DOS Boot CD / USB Stick?

[Klaus Meinhard]

Hi all,

does anybody know a good DOS boot CD? or a bootable USB stick?

I'd like to see an optimally configured DOS (hey, which one?), with NTFS
support, Long Filename support, international keyboard support, perhaps
4DOS as CLI, hyperdisk, drivers for CD, mouse(?), LAN and Internet
support (though not all necessarily at the same time: a boot menu
selection might be necessary, and a memory manager like QEMM and a
taskswitcher like Deskview might be handy. And of course USB drivers for
the USB stick and whatever I may have missed.

Utilities like an editor, virus scanner, partition editor and whatever
comes to mind as nice to have on a DOS bootable CD / USB stick.

If there isn't such an animal, should one create one? Would it be useful
e.g. as a rescue cd for Windows95/98? XP?
Would it be useful as a small useful toolkit to take with you? What
should go in, what should be kept out?

Please feel free to make suggestions. If anything comes from this
(hopefully following) discussion, I'd like to put up the resulting
ultimate :-) DOS boot CD and/or USB ISO file on my site (see sig).

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Klaus, there are many DOS boot CDs: the Hiren's boot CD, the DOS Live CD
(http://fdd5-25.net/doslivecd.php), and even my boot disk which is a FDD
image but can be burned on a CD (http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/lucho.html)
with 4DOS as the shell (of course!) and probably many others. However no
CD can possibly serve all possible purposes, so if needed, a custom boot
CD may have to be created.

Regards,
Lucho

[Klaus Meinhard]

Lucho,

Post by Luchezar Georgiev
Klaus, there are many DOS boot CDs: the Hiren's boot CD, the DOS Live
CD (http://fdd5-25.net/doslivecd.php), and even my boot disk which is
a FDD image but can be burned on a CD
(http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/lucho.html) with 4DOS as the shell (of
course!) and probably many others. However no CD can possibly serve
all possible purposes, so if needed, a custom boot CD may have to be
created.

I think you could have a boot menu for the different purposes. What I
primarily want to see is an optimally configured DOS (a windows 32bit
command line would be just fine) with at least about 600 kB free memory,
the possibility to access NTFS drives, and a collection of useful tools
(a cd should be more than enough to include a lot). I see that your boot
CD is a good step in that direction.

Virus protection: is it possible to include e.g. F-Prot and download the
definition files to another (writable) drive?

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Post by Klaus Meinhard
I think you could have a boot menu for the different purposes. What I
primarily want to see is an optimally configured DOS (a windows 32bit
command line would be just fine) with at least about 600 kB free memory,
the possibility to access NTFS drives, and a collection of useful tools
(a cd should be more than enough to include a lot). I see that your boot
CD is a good step in that direction.

Thanks! A problem appeared with it - the server sends the .IMA file as
plain text instead of binary file. I'll inform my friend Lam about it.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
Virus protection: is it possible to include e.g. F-Prot and download the
definition files to another (writable) drive?

For this, network drivers and TCP/IP stack would be needed (e.g. NWDSK
at http://www.veder.com/nwdsk/). Mr Vesselin Bonchev of Frisk Software
may be able to help with automatic download of the definition file ;-)

Regards,
Lucho

[n***@gmail.com]

For a cd which boots dos and reads and writes to ntfs drives please visit www.ntfsdosboot.weebly.com