UGN Security Forums UGN Security: Underground General Booting to DOS in XP

Hi every one, i am obviously a newbie i mean, just check out the 'member number'.

Any way on with the question. I am running XP at the mo and just want to know how to boot in to pure DOS just like 'Win 98'. Could any body help me here?

Thanks for those who help!

XP isn't built on DOS, I don't believe. It's built on NTFS, like windows NT. This means that it has a different file system and no DOS. At least I'm pretty sure of that. Wait, I just remembered, it depends on how you install it. You can choose your file system when you install XP. If you chose NTFS, then you don't have DOS running under you system so you can't boot to DOS and if you really need to, you have to use NTFSDOS. Search on google to find a site to download it, and you just stick it on a win98 boot disk or something and run it and load your NTFS drive with it and then you can use it like DOS. If you chose FAT32, then it's the normal way for FAT OS's.

XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT don't contain DOS. Therefore you do not have the option to boot into a pure DOS environment. However, all three OSs support the cmd.exe command shell, which lets you run NT-equivalent DOS commands. Is there a reason you desire a DOS environment?

NTFS and DOS have no relation Mornse.

And like DecAy said, you cannot boot into DOS in XP/2K/NT because there is no DOS there to boot into. The closest XP has (cmd.exe notwithstanding) is the recovery console which you can reach via booting off the install cd then selecting 'recovery console' instead of 'install'.

Infinite

You can also boot into safe mode with command prompt by pressing f8 after your bios information has come up.

MS released its first os as MS-DOS.

win3.1, 95, 98, ME all run on top of DOS. Granted for each version, DOS was stripped down and more was done at windows level.

I believe NT 4.0 runs on the NT kernel and not DOS, hence the name.

Now 2000 and XP both run on an NT Kernel (maybe where mornse was thinking NTFS from) and not on underlying DOS. So there is no way to actually get to a "real" dos on either of these systems, just an emulated version.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Press F8 or Shift-F5 then you will be able to choose normal mode,safe mode (Win98) or command prompt.

yee inf said that already ntd

Win3.x series
This wasn't an OS. It was a shell, like XWindows and Gnome on linux. The OS was MS-DOS.

Win95,Win98,WinME
The computer booted with DOS, but then DOS terminated and Windows took over. On these operating systems you can prevent windows from starting and just stick to the MS-DOS prompt. After windows took over MS-DOS was emulated.

WinNT,Win2K,WinXP,Win2K3
the computer booted straight into the windows operating system. This resulted in a faster boot time. MS-DOS is still emulated. You no longer have the ability to boot into DOS since DOS is no longer the first OS to load on boot.

And finally...

You can ALWAYS boot into DOS on any computer no matter what it is. The only catch is that you need to have the proper drivers. You can boot into DOS from a CD or a floppy disk. If you have NTFSDOS by sysinternals.com then you'll have the drivers that DOS will use to mount and recognize how to operate NTFS partitions. NTFSDOS is the result of reverse engineering the NTFS recovery disk you can get off of a Windows 2000 installation CD.

Thanks, problem solved.

I booted it from a bootable floppy and it worked.

Thanks for all your help and giving me a good understanding of how the different OS's work.

Help very much appreciated:

Mornse, DecAy, Infinite, nfinitous, onconley, NTD and SilentRage.

I never said that NTFS and DOS were related, I just said that I thought when installing windows XP you could choose your file system, and if you chose Fat32, that maybe then you could boot straight in to DOS without the need of a boot disk and NTFSDOS. Is that correct?

I get what you are saying now. I apologize for my misinterpretation. I am not sure if that works, but it would make sense. Beings NTFS, you couldn't read with DOS unless you had a utility like the NTFSDOS from sysinternals/winternals, as SR said. I am not sure if what you are saying is how it works, but it does make good sense. sry

Um... Say what? I'm not sure I understand what you are saying at all here

There is absolutley no DOS to boot into in XP regardless of the filesystem.. The only way you can make an XP machine boot into DOS is with a DOS boot floppy. Other than that, there is no DOS anywhere near XP, not even a little bit.

Or am I missing what you are saying totally Mornse?

Infinite

Yeah, I think you're right, my bad. Though I still think I remember having the choice to use NTFS or Fat32 when formatting my drive for XP. What's the point of doing this then? Why would microsoft give you the choice? Just of the hell of it?

It would allow a dual boot like DOS or earlier windows version to access your FAT32 partition, whereas they wouldn't be able to access a NTFS.

Another reason to go for FAT32 is for application support. Some applications only work for Windows 9x cause the NT/2K/XP/2K3 drive is formatted for NTFS.

Yeah, but XP also has that tool, what's it called, damn I forget and can't find it, but where you can run older software as if it was running on a 98 box or whatever so that it'll run in XP. Damn it, what's it called. Hmm, microsoft calls in Compatibility Mode on their website, so I guess that's it. Does it work well though? never tried it.

There is an option to run certain programs as if they were in another version of Windows to preserve some compatibility.

However, I find it odd that any program would have issues with the file system. Isn't that something that should occur at a lower level than the applications would have to deal with. Something that should be handled via the operating system itself? I am sure w/ all you have handled with coding for windows, you can give some examples of why/why not SR.

TIA

Even if u have booted it from a boot disk,

it doesn't mean Xp has been booted into DOS(Defective Operating System).

I'm runnin XP Pro SP1 and I've yet to come accross any software that won't run on it...

HD: 40GB
Partitions: 1 NTFS
Processor: 1.7GHZ
RAM: 256Meg

This configuration is perfect, i've yet to find any issues, running NTFS actually goes faster than running as FAT32.

I hate you. As soon as I wrote my post I thought that exact same thing. I don't understand it myself. But I have known of an example of a program that wouldn't run on NTFS but would on FAT32. I have no clue as to why it makes a difference other than low level drive accessing.

On the other hand maybe my noodle is mixing stuff up like the dyslexic I imagine myself to be and am actually thinking about the capability of access Win2k drives fromatted in FAT32 from a linux or 98 partition.