Trouble with DOS Boot Disk from Win 98 SE

[Autio]

I've been attempting to create a boot disk to DOS in order to play my old DOS games.  I think that I have most of it figured out, but for some reason it will only recognize the floppy and CD drives, but not the hard drive, which means that I don't have access to the games themselves.  I've put most of the essentials on the boot disk itself, such as EMM386 and HIMEM because my computer won't recognize them on the C: drive.

When the disk first starts to load on restart it will say "Loading Win 98" or something to that effect, and then proceed to load my commands from the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys and then remain in DOS, with only the A:, D: and E: drives available.  The boot files are as follows:

Auotexec.bat:
PATH=C:\WINDOWS
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
REM LH A:\SBEINIT.COM
LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
LH A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:12345678 /L: D
LH A:\MOUSE.COM

Config.sys:
REM DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
REM DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE RAM 3072 I=B700-B7FF
REM DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
FILES=30
BUFFERS=30
DEVICEHIGH=A:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:12345678  

I've REMmed out most of the A:\ commands in order to try accessing them from the Hard Drive, but that's exactly my problem - it doesn't see it.  Is there any way that I can Dos to recognize my hard disk in order to boot using those files, and so I can actually access the games and my soundcard?

Any help would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

[merlin_2]

what old dos games have you thought of using an emulator >http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/computer/  i have an old game jardinains it run ok on win9x? try retro64.com for games..

[Autio]

Actually, I just downloaded the latest version of DOSbox, but I found it to be rather slow.  I'm more interested in configuring my computer to play in DOS itself as I've done it before on other computers, but this one's giving me trouble.  I'm also looking at the making of this disk as somewhat of a personal challenge that I'd like to be able to beat, if you know what I mean .

Oh, and I'm most interested in playing Halloween Harry and Blake Stone 3D at the moment - old classics from when I was a kid.

[merlin_2]

will this do>http://classicgames.netherweb.com:8080/index.cgi?sid=RwFJn0yKwbp82o8trbMqlhn8Gg&go=allgames


or make your own>http://www.sylpher.com/dosuser/download.htm

[Autio]

That's a great resource - thanks for filling me in!  It has pretty much all of those old games I love.  Thanks!

[merlin_2]

the best of the bunch before its time<it talks to you very rare indeed> click the icon on the website>>>>valhalla>>http://www.vulcan.co.uk/

[Computer_Commando]

Is your C-drive Win98SE or WinXP?  If XP, what you have will never work.  If you have 98SE, create Multi-config menu and boot to DOS...don't need boot disk.

[Autio]

Win98SE

[Computer_Commando]

Look here:  http://dos.rsvs.net/DOSPAGE/CONFMENU.HTM
http://www.shiningstar.net/geek/html/multiconfig.html

BTW, with Win98, do you know how to boot to DOS on computer Startup?

[merlin_2]

?

[Computer_Commando]

Choose a Forum to continue.

[Autio]

Thanks, I managed to get the menu system to work, although it still won't recognize the C: drive when loaded from disk, and it just loads Windows according to my DOS configuration when I load from the hard drive.  

I'm not sure how to boot to DOS from the hard drive, but if I did it would probably be the solution to this problem as I could use one menu configuration for Windows and the other for DOS.

[Computer_Commando]

...I'm not sure how to boot to DOS from the hard drive...

F8 on computer startup, then select Command Prompt.  If you choose this, it will then run config.sys startup menu
OR
Download TweakUI (free from Microsoft).  You can choose to display Windows Startup menu prior to Windows bootup, you can also choose how long you want it to display.  5-10 seconds is good, it allows enough time to select.  If you do nothing, it boots normally to Windows.

I don't know why you can't see the C-drive.  Even with a boot floppy, from the A:>, you should see something when you type dir c:  Do you have more than one partition, maybe an H-drive?

[Autio]

Thanks a bunch for directing me to TweakUI.  That did the job brilliantly!  I think I've pretty much got most of the bugs worked out, except now I have two other issues to deal with - how do I free up enough memory to actually get the games to run, and how do I solve the Runtime error 200 problem that's due to the incompatibility of some of the games with my processor.

I've created several different boot options, some employing no mouse or no cdrom, or both, and there's still not enough memory to play some games.  Any ideas as to how I'd go about freeing up more?

And I downloaded a couple fixes for the runtime error 200 problem, but it didn't seem to work.  Maybe I'm just SOL on this one...  

Anyways, thanks again.  You're very helpful!

[Autio]

Well, I think I've pretty much got it all figured out.  TweakUI allows me to utilize the different boot menus I've created, and I found a fix for the Runtime Error 200 problem at: http://www.doghousebbs.com/rte200.html.  Now it's just a matter of figuring out which games require which settings and configuring the boots accordingly.

The only thing left puzzling me is how to free up enough memory to play the shareware version of Cannon Fodder that I have, considering that I need a mouse for that game and even having that driver loaded is too much.  If anyone has a way around that, I'd be much obliged.  Thanks.