FreeDOS is a complete operating system. For new users, we recommend installing FreeDOS in a PC emulator or “virtual machine.” If you install FreeDOS directly on a computer, without using a PC emulator, you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for example, Windows.). USB “Full” installer.
The FreeDos project offers a number of downloads, but all of these contain an installer that tries to install FreeDos from an installation media onto the harddisk. Selecting the mobile stick as installation target is not supported. Since typical USB sticks typically large enough to contain the OS plus applications, writing onto the harddisk is often not intented. Some pages point to tools like Rufus, which can create a bootable FreeDos installation from a template, but this disk is then missing the typical FreeDos components. So how can a complete FreeDos be installed onto a bootable usb stick to create a live USB version with FreeDos?
Peter B.Peter B.
2 Answers
Unfortunately the current information on the FreeDOS Wiki is not up to date, but with the help from FreeDos Developer Jim Hall I could find the solution:
- Download the USB “Full” installer from the FreeDOS page.
- Unpack the downloaded zip
- Use a USB formatting tool (for example rufus) to write the image to USB (take care to write over the right drive)
- Move the directory D:FDSETUPBIN to D:BIN
- Edit first and last two lines in D:FDCONFIG.SYS as follows
- Edit D:AUTOEXEC.BAT as follows (Windows will hide this file, but you can open it by directly giving the filename).Only the line setting the DOSDIR needs to be changed and some display code at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT are to be removed
- Delete D:SETUP.BAT
- Done, safe your files and safely remove the USB stick
Boot and test
The USB key now boots directly into FreeDOS and loads into high memory, leaving roughly 600KB of common memory for programs.
Peter B.Peter B.
How can a complete FreeDos be installed onto a bootable usb stick?
See USB - FreeDOS:
This article describes how to create a USB boot 'disk' using FreeDOS.
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The instructions for Windows are as follows (see the link above for instruction for Linux):
Partition the USB stick
If using Windows, your USB stick is mounted as something like E:. All operations must be performed as Administrator (right click, Run as Administrator) using Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008. The Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) 2.x should also work, for those that need it.
Then enter the following diskpart commands:
Install a boot loader
It is probably easiest to use SYSLINUX. To do so, simply download and extract the archive. Let's say you put it in C:syslinux, and your USB stick is E:. Change to the location where you extracted SYSLINUX, and run it:
Create a new file E:SYSLINUX.CFG as follows:
Copy the boot files from the FreeDOS 'full' CD-ROM image (fdfullcd.iso) to your USB stick. In the following, assume the CD-ROM drive is mounted as D:.
Extract sourceukernelbootfat32lba.bin from D:FREEDOSPACKAGESSRC_BASEKERNELS.ZIP to the root of your USB drive and rename it to fat32lba.bss
Boot and test
Your USB key should now boot directly into FreeDOS. You can modify the contents of the USB stick directly as you like.
Source USB - FreeDOS
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