Trouble with DOS Boot Disk from Win 98 SE

[Autio]

Sorry, I posted this in the Windows Forum as well, as I wasn't sure which was most appropriate.

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]

forget the bat files just load the floppy disk..and run it..and if you want to be  flash drag the contents of the floppy to the c:\drive..or dir call it  dos game or whatever you want to call it...echo@

[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?

Choose a Forum to continue.

[MalikTous]

I would use F8 (tap the F8 key as the system starts up) and boot using the Command Prompt option. To recognise CDROMs, you may need to add the OAKCDROM.SYS line to CONFIG.SYS and the MSCDEX.EXE line to AUTOEXEC.BAT, but otherwise it should work fine with the existing files on your C drive.

If you have driver contentions when you try to do this, make up a couple of batch files to swap MSDOS.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and CONFIG.SYS to allow you to swap these files in and out at shutdown. You would have a couple of subfolders C:\Restart\DOS and C:\Restart\WIN with each having the appropriate trio of files in it, and the batch files would be DOSSTART.BAT on the desktop to issue 'copy c:\restart\dos\*.* c:\' and a restart script, and WINSTART.BAT in the C:\ (root) directory to issue 'copy c:\restart\win\*.* c:\' and a utility like WARMBOOT.COM. Don't forget to remove the write protect, hidden, and system bits on the three files in the root directory.

Setting the MSDOS.SYS line BootGUI=0 will cause the machine to boot to DOS 7.1 command line. Setting BootGUI=1 allows Windows to boot. This way you don't have to use F8...