Solved dos boot CD install immediately

You could remove the CD and/or set the boot order in the BIOS to boot to the onboard HDD first.

I don't want to boot in windows 7 on my harddisk. I want to boot in DOS on my CD but my problem is at the boot up the DOS CD tries to install DOS on the harddisk before it boots in dos prompt > (because the installation does not succeed:it cannot access the drive) If I change the boot order I boot in windows

ijack December 23, 2014 at 09:07:23

If you are getting the DOS prompt then the boot is succeeding. The reason that it cannot access the drive is (almost certainly) because it is in a format that DOS doesn't understand. Anyway - how did you get a DOS 6.22 CD? Microsoft never produced such a thing, so it must be a pirated version of DOS.

on my drive I have a ntfs c: and a ntfs d: also a FAT32 f: I downloaded DOS6.22 from the internet.Do you think it's illegal?

ijack December 23, 2014 at 10:14:29

DOS 6.22 doesn't support NTFS or FAT32. And, yes, your copy is pirated.

What exactly is your goal? Perhaps a little clarification would help us to help you. :)

DAVEINCAPS December 23, 2014 at 15:25:25

It's going to depend on how the start up files were setup since it's a disk someone created on their own as 6.22 didn't come on cd. Since you want to run dos from cd and not install it, you should know that many of the dos files on an installation disk--and probably that cd--are compressed and not usable until they're uncompressed. But again that's going to depend on how the disk was created. It's possible that whoever put it together may have uncompressed the files. You can tell by looking at the file names. For example an EXE file extension on a compressed file will be EX_, a SYS file will be SY_ and so on. So if any of the file extensions on the disk are that way then they're compressed. Setup from floppies will give you an option to exit setup--pressing F3 I think--and it leaves you at a dos prompt. Then from there you can use any files that aren't compressed--format, fdisk and other basic ones. When you boot from the cd do you get an option to exit setup? Another thing, setup starts from autoexec.bat on a floppy. To interrupt the commands being processed in a bat file you can hit CTRL C and it will ask if you want to exit the batch file. If it works the same way when using your cd then doing that should also leave you at a dos prompt. If none of that works out it shouldn't be difficult to create a cd with a working dos OS that doesn't include the setup option.

Hi Daveincaps, I've tried the DOS 6.22 CD again and now he didn't try to install at startup. I got immediately my dos prompt. I don't understand. Now it's solved! I've looked and the files are not compressed. See you

DAVEINCAPS December 23, 2014 at 23:48:30

That's good. I suppose the reason they're compressed on the floppies is so less disks would be needed but on a cd there's no need for that.

I was wrong: it still aborts the installation! I thougt about removing autoexec.bat with winiso from the iso file and burning a new CD but I think that will not help because autoexec.bat contains only: MSCDEX.exe /D:banana /L:R Sorry

Maybe it aborts the installation of the cdrom device driver. It first says it loads the cdrom device driver then it says there is no cdrom device driver selected then it says there are no drives found then it says it aborts installation

ijack December 24, 2014 at 10:32:33

You can't expect DOS to recognize a modern CD drive.

DAVEINCAPS December 24, 2014 at 16:34:53

The dos driver loads in config.sys. Mscdex is a 'dos driver extension used in conjunction with the driver'. If the driver loads OK then Mscdex will load OK. If the driver doesn't load then mscdex doesn't either. The messages you're getting are coming from both files attempting to load. Most atapi cdrom drivers will recognize a cdrom connected to an IDE port. Since the one on your disk isn't loading it's either because the driver isn't compatible--usually because it for an older proprietary cdrom--or you have a SATA cdrom. What is the model number of your cdrom? The 'banana' thing is just the name given to the cdrom. It can be named anything. But years ago someone put together a dos boot disk with cdrom support and named it banana and for some reason that driver setup is still being passed around. If you can view config.sys on the cd disk you can see what driver it's attempting to load. If you do have a sata cd drive there is one dos driver I know of that usually works--gcdrom.sys. It could easily be incorporated into a config.sys file but we'd need to build you a new dos cd disk.

I have a drive HP DVD RW AD-7586H following the furter description in system information of windows 7 it's an IDE drive. The driver loaded in DOS 6.22 is CD1.sys and that's also for an IDE controller: That's what it says at startup. I've already sent a mail to HP for the needed driver but I think they will respond they will not support DOS for my laptop.

DAVEINCAPS December 24, 2014 at 19:43:41

When I google that model number all the specs I get for it say it's SATA so that must be why the driver isn't seeing it. I'd be interested in what HP says. You asked them if they had a dos driver for it or dos SATA driver for it?

