is it possible to run MS DOS on Windows XP without using a command prompt and without uninstalling XP?

Question

for example, can I run the files for Windows 1.0 (DOS) on an XP machine without using a command prompt and without reinstalling windows? The reason I am asking is because I downloaded the files for Windows 1.0 and when I ran them a command prompt opened with "details" about installing 1.0. I was able follow the commands up until a certain point, and after that the command prompt just closed automatically, and I never saw anything about 1.0 being installed or running. So I don't know what happened. Likewise I doubt if any version of DOS would be able to be installed in place of XP on this computer due to the extreme RAM requirements of XP which were not found in DOS systems. So I just basically want to know if there is a way to run Windows 1.0 from an XP system whlie XP is still installed? Because, as I just explained, it would not even work with a command prompt.

before anyone asks, there is no particular reason why I want to do this; I am just curious to see if it will work.

also, I am aware that DOS was command based, which is in part why I can't figure out what happened with the command prompt.

Dave, I was not referring to DOS as 1.0...I was merely indicating that I had downloaded the files for 1.0 (as opposed to those for another version of DOS)

Answer 1

1. You could dual-boot it with FreeDOS:

http://www.freedos.org/

It'd be easier to set up in a dual-boot environment than classic MS-DOS

2. You could run them in an emulator like DOSBox:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

3. You could install MS-DOS on a virtual machine, like VMWare or VirtualBox:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Answer 2

OK first, please stop refering to DOS as Windows 1.0

Second, the DOS system has limitations on hard drive partition sizes for example

DOS 3.2 can only see a drive of up to 32Mb

DOS 6.22 can see a maximum of 2048Mb (2Gb)

There are many other limitations with DOS on todays hardware like

No DOS system is able to read an NTFS file system without 3rd party conversion software (NTFS4DOS)

I would give up on the idea, DOS is dead for all but us techies who grew up with it.....even we use XP (or Linux if we need a fix of command line stuff)

Answer 3

You do know that the DOS Partition for Windows XP is up only 8MB big and used only to boot the computer up and hold some operating system files.

The XP Partition is formatted NTSF, not FAT 16 OR Fat 32, unless that is the way you had Windows XP set your Hrad Drives Up.

This is the second question about DOS I have seen today.