Forum Discussion
How to make a DOS bootable flash drive
Hi,
I need to run a DOS utility on a group of computers. I have been looking for many hours for some way to create a DOS bootable flash drive. I have tried the following with no success:
- Rufus 4.4 - cannot boot from FREEDOS or MSDOS options
- WinUSB.exe
- unetbootin.exe
- HPUSBFW.EXE
- MS-DOS 6.22 iso from AllBootDisks
- MS-DOS 6.22 iso from archive.org
- Rufus complains these ISOs are not bootable or incompatible with Rufus.
Most articles are from long ago and modern hardware is not responding to any suggestions that I have found so far.
Has anyone successfully made a DOS bootable flash drive recently?
Thank you!
Rob
Ok I got it working with an old IBM Thinkpad. Here are the steps I took:
Get DOS Image File from Here: WinWorld: MS-DOS 6.22 (winworldpc.com)
Get RMPrepUSB Here: RMPrepUSB download latest version (fosshub.com)
Get the Dos6.22 IMG file from here as you already did.
With RMPrepUSB (I'm using v.2.1.739) select File->Drive.
Go through the prompts and let it put all the files from the ISO onto the USB stick.
Copy ALL the files on the USB stick to somewhere on your hard drive (these should be the only files in the folder).
"In the Copy OS files from here" section, put the folder that you just copied all the files from the USB stick to.
In Sec.3 select MS-DOS bootable.
In Sec.4 select FAT16 on the left, and "Boot as HDD" and "Use 64hd"**
(Make sure the checkbox next to "5 Copy OS files" is checked)
Select 6 Prepare Drive and follow the prompts. It will partition, format, MBR, bootsector and copy the files to the USB stick.
When 9. is complete, hit Eject Drive and remove USB stick.
That's it! Let me know if it works for you.
Note: I think the problem with just doing the File->Drive thing is that it doesn't put the files in the right place on the USB stick. When you let it prep and copy the files itself, it puts everything in the proper place and order.
** You may have to monkey with the checkboxes in this section. My laptop places the USB Boot under its "Hard Drive" section when it lists it in its BIOS. Your computer may consider it removable storage, or a FDD.
Ok I got it working with an old IBM Thinkpad. Here are the steps I took:
Get DOS Image File from Here: WinWorld: MS-DOS 6.22 (winworldpc.com)
Get RMPrepUSB Here: RMPrepUSB download latest version (fosshub.com)
Get the Dos6.22 IMG file from here as you already did.
With RMPrepUSB (I'm using v.2.1.739) select File->Drive.
Go through the prompts and let it put all the files from the ISO onto the USB stick.
Copy ALL the files on the USB stick to somewhere on your hard drive (these should be the only files in the folder).
"In the Copy OS files from here" section, put the folder that you just copied all the files from the USB stick to.
In Sec.3 select MS-DOS bootable.
In Sec.4 select FAT16 on the left, and "Boot as HDD" and "Use 64hd"**
(Make sure the checkbox next to "5 Copy OS files" is checked)
Select 6 Prepare Drive and follow the prompts. It will partition, format, MBR, bootsector and copy the files to the USB stick.
When 9. is complete, hit Eject Drive and remove USB stick.
That's it! Let me know if it works for you.
Note: I think the problem with just doing the File->Drive thing is that it doesn't put the files in the right place on the USB stick. When you let it prep and copy the files itself, it puts everything in the proper place and order.
** You may have to monkey with the checkboxes in this section. My laptop places the USB Boot under its "Hard Drive" section when it lists it in its BIOS. Your computer may consider it removable storage, or a FDD.- It turns out that Rufus FreeDOS works. My issue was the industrial computer I was testing on has a BIOS with many options not seen in a typical computer. Once the BIOS configuration was exactly right, the bootable flash drive was able to boot the computer.
Another issue I had was that I was testing computers that supported UEFI only. Legacy mode is not an option. These could not see the flash drive as bootable. There might be a way to get the flash drive to boot up this type of computer, but it is out of scope for our needs.
Thank you for helping out!
Rob
This is a great find, but it doesn't allow the AMI bios utility to run. The computer must be running only DOS for this AMI bios utility to work.
