Welcome guest. Before posting on our computer help forum, you must register. Click here it's easy and free.

Author Topic: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?  (Read 13469 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MIRKOSOFT

    Topic Starter


    Hopeful

    Thanked: 2
    bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
    « on: March 08, 2019, 08:52:28 PM »
    Hi!

    I tried to create dual boot DOS & XP by NTLDR.
    DOS item I set by:
    C:\="MS-DOS 7.10"
    at boot selection between XP and DOS when I select DOS it reports that bootsect.dos is missing.
    I know that I did never DOS FAT32 partition active and booted only from floppy, what I do to today, XP boot floppy have too.
    I found over the web that bootsect.dos is possible to restore by typing
    SYS C:
    but I don't want to touch boot info so Q is:
    Is possible to create or get bootsect.dos by any way?

    Thank you for all suggestions.
    Miro

    Geek-9pm


      Mastermind
    • Geek After Dark
    • Thanked: 1026
      • Gekk9pm bnlog
    • Certifications: List
    • Computer: Specs
    • Experience: Expert
    • OS: Windows 10
    Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
    « Reply #1 on: March 08, 2019, 10:46:34 PM »
    Yes, it can be done. But I do not recommend it.
    This is almost no reason to have bother an older version of MS-DOS and Windows XP on the same computer.
    Forget about doing it with a large drive. It will drive you crazy.

    Can you explain why u need it?

    Here is one of many videos about how to install MS DOS 7.1 (skip the ads.)
    Use a small hard drive and a small partition for MS-DOS. . Yes small. And  Leave space for XP. Do not start with XP already on it.
    Did do it the way he says? Really?
    You must do the drive  the old MS dos ways is how to have to start.

    After That install Windows XP. Just maybe XP will do it right for you.

    MIRKOSOFT

      Topic Starter


      Hopeful

      Thanked: 2
      Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
      « Reply #2 on: March 09, 2019, 08:07:23 AM »
      Hi!

      Ok, what I want and what I did.

      I have old notebook with IDE 80GB HDD.
      HDD has three partitions
      1. MS-DOS 5GB FAT32
      2. XP 30GB FAT32
      3. OSX86 30GB HFS+
      rest is free
      Notebook has OSX bootloader and I'm booting into DOS by floppy and XP too, directly to OSX - this is reason why I need do not touch bootloader (I know not any OSX bootloader for floppy).

      Purpose:
      I'm retrocomputing fan and I'm programming for DOS. XP I'm using only for compatibility with other currently not working software on my Windows 10 x64, even when it is not possible to run iby NTVDMx64.
      I have OSX for creating software for Universal Binaries (10.4 is last OSX supporting it) and when I learn anything more with OSX, I'll programming also for new OSX versions.
      I want to add to free space on HDD also Linux - but don't know how to install Linux bootloader to first Linux partition instead MBR.
      Linux purpose is same like OSX.
      DOS I'm using also for my favorite retrocomputers - 8/16-bit Commodore computers - and have software which allows Commodore computer read/write from/to PC HDD, floppy or read CD/DVD, but software requires DOS, max. Windows 98.
      I'm programming on my PC and retrocomputing is my hobby.

      So why still NTLDR?
      I have XP bootfloppy and I added there DOS and possible is also to add Linux - so I will need not to exchange floppies to boot...
      DOS item has only problem with bootsect.dos
      Linux item is yet missing 'cause I don't know how to install Linux bootloader into 1st Linux partition instead MBR.
      If is possible to get any bootloader for OSX86 which can be placed on floppy it can solve all - bootloader must to stay OSX - it is not possible to boot OSX by other - I tried GRUB and selection of OSX caused only reboot, Windows/DOS bootloader works not totally.

      So, that's it.
      If you can help me with bootsect.dos and even installing Linux bootloader info 1st partition I will be really thankful.

