Hi All
I have an old Pentium based PC with FreeDOS installed that I'm using to control a CNC machine using proprietary ISA cards and software.
I would like to install XP in a dual boot configuration so I can continue using the FreeDOS CNC program while I have an option to boot to XP to save/restore the CNC programs on a USB flash drive instead of the PC's diskette drive since FreeDOS lacks USB support.
I have another PC I've been experimenting with to make sure I don't destroy the CNC PC's FreeDOS install, since it took awhile to configure correctly and I don't want to do it again. I've formatted the test PCs HD as FAT32 and installed FreeDOS and it boots OK.
When I attempt to install XP from CD into C:\Windows the install proceeds OK but on the first reboot during the install the PC doesn't boot, giving me message "Disk Error, press any key to restart".
I tried booting to the repair option on the XP CD and running fixmbr and fixboot but that made no difference.
I know the XP CD is OK because I was able to reformat the drive on the test PC and install XP by itself.
My question is what is the best way to load XP onto an existing FreeDOS PC and maintain both OSes in a dual boot configuration?
Thanks for any help
Scifidude