Installing FreeDOS onto a USB stick using unetbootin fails

Solution 1:

As of late, there have been numerous complaints about unetbootin not working. I do not know the specifics, but the end result is usually something like 'no operating system found'.

There is a solution. It's to use a different program. My personal favorite is Balena Echer.

You might also consider Mkusb. There's MultiBootUSB that is more aimed at multiple ISOs on one USB. The list goes on and you can search for alternatives. If you're using Windows, there are even more choices.

Solution 2:

Installers that Work for FreeDOS

I tried a few popular OS installers with FreeDOS FD12FULL.img file. FreeDOS 1.2 was the latest version that I could find on the freedos.org site.

I formatted the USB flash drive as FAT32 and used the various tools to create an installer on the drive, then I booted the drives and used the FreeDOS installer to install on another flash drive.

The installer tools that worked for me were Unetbootin (Windows & Linux), Etcher (W&L), Rufus (W), Win32DiskImager (W), mkusb Live (L), SDC (L) and Gnome-Disks (L).

YUMI (W), Universal (W) and Ventoy (W&L) did not work with the FreeDOS image file.