Eric Auer wrote:
MBR is limited to 2 TB disk size unless sectors are > 512 Bytes and MBR is a bit weird because you need a chain of partitions if you have more than just the primary ones. in the last few decades
Previous to the current attempt every laptop I have setup has had two versions of Win, nothing else. Win provided the boot manager. The first thing I don't like about the Win boot manager is that it is hooked into the BIOS. I "grew up" believing the BIOS belonged to me and no OS could screw with it. The laptop I am working now got wiped because a Win "update" left me with a black screen and I could not boot either Win partition. That should be impossible. Win should be limited to destroying only the partition it is "updating".
Every desktop, in the last few decades, has had only a single primary - two if you count the extended wrapper. That is the system I am trying to build. This laptop shipped with a 1Tb HDD. I could have FreeDOS, two Win, and a half dozen Linux and never fill that drive. I don't keep junk on a working box, I have a storage box for that, or at least I did until Win11 killed my LAN, and that is what started all this.
Which steps are still missing? You should be able to boot it on a laptop which still supports BIOS / legacy boot and is not limited to only booting EFI / UEFI. For EFI-only laptops you would need a suitable CSM to boot DOS. People work on that.
First, "Bad or missing Command Interpreter" is an "old friend". It has been part of my FreeDOS experience, but not lately, because I have not tried to install FreeDOS lately. Somehow I always got past that.
The install USB boots as C:\. I can switch to the HDD as D:\. I can navigate the HDD.
Does the fact that the USB can boot, guarantee that the HDD can be made to boot?
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