      Miro

      Geek-9pm


        Mastermind
      • Geek After Dark
      • Thanked: 1026
        • Gekk9pm bnlog
      • Certifications: List
      • Computer: Specs
      • Experience: Expert
      • OS: Windows 10
      Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
      « Reply #3 on: March 09, 2019, 10:14:36 AM »
      In order to provide you a quick and detailed response I am using dictation. My typing is very slow and I make lots of typos. Using dictation is much faster, but subject to other problems. In some cases the dictation program does not fully understand what I'm talking about. So bear with me.
      First of all, what you are trying to do and want to do is within a reasonable possibility. However, the amount of effort involved may be more than what you need at this point. What I mean to say is that there may be another solution that would serve your objectives without taking up so much of your time and attention and also the risk of possibly doing harm to your operating system.
      I think in about the OS 10 system you have. That is a valuable asset and you would not want to do anything to damage it or lose your license. I assume that you do have a license for it and I will not ask anymore questions about that concern. The operating system made by Apple is a very important tool and it will serve you well if you show it due respect. Do not try to tamper with it or modify. It was not built for that kind of thing.
      At this point the best recommendation I can make for you is to acquire another notebook computer that you can use just for your DOS experiments. For MS-DOS almost anything will do, even very, very old notebooks run MS-DOS very well. So I think the best use of your personal resources would be to invest in a cheap notebook that can run MS-DOS. That way you a lot have to do any kind of experimentation with the machine that has the Apple operating system on it.
      However, if you really insist on having just one computer that runs all your operating systems there are ways of doing that. But I am very reluctant to give you that information without first warning you that there is great risk involved in trying to make the system do something that it was not designed for.
      I'm going to give you time to respond to this and I am going to look over your response more carefully to see if I can better understand what your objectives are. I get the impression you are a student and you have limited resources and limited experience with them do it yourself computer hacking. I am a very, very old computer hacker and I know how to do the kind of things you want to do and I have enough common sense to avoid it whenever I can.
      Please provide some more details about exactly what portable computer you now have. In particular, information about the firmware or the BIOS is important.

      I will be back in two hours or less.  :)

      MIRKOSOFT

        Topic Starter


        Hopeful

        Thanked: 2
        Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
        « Reply #4 on: March 09, 2019, 04:54:52 PM »
        Thank you for very serious reply and warnings.
        So, what about all and why:
        My main modern computer runs Windows 10 Pro x64 incl. NTVDMx64.
        There I'm programming projects for own modern applications. Later want to extend my field of competence to OSX and Linux platforms.
        My hobby is retrocomputing and I know also programming software for 16-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows.
        Notebook is very old HP Compaq Presario N1000v.
        There have installed OSX86 10.4 Tiger, Windows XP SP3 x86 and MS-DOS 7.10 on single disk.
        Reason for selection OSX 10.4 is that this system is last which support UniBin platform.
        Windows XP I'm using for tools which running not on Windows 3.11 and also on NTVDMx64
        MS-DOS has two purposes:
        1. Programming applications for DOS and for tools from DOS era
        2. Some software for my hobby - Commodore 8/16-bit computers is written only for DOS and also software which allows Commodore computer to read/write whole PC system (HDD, CD/DVD, floppy) requires DOS or at least Windows 98.
        What works:
        1. OSX86 works and boots directly from harddisk
        2. Windows XP works and boots from floppy
        3. MS-DOS works and boots from floppy
        So, why NTDLR? To NTLDR is possible add MS-DOS item and Linux too - so reason is only for single this - boot comfort - not diskette exchange.
        What I don't know:
        Install Linux bootloader to 1st Linux partition
        What failed:
        After Linux installation it rewrites my MBR and OSX item in boot menu exist, but after choose it only reboots computer.
        The same it makes with DOS.
        When I tried to remove Linux MBR occupation it was never success - it loks like impossible to do it, so Linux is not yet installed.
        What I can and makes me not problem:
        I have whole disk backuped by Raw Copy tool, can install first OSes separately on for example 16GB CF card and copy them into my own order to destination disk.
        This way I created current disk:
        1. created MacOS partition table
        2. installed MS-DOS 7.10 without making it active to FAT32 partition
        3. installed XP to CF card to FAT32 partition and copied partition to disk
        4. installed OSX86 directly to disk to HFS+ partition
        5. created boot floppy of XP and DOS, but separate floppies, what enabled using both too
        To Linux - it is Linux Mint based Commodore OS Vision 1.3 x86.
        So, don't worry about any crash or failure, I want to do for it all - risk is sometimes anything good and we all can learn also on our failures.

        So, my Qs are only two:
        1. how to get bootsect.dos without affecting OSX86 bootloader?
        2. how to install Linux bootloader to 1st Linux partition instead of MBR?
        No problem with reinstalling, data corrupt or loosing - maybe I learn even more than I expected.

