just copy a live DOS directory from HDD onto the CD which gives full DOS to the booted CD, and can easily be copied back onto a hdd. Works for 3.1 and 3.11, and programs too. Win31 and 3.11 wfwg can also be blown from the CD into a ramdrive and work very well. One just has to make grp files for use with the ramdrive and remove / overwrite the stock ones once the files are on-board the ramdrive.

"Then if you know how, make it bootable." that's just it, i dont know how could someone explain it to me? what i was thinking of doing since i downloaded wengiers dos7.1 .iso image file of a bootable cd i would burn a cd with the .iso and the operating systems setup disks in folders this cd is then bootable and has dos 7.1 on it but it would also have all the operating systems on it and i could install dos reboot and boot back into the cd and install any windows operating system hmm... maybe that wont work maybe ill just copy a win98 boot floppy to the cd and have all the operating systems on the cd too as well as dos images from old harddrives what is the command to copy the dos from the cd to a harddrive? thanks for all the help so far everyone what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

Making a CD bootable is relatively simple, but requires reasonable knowledge of DOS and on how to set up an AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. Basic theory is to make a floppy boot disk containing the files needed for "starting" the OS (including CDROM drivers). then use a CDROM burning software, select "Make bootable CD" (or something like it) and direct the burning software to the drive that holds the boot floppy. The floppy image is stored on the CD and when the CD boots, fools the BIOS to believe the boot image on the CD is the A: Drive (your real floppy drive is pushed back to B:). It is impossible to give you exact instruction, as there are a thousand variations depending on your particular burning software and what you need the bootable to do, not to mention any extra software you may wish to include. Probably best advice is to start by learning how to make a bootable floppy from scratch, then buy a 50 pack of CD-Rs and start making coasters... :)

As far as DOS commands are concerned, there is very comprehensive information online. I suggest you learn atleast the basics... the same info is available in MS_DOS 6.22 by typing HELP from a command line. If in win 98, the DOS 6.22 help file is on the cdrom in tools\oldmsdos. just copy the help and qbasic stuff to a directory on your drive, and in a DOS box (or from clean DOS), navigate to that directory and type help. ANY DOS command also has built in help: type the command followed by /? . Like this: COPY /? The copy commands are COPY and XCOPY.