How do I dual-boot Windows 10 and FreeDOS?
I managed to dualboot. Why are you being stupid? It is possible. However, it only works on very old computers. Here is what I did: (IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE WINDOWS RECOVERY DISK IF YOU FOLLOW THIS! FDISK WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO SET YOUR ACTIVE PARTITION TO YOUR WINDOWS PARTITION!)
First, I started by partitioning my drive. The new partition must be FAT32 or FAT. FreeDos has FAT32 support so I used FAT32. Then I used Rufus to put the installer on a USB. The live disc does not seem to work on a USB, so I used the full-USB installer.
I booted into the installer. Unlike the live disc, it doesn't give you the option to use the command line. After following a few steps, the "No, return to DOS" option shows. At DOS prompt, check your d: drive with dir. If it is empty, then you can install it there. If it your Windows installation, then try again. I typed setup adv. Advanced setup allows you to select where you want to install FreeDos. Install FreeDos to the partition that is the new, empty one.
After installing it, I rebooted. It sets the active partition to the FreeDos installation. However, you want the active one to Windows partition. FDISK in FreeDos will tell you that your Windows partition is not bootable, so boot the system recovery disk. To set your active hard drive back, it may be a little different, but it should follow steps like this:
- Choose your language and click next
- Click "recovery options"
- Click "troubleshoot"
- Click "command prompt"
- Enter "diskpart"
- type "list disk"
- Find your disk. It probably is disk 0.
- type "select disk x" and replace x with your disk
- type "list partition"
- look for the partition. If you are not dualbooting anything more than Windows and Freedos than it should be the biggest one. FreeDos is tiny
- type "select partition x" and replace x with the partition
- type "active"
- type "exit" and "exit" and then click shut down computer
Restart your computer. If Windows boots up, than you have done it correctly. If not, you will have to try again. As long as you don't change anything, the order of the partitions should not change. If Windows gives you "Windows failed to start error" (this happened to me when trying to dualboot once) then you will need to use the system recovery disk and troubleshoot startup.
After booting Windows, turn on the list of operating systems in control panel ( open run and type sysdm.cpl ,3), select startup and recovery, and check "time to list operating systems".
The Windows BCD editor is very bad, and I don't know how to use it, so I used EasyBCD. EasyBCD has automatic detection of where FreeDos is installed. All you have to do is open the add operating system menu and select FreeDos and click the plus button.
FreeDos and Windows will now show up in the boot menu.