Installing Windows 95 for Dual Booting with Windows 3.x

To install Windows 95 with dual-boot capabilities for MS-DOS, the computer must already be running version 5.x or 6.x of MS-DOS or PC-DOS.

Important In order to take advantage of the Windows 95 dual-boot capabilities, the entry BootMulti=1 must be set in the Windows 95 MSDOS.SYS file in the root directory. For more information, see "MSDOS.SYS: Special Startup Values" earlier in this chapter.

To set up dual-boot capabilities for a new installation of Windows 95

• During Windows 95 Setup, when you are installing Windows 95 for the first time, make sure you specify a new directory that does not already have another version of Windows in it.

Windows 95 Setup makes all of the necessary changes to preserve your existing version of MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, or Windows for Workgroups 3.x, and your current AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.

If you have already installed Windows 95 without dual-boot capabilities, you can follow these steps to allow MS-DOS to dual boot with Windows 95. However, you will not be able to dual boot with your previous version of Windows.

To set up dual-boot capabilities after Windows 95 has been installed

1. On a bootable floppy disk that starts MS-DOS 5.0 or greater, rename the IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS files on the disk to IO.DOS and MSDOS.DOS. Then copy these files to the root directory of your boot drive (usually drive C).

   These files must be placed in the root directory. Usually these files are marked with the hidden, system, and read-only attributes, so you might need to use the MS-DOS attrib command on these files while they are on the floppy disk, to view and copy them (for example, type attrib -h -s -r io.sys).

   Caution You must rename the MS-DOS versions of these files before copying them to the root directory. Otherwise, you will destroy your Windows 95 installation.

2. On a bootable floppy disk that starts MS-DOS 5.0 or greater, rename the COMMAND.COM file on the disk to COMMAND.DOS. Then copy this file to the root directory of your boot drive.

   Note If you are using disk compression software, you need to copy IO.DOS, MSDOS.DOS, COMMAND.DOS, CONFIG.DOS, and AUTOEXEC.BAT to your host drive also.

3. Use a text editor to create CONFIG.DOS and AUTOEXEC.DOS files that are appropriate for the MS-DOS version that you are using and store them in the root directory.
4. To use Windows 95 or the earlier version of MS-DOS in the usual way, restart the computer.