        Thank you in advance.
        Miro

        Geek-9pm


          Mastermind
        • Geek After Dark
        • Thanked: 1026
          • Gekk9pm bnlog
        • Certifications: List
        • Computer: Specs
        • Experience: Expert
        • OS: Windows 10
        Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
        « Reply #5 on: March 09, 2019, 08:47:51 PM »
        Again this is from dictation.  :)

        Thank you for your reply.
         Now I have a better understanding of what you intend to do with your computer and your software projects. I wish to commend you for having made very good progress in understanding how different operating systems function. Just because things have not turned out completely the way you want should not be considered to be a failure. Your learning experience has been a success because it is brought to this bar and you have come to ask others to help you.
        There are many who are able and willing to help you. However, you need to understand that those who have more experience than you also have some words of question about the message you may approach.
        Rather than talking about my own history of studying computers as both a profession and a hobby, let me turn to another form of human communication. I wish to make reference to what we call a metaphor, parable or illustration. These are methods we humans use to convey ideas that are difficult to express in technical terms but we know to be basically true. Oftentimes these ideas are presented as fables or myths involving animal behavior or some type of unusual human behavior. These stories are use to help reinforce ideas about good choices and bad choices that people make.
        Some of these stories encourage people to keep on trying even when it seems there is no answer to a problem. In many cases persistence does pay off for the individual that is patient. Thomas Edison claimed that his success was more about persistence rather than genius.
        Other parables so are metaphors show how sometimes humans can go too far and too extreme in trying to bring about a desired result. Such stories illustrate how it may be foolish to keep on exploring something that will not result in a happy ending.
        Another group of stories often used are about how compromises bring about results that are usable even though they are not ideal. Sometimes it is difficult for us to let go of our ideals and except a compromise solution. Yet human experience has shown that oftentimes that is the best course of action.
        Now for my metaphor I am going to talk about the experience of the railroad industry. Now I am not going to talk about the greed of the railroad industry, nor am I going to talk about the huge success of the railroad industry. No, I wish to talk about a specific problem that did occur that was hard to resolve until a compromise was made. But the compromise did not really eliminate the problem. It was a compromise and nothing more or less than that. But it was necessary.
        My source for this is from an article in Wikipedia about the history of the Australian railroad industry. As you know, Australia is a very large area with people concentrated in a few scattered cities mostly along the ocean. The railroad industry was successful in time together the distant places of Australia and contributed much to the success of Australia today. However, there was a very big problem at one time. Here is a quotation .

        The colonial railways were built to three different gauges, which became a problem once lines of different systems met at Albury in 1881 and Wallangarra in 1888. In the 20th century, the lines between major cities were converted to standard gauge and electrified suburban networks were built in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. In the second half of the 20th century, many rural branch lines were closed to passenger traffic or altogether in all states.
         -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_Australia

        I am using this essay metaphor to persuade you to accept the success you already have and to recognize you have taken the issue about a sparse you need to go. You have come up with a way to boot for completely different operating systems by making a simple compromise. Your compromise was to use another boot media that can be removed and replaced. Specifically, the floppy drive. You can also use an optical disc the same way. Linux will boot off of a optical disc very well and runs very well. Windows 10 can be made to boot from a USB drive and it will perform quite well. So you already have a compromise solution to your problem.
        What you are trying to do now is unify everything into one solution that would allow you to boot any operating system without the need to use replaceable media. It can be done, but the cost of time and energy is too much.
        Now let me go back to my metaphor. The problem the railroad industry had was not with locomotives. It was not with passenger cars. Nor was the issue about how rails are made. Nor was it anything to do with the size of the wheels use on the cars. The issue was the gauge. The gauge is the spacing between the rails. It has to be exact, a small variation is not tolerable. Any attempt to make some kind of a system that would automatically adjust to differences in rail spacing leads to an enormous investment of time and energy and materials into something that never will work right. The solution to the railroad problem was to simply standardize one gauge for use in the entire country. This meant that some equipment had to be either scrapped or repaired or modified. Large stretches of railway had to be readjusted to meet the new standard. And even after doing that there still was a lot of passenger cars and freight cars that did not conform to the new standard. They either had to be scrapped or modified. There was no easy solution.
        Now what I'm trying to say in this metaphor is that the Apple company, the Microsoft company, and the Intel company did not at first try to work together to make something unified. After a period of time there was some work that eventually resulted in some kind of an agreement among these manufacturers about how a personal computer should work. These standards are now the basis for designs of new computers. However, these new standards did not make the old computers compatible with the new standards. Nor is there an easy way to convert the old computers to conform to the new standards. It's just too hard. No, I do not say impossible. Is just not a practical thing to do. New computers nowadays are 64-bit computers and the firmware and software is designed to run a 64-bit operating system that has the security and power needed for modern-day personal computers. Trying to convert an older computer to conform to the newer operating systems is just not worthwhile.
        I hope you understand my use of a metaphor to illustrate the idea of accepting a compromise and not trying to work any further on something that is very difficult do.

