Installing WFW 3.11/DOS6.2 on a multi OS machine

My other machine runs three OS on primary partitions(when I have reinstalled W2K) and one storage/bridge FAT32 logical drive. I have or will have XP Home and W2K Server both NTFS and ME FAT 32(primary system OS). I therefore have my four maximum partitions. PM7 and Boot Magic are used.

I want to play with W3.11 just for some Geek fun and maybe to experiment further with the Calmira shell. I do not need to boot from this OS.

Question - can I creat another Logical drive formatted FAT 16 for DOS/W.3.11 on the extended partition that I use for my storage drive without upsetting my three multiboot C drive OS? Can I access it just by clicking on the folder in My Computer and will it upset my drive letters which at the moment are C drive for the three multiboot OS, D drive for the FAT 32 storage/bridge partition and M for CD ROM. Space is no problem and my original copy of W3.11 ran on a 40MB hard drive! So I propose to allocate about 300MB.

OK ... I think you would be better off getting virtual pc - it allows you to load and run any os from the existing os.

To my knowledge dos has to be in the first 1024 cylinders of the drive... you need dos to use windows 3.11. So you are dealing with drive geometry issues as well as multiboot and everything else. Hence my suggestion for you to invest in virtual pc see the system requirements on the left for details. There is a trial version available.

Thanks Noo Noo.

That Virtual PC thing scares me a bit, knowing how unstable my other machine is.

I think I do have DOS in the first 1024 cylinders because after my last Partition Table and loss of MBR Disaster I eventually had to use my DOS 6.2 floppies to create a DOS Partition and I had to do some substantial messing about in FDISK etc before I could get my HP restore CDs to put ME back on.

There was a time when my HP disks always rescued me but since I have been multibooting and using NTFS systems the machine seems to have lost it a bit! Do DOS and NTFS systems actually co-exist happily anyway?

This is the machine that HP told me never to even think about putting NT4 on so I wonder if it is so unstable that I should just get an old machine out of the shed to play around with DOS etc? But I would just love to see DOS and 3.11 on a fast machine!

Up to you, it is your experiment! The people I know who have used virtual pc say its great.

The thing about putting NT4 on your HP is more probably about legacy os's on pnp machines. You would run out of irq's very quickly and everything would have to be configured manually. If memory serves me you have an intel 810 all on board jobby... it's not gonna like it.

You are right about my Chipset Intel 810. The computer is the HP PAV 6712 with 15GB HDD, Intel Celeron 667mhz and I have upgraded the 64MB RAM ro 128MB. The BIOS is Phoenix and access is very limited - HP actually told me they don't want their customers messing about and that the machine was not meant for advanced users anyway.

Regarding NT, I did attempt to install it and it very nearly saw the machine off for good, that is how I came to email HP to ask advice and was told they do not advise or support NT on that machine.

I will probably pick up a couple of old ex corporate PCs for messing about on because I will not feel like a real geek until I have installed, configured and run NT! I have installed and configured every M$ OS from DOS, Win 3x, Win95 and OSR2 , Win 98 and SE, ME, 2K Pro and Server, XP Pro and Home so I really need to add NT to all that.

One thing, I am really grateful to my original Guru who insisted I learn DOS before Windows because that knowledge has been very useful.

BTW I have a DOS GinRummy game which runs really well in XP.

Noo Noo,

I am in the process of downloading Virtual PC Demo but the 23MB is touch and go with my 56k dial up and timeout after two hours and at the moment my ISP have DNS Server problems and things are a bit slow. The present estimate on the download dialogue box is about one and a quarter hours.

I have just seen the price and there is no way I can buy it so I will make the most of the demo.

I am not sure whether to use ME or XP as my Host? I might as well play with 95 and even Linux as well as DOS and 3x, after reading the stuff on the website it looks really easy and even exciting to use.

Thanks again Noo Noo.

EDITED LATER to say I managed to download Virtual PC Demo despite a slow connection.