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MS-DOS 6.22 setup hangs on IBM PC/XT 5160

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marcoguy

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For those of you who don't know, I have an IBM PC/XT 5160 that has 640K RAM, a 1.2Gb SCSI HD, and a 1.44Mb high density FDD. It currently has PC-DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0 on the HD. I have some 1.44Mb MS-DOS 6.22 setup disks that I'd like to install on it, however whenever I try to boot from them the setup hangs at the "Checking your system configuration" dialog. I will post a pic later today of the exact screen it hangs at. Any help with this is very appreciated.
 
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DOS doesn't need to be ‘installed’. You can just copy what you want (from an installed copy on floppies) to the drive and run SYS and you're done.
 
You can try hitting F5 right as dos boots, which should bypass the config.sys and autoexec.bat script, so the installer won't load, or try using F8 to single-step through config.sys and autoexec.bat to see where it's hanging.
patscc
 
I hated the later MS-DOS "install" programs--they'd always pull in too much junk and yes, they could hang, depending on your hardware. I'ts not hard to do it yourself--and then you can pick and choose what you want to install and tailor your directory organization as well. I don't recall if the 6.22 setup used compressed files for some of its programs. If so, there's an expand utility on the setup floppies.
 
MS-DOS 6.22 does have an installer and yes the files are compressed. If you are running the upgrade verision run setup.exe and proceed. You should have the option to install the Windows utilities and DOS utilities such as Anti-virus,Backup etc. I would suggest not instaaling any of those extra utilities just the main DOS files. If it is the "FULL" version you need to boot from it and do basically the same thing. But it might complain about a previous version of DOS being installed and quit. So good luck.

If it hangs at checking your system then might be HD or a memory issue. Or maybe bad floppy disk. Just a guess.
 
Sorry for the echo chamber but..... I haven't ‘installed’ any version of DOS in a long, long time -- about 10 years or probably even more. It's just not necessary. Once you have DOS on floppies (or on a hard drive) you've got everything you need. DOS is easy to copy and transfer to other media so why go through the work and hassle of ‘installing’ it when SYS and XCOPY will do the job easier and faster? Need I also say without incident, as well? I don't look for ways to make extra work for myself when the obvious solution is foolproof, IMO. :)
 
Okay, I would first like to thank you all for the helpful suggestions. I tried the F5 and F8 tricks but it just hangs after it says "Starting MS-DOS..." I get the feeling I'm going to end up sticking with 3.3, although I really wish I didn't have to split my 1.2 Gb HD into a bunch of tiny partitions.
 
Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy to boot it from. The only 6.22 disks I have are the setup disks. I am working on trading an Atari 520STE for an older PC (probably from 93-95) with a floppy drive so once I get that I can run the setup disks I have, install MS-DOS on a floppy, boot that floppy disk on my 5160, and use the FORMAT C: /S command to install it on my XT's HDD.

BTW, I'm not crazy enough to have 36 partitions, I only have 2 and the rest of my HD is unallocated... That's why I want to use a later version of DOS, so I can take advantage of my SCSI HDD. If I wanted to use 60Mb of my HD I would have gotten an MFM and saved a couple bucks.
 
Stone said:
Sorry for the echo chamber but..... I haven't ‘installed’ any version of DOS in a long, long time -- about 10 years or probably even more. It's just not necessary. Once you have DOS on floppies (or on a hard drive) you've got everything you need. DOS is easy to copy and transfer to other media so why go through the work and hassle of ‘installing’ it when SYS and XCOPY will do the job easier and faster? Need I also say without incident, as well? I don't look for ways to make extra work for myself when the obvious solution is foolproof, IMO. :)
Click to expand...

This is quite correct. The "install" program is not a feature, it is a bug. I have never used it, but years ago did type "install" once and before it could do much had to give it the three finger salute because it started doing things which it was not authorized to do (by me) and that makes me see red. In fact it makes me go postal!

marcoguy said:
Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy to boot it from. The only 6.22 disks I have are the setup disks
Click to expand...

That doesn't make any sense. You can't "install" unless you have a bootable disk. I just checked a set of install disks and see that they will work just fine as is. For one thing the three files which make up the actual OS are right there. The diskette will boot and you are good to go. Also the EXPAND utility (as well as a lot of other useful utilities) is not compressed so you can use that instead of the install command should you wish to use some of the utilities from MS.
 
No, what I mean is that I do not have a bootable MS-DOS 6.22 disk that doesn't have the setup program written into the AUTOEXEC.BAT. When I try to bypass AUTOEXEC.BAT during the boot up, my system hangs.

UPDATE: I just tried renaming AUTOEXEC.BAT to AUTOEXEC.OLD so it won't load it and will just boot normally. It still hangs, so I guess that means there's nothing I can do... It hangs with or without loading the SETUP program.
 
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One step ahead of you, I already tried booting without my SCSI controller, no luck. I don't have any memory diagnostic programs available right now, unfortunately.
 
marcoguy said:
I don't have any memory diagnostic programs available right now, unfortunately.
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I don't believe you. :) You'd have to be connected to the internet in order to post that message.

Here is a huge load of diagnostics programs for you. Warning, it's a 5.8MB archive, and please unzip with the -d switch.
 
Creating a DOS 6.22 bootable disk should be possible by placing the DOS 6.22 install or upgrade disk in the proper floppy and then entering "a:\setup /f" (or the b drive equivalent). There is a bug in 1.44MB floppy versions that prevents this from working correctly with a 360kB floppy as target. 1.44MB target disks should be fine.

I strongly recommend making an extra copy of the DOS 6.22 disks before starting the process. I have lost my place when swapping disks in the same drive and copied over the original. Don't make my mistake.

The upgrade can be run after copying all the files to the hard disk partition but I do not remember if there are any special wrinkles to doing that. I used to install upgrades off a removable hard disk or CD-ROM because it was faster than handling 4 floppies.

Which SCSI controller are you using? Just in case you need a special driver or other option.
 
Take your 6.22 setup disk and also rename CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.OLD, then try booting. If it still hangs (basically a "naked" boot), there is something very, very wrong either with your machine or the system disk.

One thing that the MS-DOS documents fail to mention is that the system goes out and reads the hard disk partition table. It's possible, if you have a hard disk installed that the partition table is causing DOS to hang while booting. I've seen it happen.
 
Chuck(G) said:
One thing that the MS-DOS documents fail to mention is that the system goes out and reads the hard disk partition table. It's possible, if you have a hard disk installed that the partition table is causing DOS to hang while booting. I've seen it happen.
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He's already tried that...

marcoguy said:
One step ahead of you, I already tried booting without my SCSI controller, no luck.
Click to expand...
 
Ole Juul said:
I don't believe you. :) You'd have to be connected to the internet in order to post that message.

Here is a huge load of diagnostics programs for you. Warning, it's a 5.8MB archive, and please unzip with the -d switch.
Click to expand...

I am posting on here with my laptop, and that doesn't have a floppy drive to transfer files to my XT.

Chuck(G) said:
Take your 6.22 setup disk and also rename CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.OLD, then try booting. If it still hangs (basically a "naked" boot), there is something very, very wrong either with your machine or the system disk.
Click to expand...
Still hangs...
 
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