China DOS Union

I made an msdos7.1 boot floppy image last year. Today I booted the system in vmware4, and it could boot. After partitioning the hard disk, I used format c:/s to format it. Then I rebooted from the hard disk. Logically it should have been able to boot! But now after the system self-check it just goes to a black screen and hangs there. I then did the same thing in vpc, and it was still the same. What's going on??
I can get into drive c, and there are the three files command, io.sys, msdos.sys in it. Same as before. Then I copied format.com and sys.com from the floppy to drive c, and used format a:/s to format a new floppy image test.img. It actually could boot! That shows the system files are not wrong! Then why can't it boot from the hard disk?

Could it be the result of everyone using software compression?
Now the boot disks everyone makes all use software compression to save space, or use smaller software with similar functions instead. For example, ms-dos71's io.sys is smaller than win98's, but can it be compatible with more hardware?

These past two days I've also run into a problem: in the virtual machine Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 v5.3 Build 582, ghost 8.0 gives an error as soon as it runs! But other software has no problem at all, including ghost 7.0!

But the strange thing is, a few days ago it was working fine with no problem at all, and if I use the same CD to run it under real DOS there is no problem either!

I already reinstalled VPC, and it still doesn't work. As long as I run ghost8 it errors out.

It's not a compression problem. I used the same method before, and the resources were all from wengier's boot disk. It used to be fine before, now it doesn't work.

If you want to install MS-DOS 7.1 onto the hard disk, try using the MS-DOS 7.1 installation disk instead of the boot disk:

http://newdos.yginfo.net/dosart32.htm

Maybe the virtualization isn't thorough enough. I wanted to use more EMS, and after adding DEVICE=EMM386.EXE RAM I=F000-F7FF in CONFIG it wouldn't boot anymore. Depressing...

The following is quoted from Wengier's post at 2004-3-11 20:37:39:
If you want to install MS-DOS 7.1 onto the hard disk, try using the MS-DOS 7.1 installation disk instead of the boot disk:

http://newdos.yginfo.net/dosart32.htm

What's the difference between installing onto the hard disk and making a boot disk? And why did it work before but not now?

If it worked before and doesn't now, then it should be a problem in the manual operation. Try the installation disk above for automatic installation and see whether it works. Also, after installing with it, the DOS commands inside will be much more complete and already configured.