# DOS 6.22-How do I use(Run)



## Learner1 (Mar 18, 2004)

I have (MS-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced Tools) on 3 floppies.Can I install with Windows on my HD or should it be blank.I have a Maxtor 80 GB HD.Some programs don't do to well with 3rd party stuff.I would like to find out what version of DOS I have now.When the system boots up,it shows nothing but a black screen.(No information)I have Windows 98S.E. on system. Thank you.........I love to tinker with my PC


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## brushmaster1 (Jun 15, 2002)

With Win 98, you have DOS 7.

Installing DOS 6.22 is a bad idea for several reasons:

If your hard drive is formatted with FAT 32, DOS 6.22 won't even see it, much less install.

If you're still running FAT 16 and manage to install DOS, many of those "enhanced tools" will be capable of completely destroying Windows 

DOS 7 *is* DOS 6.22, but with those dangerous tools removed... stick with that and you'll be safe.


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## Guest (Nov 15, 2004)

You can install it on its own partition.


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## Cosmic (May 5, 2003)

You are better off using DOS 6.22, (if you must) in an isolated environment, like say installed to a ZIP disk. For example: You can run things like old DOS programming program and sort of make them believe they are back home in an Old DOS only machine. The ZIP format is probably the most forgiving, even there under a DOS window you can get quirks. You never want to load anything to Drive C IMHO.

Example you can run QuickBasic 4.5 and write DOS programs. You will occasionally get glitches. You can't get a Windows machine to truly run as Old DOS. You can run an Old DOS operating Shell program call TREEVIEW on the ZIP and run an old DOS program under it. Cures many problems but not all.

What can happen is after exiting DOS, your icons will be all screwed up and sometimes file names revert to DOS format and other weird things. Usually rebooting will fix it. On a ZIP, the problems usually will be restricted to that drive only.

The best way to play with DOS 6.22 in a newer machine is to get a removable tray system for Drive C, having a ZIP installed is nice too. Get an older hard drive, 635 MB works dandy, format that as an DOS 6.22. Plug that in as Drive C, boot and set it up just like an old DOS machine. Finding the drivers and such can be a challenge for the newer hardware. Things like sound card, cd-rom, etc. The ZIP is easy to put in, use that in place of CD-ROM.

Then can use DOS 6.22 as it was intended and run old programs using newer hardware. A hard drive formatted under DOS 6.22 can be used in a slave position as a data drive with any Windows OS. One way to swap old programs in but if run under that environment, they again are just running in the DOS prompt window of whatever OS it is. But it can give the necessary isolation if you want to run something like TREEVIEW.

I have the ability to do this on all my machines. I still have old DOS only machines operational. Can swap data seamless between any machine. I can run just about any DOS program on any machine, on the Windows I do it only on a ZIP disk and never work across drives. The best way to operate in old DOS is in a shell environment. The very large DOS programs will not run under TREEVIEW unless you have made a second boot routine that streamlines memory use. Same problem as in the dying golden days of old DOS.

Don't screw up a Windows machine with something made to run in Old DOS. You will be sorry.


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## m-dash (Nov 12, 2003)

Learner1,

If you really have a need to run real DOS on your machine, and "like to tinker", you might want to consider whether it is worth setting it up in its own partition (like Lightning said). As has been pointed out, you really don't want to mix real DOS and the built-in Windows "DOS mode" together since things can get *real* messed up.

Some folks, such as me, find it worthwhile to use a software program that is specially made to create partitions for different operating systems (I use System Commander.) I have Windows ME on a PC, and a while back purchased IBM DOS 2000 (IBM DOS 7 with some Y2K updates) and used System Commander to create a partition for DOS and install it on this partition. This allows me to choose which OS I want to use each time I start the PC, and it allows me to run some programs I use all the time (such as WordPerfect 6.1 for DOS) that sometimes freeze up with out-of-memory error messages running under Windows when working with some complex documents.

This method does take some forethought in how you want to set up your machine, and even though the partition program makes things as easy as possible, you need to back up important stuff on your computer before doing this, since (this being the real world), things can sometimes go wrong. Plus, like Cosmic said, you will also need DOS drivers for things such as CD-Rom drives you want to use in real DOS. But, in my case, it was well worth it, since it allows me to get the full benefits of both Windows and real DOS without one OS limiting or interfering with the other -- like having two machines in one.

M-dash


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## Learner1 (Mar 18, 2004)

Hi guys!I,m a little of a newbie so if I don't really need DOS 6.22,I won't mess with it.What is Windows DOS 3.11.I think I have 6 disks.I borrowed these 2 versions and thought I would have a little something more,but its looking like I don't need either of them.


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## Cosmic (May 5, 2003)

Windows 3.11 version was the first real usable Windows. There were some prior version but they were horrible, plus not much to run. Win3.11 was a bit clunky but did have a fair amount of software written to run under it.

If you didn't experience it, didn't miss much. Fair amount of crashes and was easy to lose the entire system and start over. There was a DOS prompt window built in but again anything in old DOS running under Win3.11 was running under Windows. Just not that much differences, some functions didn't work.

Was common in them days, for computers to be set up around DOS 6.22, would be booted that way. Then Win3 would be started to run any software written for Windows. Kind of like having two OS and you switched back and forth to run particular programs. To go back to Old DOS, you just closed Windows.

Unless you have particular software written for those era OS there is no particular advantage to having either on a machine. Win3.11 required a lot less robust computer to run and could co-exist with older computers of the old DOS era. Putting Win3.11 on a newer machine is pretty much a non-starter. I still run it on a couple quite ancient machines but they also have the complete suite of software from that era. The old machines are still useful for DOS, not of much value for Windows which in my case rarely ever gets anything run. To really have those older OS's have any value, you also need a fairly good collection of software of that era and have a reason to still want to use it. 

In my case, a lot of it is because I wrote lots of software in those days, know exactly how it works and can adapt it quickly to some present tasks. Examples are; having a large ASCII file and want to run a pretty unique analysis of the data to very fine criterion, I already have the code to do it. Far easier to just fire up the programming environment, make a few tweaks and run it that way instead of mucking around in some present more modern OS trying to find a similar way to do it with a program I may either not have or would have to learn or would never do exactly what I wanted. Also some old databases that are still useful. No sense duplicating that work over. Some of the stuff just doesn't run well under more modern OS's.

Just having those old OS's doesn't do much without the means and a reason to be running them.


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