Installing only DOS?

Would it be possible to partition your hard drive and have the two OSs be WinXP and the (true) DOS from a Win98 CD, without installing Windows 98? (I'm asking so I could play Vanilla Doom; that's why I posted this in Doom General instead of EE.)

you wouldn't use a win98 cd since that likely will wipe your existing partitions, look into partition magic

No. Use a Virtual Machine software such as VMWare or Virtual PC

I typed dual boot "windows 98" "windows xp" on Google and got this as a first hit, followed by other stuff that is probably useful.

To tell you the truth, using the DOS engines on Windows 98 is much more convenient than on a plain DOS interface, since you can more easily move around files by using folders, minimize the game screen with Alt+Tab, or edit CFGs with Notepad, and whatnot. It's even more stable due to the way it handles memory (for example, a DOOM level with a memory overflow glitch crashed Windows 98's full DOS in a nasty manner while Windows 98 proper ran it without visible problems). Just be sure the system's memory is set up efficiently once you install it, so that the game runs smooth (I learned that by staring to use an old version of RAM Idle that smoothed out system performance by helping me set the right disk and file cache values).

I'd suggest just installing 98 as a second option and leaving it barebones for when you want to try the DOS engines or similar games.

While setting up a dual boot takes more effort, using DOS or Win9x emulators from Windows XP is a waste of resources and not as good an option as a dual boot with 98.

Windows 98 will refuse to install if it detects NTFS hard drives on your system (dunno about linux HDDs).

The best is to unplug all HDDs but the one you want to install windows 98 on (usually an old HDD). Partition, format and install win98. Then plug your other HDDs and choose from the bios which one you want to boot from (Xp or 98).

If you have big drives then you can eventually add a NTFS partition (with something like partition magic). But beware, windows 98 cannot read/write on NTFS HDDs (win XP/2K default). So if you want to get files off your winxp drive you will have to reboot on winxp. So it's always a good idea to have storage partitions in FAT32 so both 98 and XP can access it.

HobbsTiger1 said:

No. Use a Virtual Machine software such as VMWare or Virtual PC

I wonder how efficient that is...

Vanilla Doom seems to work just fine for me without DOS...
Are you trying to recreate the good ol days?

It's definitely impossible without destroying your existing operating system and all disk contents. DOS can only sit on the primary partition, which must be FAT-formatted, and must be under a relatively small number of sectors in size. Anything larger and the OS just crashes at boot (at least, this is what happens to FreeDos, which is more or less the same).

So if you can get XP on a secondary partition, then you can dual-boot DOS. But only if. And keep in mind old versions of DOS will not be able to access FAT32 partitions, and no version of DOS can access NTFS partitions. And no, it is not possible to coax Win98 into installing only DOS. You could just install Win98 though, which would automatically allow you to boot into real-mode, and give you the extra "benefit" of having Win98 installed for compatibility purposes. Of course this will use about 800 times the disk space. You could also probably steal DOS from an existing Win98 install, but I have no idea what would happen on boot if it tries to look for win.com and doesn't find it. I think you can configure it to start in DOS mode, but it's not set to do this by default.

GRUB can hide/unhide partitions so DOS and Windows can co-exist on the same computer without getting confused as to which primary partition belongs to them. Unfortunately you lose the ability to access files from both operating systems (unless one uses floppies/CDs, or I suppose it would work with a shared FAT16 extended partition). I'm not sure exactly how to do it, though... other bootloaders that are easier to configure might have similar functionality.

I've used DosBox to run Dos-only programs on my computer. It should work with Doom.

In general, trying to get vanilla DOOM to run with anything else but pure DOS and a fully supported sound card is a lost cause.

Even if you manage to get a "clean" DOS configuration to boot, the most likely side-effect will be the lack of compatibility with modern sound cards. Unless you're using a PCI 100% Soundblaster compatible, chances are you won't be able to get any sound effects at all. AC'97 and similar "sound cards" are highly unlikely to work, and to my knowledge there have never been DOS drivers for those (including SB compatibility).

With music, things may get a bit better if you have a soundcard with full General Midi support, as those in general are easier to configure. Again, no AC'97 or "soft midi" synths, only hardware MIDI support.

Like it has been suggested, try Windows 95/98 if you really need vanilla DOS support (but sound card considerations will still apply). Windows XP may only start DOS doom without SP2, else you will need to use DOSBox, but then expect 386-486 like performance at best, and weird performance fluctuations (e.g. for me it loads ultra-fast, but then I get "smooth" movement instead of frame skipping, making the game appear like it's running in slow motion, with any settings I've tried, quite unlike a real 486. And that's on an Athlon 3200+...).

Or just use a source port :-)

K lemme sort of expand on what I said earlier. For starters its not at all pleasant to install DOS and XP together, possible yes, but not plausible. Second DOS isn't really going to work the way you remember with your brand new Core 2 Duo (or fuck it just a Pentium 4) your 1GB of RAM (DOS will not at all like that), and certainly you arent going to get the sort of sound (music specifically) you got back in the day, because nobody has put an FM Synth on a sound card for the last age. I had a third point but I rather forgot it.

Personally I reccomend installing either virtual machine software (Virtual PC is especially wonderful for old DOS stuff in my experience), or just getting an old PC off of ebay and using that. DOSBox isn't really fabulous for "resource hungry" games like Doom, but it will work if you want to give it a shot.

HobbsTiger1 said:
Second DOS isn't really going to work the way you remember with your brand new Core 2 Duo (or fuck it just a Pentium 4) your 1GB of RAM (DOS will not at all like that), and certainly you arent going to get the sort of sound (music specifically) you got back in the day, because nobody has put an FM Synth on a sound card for the last age. I had a third point but I rather forgot it.

Yes, a second older computer is a better choice and a newer one can spell danger, unless one has the right hardware (not sure what ultdoomer has) doesn't mind possible limitations on the Windows XP side; RAM especially, and maybe the sound card, even using full Windows 98.