Hello, I have a question that needs answering. See I was told that you could boot up a computer to the C:/ prompt, with the command.com file even if you don't have MS-Dos installed on that computer, but I don't think thats possible, can anyone help?
i think what the person was talking about was using a boot diskette that had all the neccesary files on it to boot your computer.
windows 95/98/millenium have an option to make startup disks in the [control panel>> add/ remove programs>> windows setup]. you can boot your computer right off that floppy disk. once booted it will load DOS and usually the boot disk includes functions to partition & format so you can install an operating system.
DOS cannot access NTFS partitions so instead of using a boot floppy for win2000 and winXP you would use the operating system CD instead that is used just like the startup disk.
Yeah with Fat files systems you would be able to use a boot disk to get to a c promt 95/98/ME. But with NTFS Files system(most people with xp and 2000 ntfs) It wont let you see ntfs formated partitions. What are you tring to do in dos. The only way I know of you can get to a c: prompt to browse arround in xp is go to the recovery console but then you dont have all of the functions of dos. You are limited on what you can do there.
With any you should be about to boot to dos with a 98 boot disk. (and are able to run fdisk debug and format) i believe all of those on are a 98 boot disk)
Thanks for all the replies, but what if the hard drive had been reformatted and there was no operating system on it. would it then be possible to get a c:/ prompt with just the command.com file, but no other ms-dos files.
yes you can do that. i beleive you used the startup disk to format the hard disk right?
one way is to boot up with that startup disk again and type in "sys C:" where c is the drive you want to tranfer the system to. it tranfers the system files from the startup disk to the hard drive.
after this you can enjoy dos from your hard disk, but can i ask why you would want this?
here's some more help on sys dos command from www.computerhope.com :
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ABOUT SYS
Sys is used to copy the system files from one drive to another drive allowing that drive to be bootable.
When running sys the following files will be copied:
