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How do I install DOS?

 

Please view my Notices page before viewing this area, it is not complete!
This is work in progress.

 

Very easily. You just boot from the first installation diskette then follow the instructions presented to you. It may be necessary to partition then format your HDD if so the SETUP utility should drop you into FDISK automatically. That's it.

Unfortunately this simple task seems to cause so much trouble it's unbelievable, the main source of difficulty presented to people is the fact they've downloaded some version of DOS from the Internet and the disks aren't correct.

If this is your situation the first thing to do is make sure you have not just gotten a zip file. This is one of the most common causes of problems I've seen. You need to have images of the disks and not just the separate files.
Why? Because boot disks require a special file layout which you just don't get by unzipping the files, also you need the diskette's boot sector to be from the same version of DOS this is not possible if you just unzip files to it.
Making working boot disks from zip files is possible but time consuming and requires a fair amount of technical knowledge.

Another common mistake people make is to get the images then just copy them over to the disks.
The images need to be extracted to the disk. You should be advised of the required software for this at the site from where you downloaded the images.
Some images are "self-extracting" and contain all you need to restore the disks, in this case you just have to run the images (since they will be executable).

Another common problem which I will deal with here is an incorrect disk label, you should make sure that your disks have the correct labels and correct them if necessary. Your best bet for getting the correct labels is to ask in a DOS forum.
Please state the exact version.

 


Trawled this site and still can't find the solution to your problem?
If so I highly recommend The DOS Board.
It has several good techies waiting to answer your questions and I hang around there a lot too.

Copyright © Jonathan Fox 2000-2002.