What I was getting at is that an upgrade disk wont install on a drive
that is partially/completely void of an existing valid OS to upgrade from.
Anyway, I guess if you cant boot to a cdrom drive to allow
W2K to install a windows environment you get the error message
he is getting. I can boot to my cdrom drive so I didnt have the
problems. The dos-based command prompt a bootdisk creates is
insufficient for W2K/XP and when setup is run the dos error message
is displayed. The fix is listed below....................................................
Err Msg: "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" Trying to
Run Setup.exe from Command Prompt
This article was previously published under Q240251
SYMPTOMS
When you turn on your computer and then boot from a floppy disk
or hard drive with CD-ROM Support enabled to a command prompt,
the following error message is displayed when you try to start
Setup.exe from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM:
"This program cannot be run in DOS mode."
CAUSE
This behavior occurs because Setup.exe on the Windows 2000
CD ROM is a Windows-based program and cannot be run from
an MS-DOS command prompt.
RESOLUTION
To work around this behavior, boot into an existing Windows
installation and re-run Setup. If there are no Windows-based
installations on the drive, Microsoft recommends that you start
the Windows 2000 installation by booting to the CD-ROM, or use
the floppy disks created by the Makeboot.exe program. For more information on how to creat the Setup boot disks, please click the
article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
197063 How to Create Setup Boot Disks for Windows 2000
As an alternative to the above, you can change to the i386 folder on
the Windows 2000 CD, and then type: winnt.exe
STATUS
This behavior is by design.
MORE INFORMATION
Setup.exe is the program that is invoked by the autorun.inf program
on the Windows 2000 CD-ROM. This program generates the initial
Windows 2000 Startup screen that provides the option to Install
Windows 2000, Install Add-On Components, Browse this CD, or Exit.
APPLIES TO
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
