China DOS Union

Yesterday, when I was installing a computer for someone, I encountered a very strange problem, so I specially took it out to share with you all.

I don't need to go into detail about the detailed hardware configuration of this machine. It's just an ordinary compatible machine. The hard disk is a 60G Seagate hard disk. I used PM to divide three primary partitions and one extended partition. Each of the three primary partitions is 4G. I originally planned to install XP on the first partition, keep the second partition to install another operating system, and install DOS 7.1 + Ghost on the third partition to save system clone files. Then the problem came with the third partition. The XP on the first primary partition ran very normally, but the DOS 7.1 on the third partition couldn't start no matter what. Later, I installed DOS 7.1 on the second primary partition, and the fault was still the same. Until I installed it on the first primary partition, it started to work normally. Then I installed the DOS of 98 on the third primary partition, and the DOS of 98 could start normally. Is there a problem? I originally thought that the DOS of 98 and DOS 7.1 should be the same, but I didn't expect that they were really different.

What are everyone's opinions?

Add a note: The three primary partitions are divided starting from the front of the hard drive, in sequence, each 4G.

How are various versions of DOS installed? For example, is it SYS or SETUP?

I didn't install using the setup of DOS 7.10. Initially, I used the method of restoring GHO to install (because I specifically made a small clone file of DOS 7.1 + Ghost). Later, I also tried the methods of sys and format /s, but none worked. And for the DOS of 98, I just used sys directly.

Unlike setup, the sys method may fail in some cases. How was this DOS Ghost clone file made back then? Was it installed on the hard disk using setup and then cloned?

Yes, it's installed with setup and then cloned.

What's the difference between sys and setup?

I think this problem may also be related to the hardware of the specific machine, because on my other machine, DOS 7.1 also runs on the same partition structure, but there is no this problem.