4.3 Legacy Microsoft Operating System Bootloaders

DOS and Windows require you to re-install the boot loader if you change the FAT type (FAT16 or FAT32) of the boot partition. Parted will warn you before attempting to do this. To re-install the boot loader, you can either create a boot disk, or use the boot CDROM. The boot disk method does not work with Windows ME.

• BOOT DISK METHOD (DOS/Windows 9x)
  1. Create a Windows boot disk
     • Boot Windows. This implies you should make the boot disk before you use parted.
     • Right click on the floppy drive in Windows Explorer.
     • Click on "Format".
     • Mark "Copy system files".
     • Click on "Format".
     • Copy C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\SYS.COM to A:\ Note: you might have called C:\WINDOWS something else, like C:\WIN98.
  2. Boot off the Windows boot disk, by leaving the boot disk in the floppy drive when booting. You may need to tell your BIOS to boot off the floppy.
  3. Type at the DOS prompt:

     A:\>sys c:
     

• CDROM METHOD: (Windows 9x/ME)
  1. Insert the Windows CDROM, and boot from it. (Select "boot without CDROM support").
  2. Type:

     A:\>c:
     C:\>cd \windows\command    (might be \win98\command, or similar)
     C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND>sys c:
     

     That's all there is to it.

Also, DOS and Windows impose a few restrictions:

• The boot partition should be selected with the "boot" flag. Only one boot partition can be selected (sometimes called the "active" partition). For example, to set partition 3 to be the boot partition, do:

  (parted) set 3 boot on
  

• The MS DOS and MS Windows 9x/ME can only boot from the first FAT partition. That is, the FAT partition with the smallest minor number, that isn't hidden. Note that boot loaders like GRUB and LILO (and some BIOSes) can change this behaviour...
• If you are using CHS addressing (rather than LBA addressing), then the boot partition start must be less than cylinder 1024. You can tell MS DOS to use (or not to use) LBA addressing, by enabling or disabling the LBA flag on the boot partition. For example, to enable the LBA flag on partition 2, do:

  (parted) set 2 lba on
  

  Note: LBA addressing is not supported in MS-DOS 6.22 and lower, as well as all versions of PC-DOS. Warning: some BIOSes won't enable LBA addressing, unless you enable it in the BIOS as well. If for some reason, Windows doesn't boot after changing this flag, this is probably the problem.
• the "real" MS-DOS (i.e. up to version 6.22) and MS-DOS 7.0 (i.e. Windows 95/95a) don't know about FAT32. It's therefore possible to boot them from the second fat (FAT16 only, of course) partition, when the first fat partition is FAT32. Both have to be primary partitions, so you'll have to set the one you want to boot from as active partition.

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