        This is the end of dictation.  :D

        MIRKOSOFT

          Topic Starter


          Hopeful

          Thanked: 2
          Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
          « Reply #6 on: March 10, 2019, 04:30:01 AM »
          Before I'll read - I did mistake - notebook is HP Compaq Evo N1000v - not Presario.

          Later reply.
          Miro

          Geek-9pm


            Mastermind
          • Geek After Dark
          • Thanked: 1026
            • Gekk9pm bnlog
          • Certifications: List
          • Computer: Specs
          • Experience: Expert
          • OS: Windows 10
          Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
          « Reply #7 on: March 10, 2019, 02:05:32 PM »
          Here is a link to get the manual for that old Compaq laptop.
          https://www.manualslib.com/download/273371/Compaq-Evo-N1000v.html
          One Bay they sell for under $100 and in working condition. These old laptops are suitable as a educational  experience for students.

          Warning:. Do no learn 16 bit ASM for the Intel 8086/8088 CPU. Instead, learn a high-level language that is also used on modern computers. If you do, then your are like the fool who kept pet rattlesnakes just because somebody told him not to.
          The 16 bit 8086 thing is poison.  Ben there, done that.   8)

          I can not help you with modification Apple boot loader. Apple forbids users from publishing reverse-engineering source code in any form. There are groups that do that, by I do not have any connection with them and will not provides links.  :-*

          MIRKOSOFT

            Topic Starter


            Hopeful

            Thanked: 2
            Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
            « Reply #8 on: March 11, 2019, 08:07:43 AM »
            Thank you for large explanation.

            Here I need to explain some things:

            I'm programming in difficult languages.
            In case of 8-bit computers it is asembler x65 and 65k which can be named 8/16-bit.
            Also bit basics I have with x80 assembler but not yet needed to use it at maximum.
            In case of 8086 it is Q - first - it is very similar to z80 assebler, x86 assembler can be learned single way - its base is applicable without changes to near whole x86 family and 8086 is first member of this family. We all know that limits of 16-bit assembler is high, but basic instruction set is the same.
            Yes, I know that assembler is near lowest level language, but lowest is machine code.
            In programming I'm working with Visual Basic 6 and NET. Really few days ago I began learning C 'cause it is most versatile language and later I want to extend to C++ and later I plan to learn VHDL. Currently I know also Basic of some home computers and also Basic dialects of other.

            Back to topic:
            I want not to modify OSX bootloader.
            I want only to put XP, MS-DOS and Linux together to single floppy.
            In case of DOS is there only one problem - bootsect.dos - and I try all possible to do it, but need only explain how bootsect.dos works and its structure.
            Linux is not problem to add to NTLDR - problem is that I have not Linux experience for installing bootloader to 1st Linux partition. Adding is no problem, I need only to know how to install bootloader to 1st Linux partition - so it is in installation.
            I can post here modifications of NTLDR for adding Linux.

            I know that some things I'm trying near impossible - but on this forum was my Q how to have DOS and OSX on single disk replied - impossible. But I did it and it works.
            In all ways my real problem is only one - installing Linux bootloader to 1st Linux partition - other DOS and XP are solved by way of diskette exchange, these are only for comfort.
            It is not right to compare it with something what doesn't work, and I hope again to show solution - no matter of time, data loss or other things.
            Maybe it looks dumb - but my reason is simple: OSX and DOS cannot work on single disk. My result of work: it is possible.

            So, please don't be angry for these words.
            If anyone wants to see adding Linux to NTLDR, I post it.
            Notebook is for my hobby, modern PC for work.

            Miro

            Geek-9pm


              Mastermind
            • Geek After Dark
            • Thanked: 1026
              • Gekk9pm bnlog
            • Certifications: List
            • Computer: Specs
            • Experience: Expert
            • OS: Windows 10
            Re: bootsect.dos in XP & DOS dual boot - how to fix it?
            « Reply #9 on: March 11, 2019, 11:54:20 PM »
            Miro, I can not help yu any more. I might get banned.
            The computer you have is too old to conform to modern standards. It would take a modification the OS X boot loader. That breaks the license.

            Some of the work needed is documented on Ubuntu forums. They require yu to have a modern PC or laptop or Mac book.

            Links for using GRUB to multi boot:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZNmmK_4gVc

            https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/mac-os-windows-linux-multiboot-tips.219975/

            https://www.innoq.com/en/blog/triple-booting-a-mac/

            My recommendation is like the first link above. Please listen carefully to his advice.
            That is the best I can do for you.  :)