# Please help me reformat from WinXP back to DOS6



## steppec (Jan 23, 2005)

I very much want to reformat back to DOS 6.22 a PIII 10gig HD running WinXP-home.

I have a floppy USB w/ the DOS files from bootdisk website.
But F8 startup w/ safemode + DOS prompt and then running
autoexec or fdisk from USB a-drive fails with incompatible DOS
version. Please, how do I kill WinXP and reformat so I am running
DOS6.22?? The more specif your help, the better. MANY thanks.


----------



## squidboy (Dec 29, 2004)

steppec said:


> I very much want to reformat back to DOS 6.22 a PIII 10gig HD running WinXP-home.
> 
> I have a floppy USB w/ the DOS files from bootdisk website.
> But F8 startup w/ safemode + DOS prompt and then running
> ...


Ok, I'm not going to ask exactly why you want to do this 

Basically, you need to boot from your floppy, *not* from WinXP or F8 or Safemode or CmdPrompt, etc.

Second, you need the install floppys for DOS 6.22...should be 3 floppys as I recall.

If you have both, you can proceed. Make certain you have both fdisk and format files on your boot floppy.


----------



## steppec (Jan 23, 2005)

Good question! Want to retro-fit 1 of my notebks
to DOS6 because I have tons of neat DOS stuff
from the *deep past*. The hinges on my old
dedicated DOS machine have cracked, so want to
port contents to a newer laptop.

...but don't I have to enter setup and somehow
get WinXP to 'see' my USB floppy drive as the
startup to make it the bootable drive??? Thank you
for your help.


----------



## squidboy (Dec 29, 2004)

steppec said:


> Good question! Want to retro-fit 1 of my notebks
> to DOS6 because I have tons of neat DOS stuff
> from the *deep past*. The hinges on my old
> dedicated DOS machine have cracked, so want to
> ...


Mostly correct. You would enable that feature in your BIOS, not WinXP. Now, here's the tricky part...some BIOS' support booting from a USB device, others don't. So you would need to inspect you BIOS and put that floppy at the top of the boot order. I know more recent PC's/motherboards support it but not all of them . That's the best I can tell you there...good luck.


----------



## Perfesser (Jun 2, 2003)

Even if the motherboard/BIOS can support a USB floppy, DOS doesn't. There is very little DOS support for USB and it is generally manufacturer specific for the peripheral device.


----------



## steppec (Jan 23, 2005)

Yes, I have discovered that DOS does not support
USB floppies......but thanks. Apparently I will need
to format a CD, dump my 3 DOS6 floopies to the
CD and make the CD DOS-bootable. Life is not
easy!


----------



## langtallerny (May 5, 2005)

to go back to dos 6.0 coming from xp is established by the folowing:
firstly: since dos must reside on c: you better make a backup of your harddrive by making an image of c:
secondly: startup xp installation cd rom from cd rom drive and inside setup delete the old partition. stop further installation
thirdly: startup dos6 in a:-drive and use fdisk to redefine the partition in c: and format it.
forthly: install dos 6 on c:
fifthly: install xp on another drive spec, install the image maker first and restore your xp image on that drive.
you have now dos running and xp on the same computer with a multiboot option.


----------



## m-dash (Nov 12, 2003)

There are programs on the market that will make this task a little easier, if you want to set up your system with a dual-boot capability. The one I use (double-booting between PC DOS 2000 and Windows ME) is System Commander.

It automates much of the process of creating the partitions the size you want, and so forth, and dual booting is very convenient once set up (kind of like having two computers in one), but there is still the considerable possibility of things going wrong any time you modify the master boot files on your machine, so you will want to back up your important data in any case.

M-dash


----------



## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

You can run DOS inside Windows.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1


----------



## wigginton (Feb 10, 2005)

You can -this is what I've been doing. The problem is when you're running something a little more processor intensive it slow down because most of your PC processing power is being used to run the emulation software. Does anyone know if MS-DOS 6.xx will install from a CD if you transfer the floppy files to it?

Ryan.


----------

