Install FreeDOS 1.1 with FreeDOSmultiboot

If you want to install FreeDOS to your hard drive with the help of FreeDOSmultiboot on a pen drive you should first know, what you are doing: You need a backup, you can destroy your data and you can damage your hardware.

THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY!
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Then you need to download and unzip FreeDOSmultiboot.zip [1] and copy FreeDOSmultiboot.img to your pen drive. On Windows use Win32 DiskImager [2] or Rufus [3] or similar. On Unix based systems like Linux you can use the dd command as superuser/root:

dd if=FreeDOSmultiboot.img of=/dev/sdX

Replace X with the letter of the device name of your pen drive.

Boot your device from your prepared pen drive. Choose „Install FreeDOS 1.1“ from the boot menu to start the installer.

If needed choose „Create Drive C:“ in the installer menu.

Maybe you have to delete a Non-DOS partiton on your computer to create a new „Primary DOS Partiton“ for FreeDOS installation.

If the DOS partition is created you have to format the partition. Please note to set the C drive on the harddisk as active.

After a new reboot, you have to boot from the pen drive again, choose „Install FreeDOS 1.1“ from the boot menu to start the installer. Then you can choose „Install to harddisk“ from the menu and proceed with the FreeDOS installation.

There are more detailed information about the installation in the FreeDOS Install HOWTO [3]. This is for VirtualBox, but should apply to any PC.

Happy FreeDOS’ing.

[1] http://www.datenteiler.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FreeDOSmultiboot.zip
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
[3] https://rufus.akeo.ie/
[4] http://freedos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox