Am wondering, you know the Windows 98SE boot disk, can this be copied/install into C:\ and make C:\ bootable?

How about explaining what it is you're trying to fix? "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

I just wanted the fastest way to install a native MS-DOS environment in my C:\ so I can find/test out which Sound Blaster drivers work with my Sound Blaster card (that I bought off ebay but the guy told me to get the drivers off the internet).

Boot from the floppy and type at the A:\ prompt: SYS C: press enter, wait for confirmation "system transferred", remove floppy, reboot.... This will install only the required 3 files needed to boot system to C:\ prompt !

Are these going to be 98SE drivers you're testing or dos? If you can still find and download a complete dos setup all you probably need is the system files as already mentioned. With 98 drivers you're going to need a full 98 windows installation in order to try them out.

Thanks guys for your replies. Yes I totally forgotten about "sys c:" back from the oldskool DOS days. I believe sys command places io.sys & msdos.sys files in the first sector of the partition so that they get bootstrap loaded on hard disk startup ... hence bootable. I think I now know how to create my own bootable CD from scratch... building the 1.44MB boot image and using a good cd builder app to load the boot image (MagicISO, Nero, etc.)

There is one last step to that process to make it all bootable - fdisk /mbr. That hooks it all together so that it is bootable then. Old dos need io.sys copied first and then msdos.sys second and then fdisk /mbr would search for both and if found then link the master boot record with io.sys to allow for boot ups. With 98 (DOS 7.0), it doesn't matter what order you copy the files or if they are not the only files on the disk at the time. Somehow the first two slots in the directory must be being reserved for io.sys and msdos.sys behind the scenes so to speak. No matter the exact method, 98 doesn't require io.sys be the first ever file copied. You just think you know enough to make a CD bootable... http://members.ozemail.com.au/~rossstew/drs/sec3.html And then JO.SYS v1.4 and IO Patch v1.4 at: http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm I'm kidding, you probably do... Lee