Batboard

Hi all,

I've got an older PC running XP that I want to boot into DOS to run older RSS programs. The PC has only CD and USB, no floppy disk. I know some folks on here are doing the same thing - what are you using to boot the computer into DOS mode? I can't find a CD that works that can speak NTFS to read the hard drive.

Thanks!

Try the below link, I don't know for sure if they have CD support files but I bet they do.

http://www.bootdisk.com/


Jim

Does your BIOS support USB booting? If so that might be a route to go as well.

bezking wrote: I can't find a CD that works that can speak NTFS to read the hard drive.

That's the big issue right there. If it were formatted as FAT32, no problem, but NTFS isn't recognized by standard DOS boot disks. You have a couple of options:

1) Use NTFS4DOS to access the hard drive once you've booted with the DOS disk.

http://www.freewarefiles.com/NTFSDOS-re ... 11100.html

2) Convert your hard drive from NTFS to FAT32. High end partition packages like Partition Manager & Partition Magic can do this, but so can this free utility, if your drive is 30GB or less (paid version does up to 2TB):

http://download.cnet.com/Aomei-NTFS-to- ... 16980.html

Be aware you'll have to use a Win98SE boot disk, as previous boot disks don't recognize FAT32, just FAT. Also, I've never tried this conversion, so YMMV and no guarantees you won't lose your data.

3) Boot from a USB stick - details on that can be found right here on the Batboard:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=55522

It's been 6 years since the original post, so a visit to bootdisk.com as another poster directed you to might give some even easier steps to follow.