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Strange Windows request

T

TandyMan100

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Joined
Jan 7, 2009
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At my computer
I'm looking for a version of MS-DOS with Windows3.1 on a bootable CD that will have persistance. I would like Windows to treat the cd as the C: drive, and read and write to it accordingly. Is this even possible? And could someone please give me a walkthrough of how it's done if it is?
 
I don't like absolutes. In this case I will make an exception. Can't be done. Someone please prove me wrong.

Kelly
 
Just getting the "bootable CD with Win 3.1 running" would be very tough, or, as previously stated, can't be done. You would have to use EMS and no swap file. Stimulating project, likely a dead end. Especially when Windows starts looking around for a real drive C: somewhere.
 
better off using a USB flash drive IMHO. you can get a small one for a song and boot from that and the whole 9 yards.
 
TandyMan100 said:
I'm looking for a version of MS-DOS with Windows3.1 on a bootable CD that will have persistance. I would like Windows to treat the cd as the C: drive, and read and write to it accordingly. Is this even possible? And could someone please give me a walkthrough of how it's done if it is?
Click to expand...

You can get it to boot and run, but there won't be persistence. AFAIK there is no driver for rewritable CDs to act as a hard drive for DOS.

If you can give it a hard drive in the system (doesn't have to be bootable) with a FAT16 filesystem that you can point the swap file and program group files to, then you could use that drive for the persistent data...

I think a bootable USB key is a better bet.
 
boot

boot

Others have commented on the lack of persistence, but what you could do is set up the installation on a CD, and have a RAM drive start-up at boot, and then use the RAM drive for a scratch-pad activity. This still doesn't give you persistence, but it's a start.
As far as the USB drive is concerned, you need a motherboard that understands how to boot from USB drives. Usually if the motherboard handles it, the BIOS will set it up so that DOS can treat it as a standard INT 13 drive.
patscc
 
None of my 2002 - 2003 laptops (3 different kinds) know how to boot from a usb stick. In fact, with a lot on my systems, I am hard pressed to get it to boot from a cd rom.
 
Could anyone just E-Mail me the files contained in a 'clean' Windows 3.1 installation? MS-DOS and the GUI? I can expirament on my own.

Thanks.

Or you could just PM me the files...
 
usb boot

usb boot

chuckcmagee said...know how to boot from a usb stick
Click to expand...
I didn't say it would be easy. My laptops won't even boot from a USB floppy properly.

Instead of us mailing OP a clean installation, maybe if OP installs Win 3.1 onto a hard drive, and then tinkers with that installation to come up with the minimum required files, and then tinker some more with the RAM disk to get it all working before burning it onto a CD. Like chuckcmagee pointed out, this still requires you be able to boot off a CD.

The files for a 'clean' windows installation are somewhat dependent on your hardware.

patscc
 
I was stupid enough to trash my original Windows 3.1 floppies. I did keep the first one as I had to use it for Windows Upgrades all the time.

So, I had to get on ebay and buy some new installation media. Such is life.
 
Tandy,

Search around the net for Windows and abandonware and you'll certainly find the install media for 3.x. Although it isn't abandoned per the company (just so you know, legally this isn't a free operating system despite no money being made on it and it not being sold).

If you want to play around with different operating systems an easy way is emulators. Find an x86 emulator (VMWare Server and Microsoft Virtual PC are both free now) and set it up the operating system on there. Then you can take a "snapshot" (a current image that you can always go back to) and see how it works or screw it up and revert to your snapshot and get your original install back to normal.

BTW to get most operating systems to boot on a cd you do need to set it up to create a ram disk (it reserves a specific amount of RAM and assigns it a drive letter for fake hard drive access). The other thing you'll need to disable is the memory swapping/pagefile which I'm pretty sure there is an option in 3.x.

Search around the net for tips and tricks :) I know you're not the first to try this and it IS doable in a few operating systems that support all the temporary file creating to be disabled or written to a ramdisk.
 
Ironically Microsoft just ended support for 3.1 last year. It was being used in embedded systems and such up until 2008.
 
No. Because of that, because you might have some, because I have the disks myself so it's legal, but I don't want to screw with them. I'll try VM.


EDIT: Does anyone know of a good Virtual Machine that doesn't need installation? I don't want to install any software.
 
Last edited:
TandyMan100 said:
EDIT: Does anyone know of a good Virtual Machine that doesn't need installation? I don't want to install any software.
Click to expand...

Why? Any virtualization software is going to need to be installed because it needs low level access, especially if you're doing hardware-assisted virtualization such as Intel VT or AMD-V. Programs can be portable and not need to be installed but something as complex as a virtual machine is going to need a lot of resources from both the OS and host machine's hardware.
 
Okay, Thanks to your help I now have Windows 3.1 installed in DOSBox, and will be making a LIVE cd as soon as I have all of the software on it that I want (IE, FF, CAD, games...). If you want, I could E-Mail it to ya, but I will be hosting it somewhere pretty soon. I'll post a link here to the file as soon as it's up.
 
I just thought of a way to have a bootable win 3.1 CD with persistence.

The idea is to create a bootable Linux-cd with dosbox on it. And then use a usb-key (or hard drive) together with FusionFS to get persistence. I've read that the Knoppix CD uses fusionfs, so that might be a start.


Maybe a CD-RW could be used with fusionfs in this way?
 
You may find some info on similar live cd's from links on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_live_CDs

It'll likely be a pain to get working but good luck! If you're using a Windows machine your best bet is to install something like Daemon tools (cdrom emulator) so you can create a cd .iso with some burning software of your operating system test and then mount the cdrom with daemon tools and point dosbox or other emulation software at it to see what happens. Otherwise use a cdrw but you'll be going through quite a few burns I imagine before it works.
 
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