dual boot, dos 6.22 and XP

[bobalee]

First, can I dual boot between dos 6.22 and XP?
If yes, just how? I have a new job and they use Dos, I have XP on my computer. I still have my old Dos 6.22 disks to install with.

IF not, just what is the best way to do it with WIN98se. I have that on a old computer.

Thanks!!

[Geek-9pm]

You asked the question barbecue you are not sure about this. Right?
OK. The best answer for you is to take a very conservative approach, Xp does not like it when some other OS overwrites the Master Boot Record. Unless it is Vista, which has a way of dealing with this.
So, to protect your XP install ans to save time, go find a good small HDD that you can install in your Desktop as a secondary drive. Your BIOS has some way to boot from the secondary drive.

Of course thee are other wasy to do what you want.
This is the more conservative.

If you have a laptop, we have to take another approach.

[bobalee]

thanks for the reply. Barbecue??
Conservative if fine.
Okay, I can pull the hard drive off the other old computer I have.
Do I install 6.22 after the small hard drive in install in my XP computer
or
Do I install it first on the drive then install the drive on the computer?
Will dos know to ask me to install on the new D:\ drive?
How do I switch back and forth?
thanks again.

[GuruGary]

You can get a boot manager to help you.  A good boot manager will let you choose for operating systems on other drives, other partitions, and often even multiple operating systems on the same partition, and you can usually install the operating systems in any order.  This would let you keep your existing XP drive / partition and add DOS to it.

The way I have done it (which I think is the official Microsoft way) is to start off with the older OS, which would be DOS in your case.  Then boot to the Windows XP CD and tell it to install.  When the XP setup is complete, it should give you a boot menu that will allow you to choose between Windows XP and "Previous operating system" (or something like that).  Doing it that way,  you can:
1)  install on the same partition as DOS (which will have to be a 2GB or less FAT C: drive), or
2)  install on a different partition that you can make whatever size and file system you want ... but it won't be drive letter C: which I have seen cause issues in some older applications.

[Geek-9pm]

How do I switch back and forth?

You can use a boot manager. but some can  ruin your present system.
Geneally, you can learn how you BIOS works in five minuetes or less. How the boot managerwokrs can take days. For me it has taken months and months and finally discovered I don't need it, just do it in the BIOS.
Get into your BIOS. Somewhere there is a way to change the boot order. You can boot off the second IDE or the second drive. I have a Intel board mad a few years ago and have no problem getting it to boot off the second drive. Most Dell computers and ASUS mother boards have that feature. In fact, I can not think of a BIOS that does not have that feature. Except a laptop..
I suppose you have the old PATA (IDE) drives. You can not do DOS on a SATA unless it is in emulation mode.

For DOS, you can just install it on the other computer. It does not care. Some 20 mega byres is lots for DOS.  Win 98 about 500 is good.
For endows 98, you would disable the main hard drive in the BIOS settings.
For Windows 98 will install on what it sees as the first hard drive. Or whatever drive has a FAT32 partition.

Yes what the other post said is true. You can not retro install Windows versions. A Windows 98 or DOS install onto the main drive will mess up the XP MBR, NT boot sector and NTLDR. So you would install on another drive, with the main drive removed or disable or mapped by the BIOS to be the virtual second drive.
(Windows allows BIOS remapping, Linux does not. And trying to dual boot with Linux is something I have never liked. Too much hassle.)

If this is not clear, ask questions. After you put the second drive in, look in the BIOS. It should find it ans somewhere give you the option of making it the boot drive. Or you disable the first IDE channel and it gos for the other channel. If the BIOS can not find a valid boot sector on any  HDD, it gives some error message. Unless it boots first from the CD or floppy.