DAVEINCAPS December 24, 2014 at 20:15:01

I guess you don't have a floppy drive. If so it'd be easier to test drivers that way than burning a new cd each time. I did some searching and apparently if the SATA controllers are in AHCI mode in bios setup you can use a driver called AHCI.SYS as a cdrom driver in config.sys. That would be if gcdrom (or another dos driver I'm not familiar with) doesn't work. Edit Bootdisk.com has a 'universal sata cdrom driver' but they want $4 before they let you have it. They're a good site and it'd be worthwhile unless the driver they're talking about is gcdrom.sys which you can get for free elsewhere. Anyway here's that page: http://www.bootdisk.com/popfiles.htm message edited by DAVEINCAPS

I have a floppy drive but I can"t boot from it because it's an usb drive and it needs a windows driver. I've looked in my bios for the mode of the SATA controller but I've nothing found about cdrom controllers. I have a new problem:maybe i must open a new topic: I've downloaded a floppy dos622.ima image file. I write it to a floppy with winimage. I read it from the floppy to winimage and save it as test.ima Then I change the extention in windows explorer to test.img Then I burn the test.img to a cdrom in Nero As result I cannot boot from the CDROM I do this in advance to have a method of changing config.sys and building the CDROM

ijack December 25, 2014 at 09:58:03

I think it would help if you could explain exactly what you are trying to do. Why do you want to boot into DOS from a CD-ROM? What are you going to do then, bearing in mind that you won't be able to read your hard drive partitions? (I'm not going to go through the details of why your floppy image won't boot when burned to a CD. There's no point in wasting time on this until I am convinced that you have an achievable aim in view.)

My goal is to have a tool for low format mydrive if I remove my laptop. I have a dos exe from western digital (my drive manufacturer) It's too big for a discette and I can't use a discette w/o windows as I have explained. It seems I can access my drives with ntfspror.exe but again therefor I need a cdrom driver because it"s too big for the dos drive (1,44Mbytes)

It seems that the reason that my CD does not boot is the file format. My image of my discette is probably FAT16 and a CDROM file system is Juliet. And the problem is I do not this conversion. Is that right?

T-R-A December 25, 2014 at 22:25:55

"My goal is to have a tool for low format mydrive if I remove my laptop." If you just want to wipe the drive, then you don't need a LL format tool (which can potentially render a drive totally useless), you need a tool such as DBAN: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/ "Channeling the spirit of jboy..." message edited by T-R-A

DAVEINCAPS December 25, 2014 at 22:58:18

Yeah a floppy image can't be renamed as a cd image. If you want to make a bootable dos cd in nero you use the 'bootable data disk' option. Then when it's ready to load the system files it'll tell you to put the floppy bootdisk in. I'd think the external floppy drive would work for that since you're doing it in windows. If you're doing all this just to wipe a drive you're really doing it the hard way. Any utility you download from WD should be a bootable iso anyway. You don't need to separately boot dos. Which file of theirs are you trying to use?

ijack December 26, 2014 at 01:11:00

Yep, you have been wasting your time. As T-R-A said, just download DBAN which does exactly the same as that DOS utility from WD. (Although it calls it "low-level format" all it does is zero every sector of the drive - this is not what old-timers will understand by "low-level format".)

Hello Daveincaps, I,ve tried the item of Nero with the data boot CD and it succeeds!It reads the boot info of my discette and I can also add the files of my discette in Nero.I can boot from my CD in Dos. WD has only a windows tool and a dos tool for low level format no iso file. My tool calls Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Dos (Windlg.exe) Thanks. PS.Tra:good that I know about DBAN

T-R-A December 26, 2014 at 06:16:17

ijack: "...this is not what old-timers will understand by "low-level format" Yeah, guess I am showing my age by my comment. True low-level formatting was designed solely for MFM/RLL drives: http://redhill.net.au/d/10.php louis14: For the most part, as DAVEINCAPS mentions, you're making this way harder than it needs to be. If you plan to sell your machine with the drive it has, just reformat the installed drive with the Win7 CD (or whatever OS it came with) a time or two, then just reinstall the bare OS. It's highly unlikely that anyone would be able to find any info of any significance after doing so without some serious tools. "Channeling the spirit of jboy..."

DAVEINCAPS December 26, 2014 at 14:01:10

I'm glad you got the dos cd to boot but as already mentioned, there's other ways to do what you want done. But if you still wanted to use the WD utility, the windlg.exe file you mentioned is the windows version of data lifeguard diagnostics. This is the dos version download page: http://support.wdc.com/product/down... It recommends booting from a USB drive and tells you how to set that up using rufus. You could probably make a bootable cd yourself that contains the WD software but I'm not sure if dos 6.22 would be the version to use because it probably wouldn't see the drive you want to wipe. It's possible the WD software would see it anyway but that's not for sure. Assuming your laptop will boot from USB the best thing--if you were going to use the WD software--would be to set it up as they recommend.

I've used a lower version of DOS namely 5.0 so there was space to copy the WD tool DOSDLG.exe on the floppy. I've tried DOSDLG.exe on the CD and it sees the harddisk! At the same time I had copied NTFSDOS on the floppy and tried on the CD:it mounts the ntfs partitions but on my windows 7 c: partition it does not see the users and the windows directory. That's no real problem because I use the CD only for the DOSLG utility.

dir after ntfsdos.exe doesn't show users and windows dir but I can go to the directory with cd and it shows the subdirectories. So it's OK.

DAVEINCAPS December 28, 2014 at 00:30:59

✔ Best Answer

NTFSDOS would allow you to see the contents of the hard drive but that's not necessary if your only interest is to wipe the drive. You really just need the dos boot files and the WD software. Some of the ntfs dos utilities have limited abilities, especially if you're using a free version. That may be why it's not seeing everything.