China DOS Union

DOS Tips for Installing Windows

Nowadays the system commonly installed on computers is Windows. DOS, which was once in the limelight during the era when PCs became widespread, has withdrawn from the system platform and is gradually being forgotten. But that is only when everything in your system is working normally. Who can say their system never has problems? If you want to become a qualified DIYer, you must master a certain degree of DOS operating and setup skills. Because before installing Windows, there is no operating system in the computer, so you can only boot from a floppy disk or CD, which is actually using DOS to boot the system. And if the system runs into trouble and you cannot enter Windows even through Safe Mode, you also have to rely on DOS to boot the system for maintenance and repair. So if you do not have a certain amount of DOS knowledge, when something unexpected happens it is easy to be at a complete loss.

Below I will introduce some DOS tips for installing and maintaining the system, which will definitely let you get twice the result with half the effort:

Configuration tips section

No matter which version of Windows you install, it first needs to copy tens to hundreds of megabytes of temporary files to the hard disk, so when installing Windows under DOS you must load Smartdrv.exe for disk caching. And Smartdrv requires the system to first load Himem.sys during initialization to manage DOS high memory, so you cannot completely abandon the famous DOS-era file Config.sys, and loading BUFFERS in Config.sys will make file copying faster as well. A specific Config.sys configuration can be as follows for reference (assuming your Himem.sys and Emm386.exe are in the root directory):
DEVICE=\HIMEM.SYS/TEST:OFF
(TEST:OFF can skip the memory test step and speed up boot time)
DEVICE=\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
(Loading EMM386.EXE can configure DOS conventional memory more effectively)
FILES=40
BUFFERS=40,0 (DOS buffers must not be ignored. Don't be fooled by the fact that they only take a few KB—they are very useful!)
LASTDRIVE=K
DOS=HIGH,UMB
Newbies please note: unless you are upgrading the system from an existing Windows installation, if you are reinstalling under DOS and do not load Smartdrv, then when installing huge operating systems like Windows98 or Windows2000, because there is no memory being used for caching, the hard disk will spin like crazy and read/write wear will increase greatly. Copying files and installation time will also become more than 3 times longer! The same is true during maintenance and recovery. If you run GHOST under pure DOS with no Smartdrv helping out, the hard disk will keep chattering until your heart aches.

Command tips section

1. Handling long directory names or Chinese filenames
Some people like to give files very long names or use Chinese as filenames. When you need to back up files before installing the system, if you run into long directory names or Chinese filenames, then if you use the standard CD command to enter the directory, you first have to switch DOS into Chinese mode, which is very inconvenient. Actually, you do not have to go to all that trouble and type directory names one by one. You only need to find a DOS-version compression program that can list all directories.
For example, RAR is a very good choice—after running RAR, it will list all files in the current directory (including hidden files), and you can press the first letter of the directory you want to enter to jump the cursor there, or directly move the cursor onto that directory with the up/down keys, then press Enter to go in. It is convenient and fast. Press 〔Esc〕 to return to the DOS C:\> prompt.
This method is not only suitable for entering directories named in Chinese, but is also quite suitable for hidden directories and folders with many levels of subdirectories. For example, the Windows\TemporaryInternetFiles directory is displayed in DOS with ～ replacing the long name, and there are multiple levels of directories under it. You first have to type "CDWindows", then type "CDTem…", which is extremely troublesome, and if you type it wrong you have to start over; but if you enter through RAR, it takes only two or three keystrokes.

2. DOSKEY settings
DOSKEY uses a very small amount of memory space (so little it can almost be ignored) to record all the command keystrokes you type. By moving the cursor with the up and down arrow keys, you can retrieve the commands you typed one by one. You already know the advantages of this without my rambling. For example, if you want to copy 10 files to a floppy disk separately, and those files differ only in the extension number, then in Windows using the right mouse button and then sending them to the floppy is rather cumbersome; but in DOS, after you type the full command "COPY + filename + target drive location" once, afterward you can use the [↑] arrow key to find the previous command, change the numbered suffix, and press Enter again. Very convenient and fast.
A reference setting is to add a line LHDOSKEY in the Autoexec.bat file after the PATH statement. Because PATH generally already specifies the Windows command path by default, the system will automatically find and execute DOSKEY.
In addition, another advantage of DOSKEY is that it records what someone has done on your machine. There have been cases where DOSKEY records were used as evidence to catch criminals who stole a company's technical materials. So it is also a little security guard.
A sample reference statement is as follows:
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY -=DIR/W
(Assuming your DOS programs are in this directory; if not, please flexibly change the path according to your machine. That is, defining the minus key [-] as the command for listing the directory. After setting it this way, when listing directories under DOS, pressing [-] and then Enter is equivalent to typing "DIR/W", which is very convenient; LH means placing the DOSKEY command in high memory, and is optional.)

Summary:
When you use these DOS tricks to back up and transfer data, you also provide a good installation environment for Windows, and the result is much better than a standard boot disk. After you have installed Windows correctly, if you do not need the DOS configuration files anymore, just delete them. Note: please boot with a system disk of DOS 7.0 or above, otherwise partitions larger than 2GB will not be recognized.

DOS, especially overseas, becoming forgotten is impossible. Including MS-DOS 7.x, there are currently as many as 400 million DOS users.