MS-DOS & Software This page contains download links for a very old Microsoft operating system so that it can be preserved - on this corner of the Internet, anyway - for anyone who is curious to tinker with the first versions of Windows or who just wants to take a trip down Nostalgia Avenue. The operating systems here are distributed as floppy disk image files (with an.img extension). If you actually have a floppy drive, you'll have to flash these images onto floppy disks. If you just want to use, it can make use of the floppy image files directly. MS-DOS 6.22 The last version of MS-DOS from the Windows 3.1 era, before Windows 95. ¤ (.zip, 3.5 MB) Windows for Workgroups 3.11 The first version of Windows to support TCP/IP networking. Disk images (.img files) for use with VirtualBox or flashing to floppy disks: ¤ (.zip, 10.3 MB) Unpacked disk images (ZIP file containing all files from all disks in one folder, maybe useful for DOSBox installations): ¤ (.zip, 11 MB) Hardware Drivers for VirtualBox These are some hardware drivers for DOS and Windows 3.x that are known to work with VirtualBox's emulated hardware.
Drivers include:. CD-ROM driver. DOSIDLE to make MS-DOS stop consuming 100% CPU.
MS-DOS 5 introduced numerous new features and was a flagship release for Microsoft. A full screen text editor EDIT has replaced the former line editor EDLIN supplied since the early days of DOS. Microsoft QBasic also shipped in DOS 5 replacing GW-BASIC.
WQGHLT to make Windows 3.x stop consuming 100% CPU. SoundBlaster 16 as a CD image (requires the CD-ROM driver) ¤ (.zip, 4.0 MB) Comments For tips, tricks, or to leave comments, see the relevant blog post '. The comments on that blog post are shared to this page as well (so comments on either page show up in both places).
There are 185 comments on this page. Mahir256 posted on May 24, 2012 @ 23:23 UTC Okay, so the install of Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 in a VM on QEMU went without any problems, except for one peculiar problem: WQGHLT does what it needs to do (frees CPU cycles), but DOSIDLE does not. Also, when putting it in my AUTOEXEC, the whole system either freezes on startup (more common), or it gives a 'divide error' (or similar), keeping one of my cores at 100%. The effect is particularly noticeable when going into Windows 3.1, equipped with WQGHLT, from the command prompt, and seeing the usage in Task Manager on the host system go down significantly.
Am I doing something wrong here? Resuni posted on July 20, 2012 @ 20:47 UTC Having a problem trying to put this on an old Dell Latitude. Doesn't matter if I'm trying to install Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS, if I try to boot from one of the floppies I get this message: Remove disks and other media. Press any key to restart.
I'm fairly certain there isn't a problem with the floppy drive because I'm able to boot an MS-DOS startup disk I created with the Windows Explorer format tool (in Windows 7). I've tried booting this startup disk, then switched to an MS-DOS floppy, then ran SETUP from there but it then get a message: To install MS-DOS, insert Setup Disk 1 in drive A and press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
This will restart your computer and begin the setup program. Is there something I need to do to make these floppies bootable or something before I copy the image over to them? Vmlover posted on October 16, 2012 @ 12:52 UTC @Kirsle I installed it successfully on my Windows OS with VirtualBox 4.1.8 like, say, 2 months ago. FYI, I've used the command 'vboxmanage' to convert the VDI image provided in your tarball to a VHD image. I tested it on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, but your Windows 3.1 (in 386 Enh. Mode) would not boot for a full 1.5 minutes after I typed 'WIN' in the DOS prompt.
It also gives you those funny errors like this: PROGMAN.EXE caused a General Protection Fault in XXXX:YYYY. Then, it makes you go back to MS-DOS. Jayne posted on December 12, 2012 @ 14:58 UTC Please Help. I really need Windows 3.1 for the sole purpose of using Paint. Without getting technical (coz I'd only confuse myself!!!) Paint on this version of windows was different from what it is today and that's the one I need!!).
I've read comments etc on here, but I really haven't got a clue about computers. Please could someone be kind enough to explain to me how I could install this version of Windows on my PC, or maybe I could install it on another old PC I could get my hands to avoid losing data on my lovely new PC. I would very much appreciate it so m if someone could please tell me step by step how I can install this using the links on this web page? Many many thanks in advance Jayne.
Jayne posted on December 17, 2012 @ 14:06 UTC Please Help. I really need Windows 3.1 for the sole purpose of using Paint. Without getting technical (coz I'd only confuse myself!!!) Paint on this version of windows was different from what it is today and that's the one I need!!). I've read comments etc on here, but I really haven't got a clue about computers.
Please could someone be kind enough to explain to me how I could install this version of Windows on my PC, or maybe I could install it on another old PC I could get my hands to avoid losing data on my lovely new PC. I would very much appreciate it so m if someone could please tell me step by step how I can install this using the links on this web page? Many many thanks in advance Jayne. Noah (@kirsle) posted on February 3, 2015 @ 19:18 UTC VirtualBox Guest Additions don't support any version of Windows older than Windows 2000/XP, so shared folders won't work.
Other ideas:. If the networking works, try an FTP server you can connect to from within the virtual machine. Create a you attach to the VM to copy files to/from, then detach it from the VM and mount it as a loopback device on the host OS to access files. For a host-to-guest only transfer, create an ISO image (some CD burners on Linux let you turn a folder into an ISO file instead of burning to disk; you'd select your folder, right-click 'burn to disk' and on the burn:/// URI the button to actually burn would pop up a window where one option is to make an ISO instead. Power off the DOS VM, and attach its hard disk as a secondary drive on a newer VM (i.e. Windows XP or Linux) which does support guest additions. Note that two VMs can not be powered on at the same time if they have the same disk attached!
Noah (@kirsle) posted on March 16, 2015 @ 20:09 UTC MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 were originally distributed as floppy disks, so no CD-based installation is supported. On I have an 'unpacked' Windows 3.11 install folder (it's a single zip file that contains all files from all Win3.11 floppy disks). You could turn that into an ISO file using any ISO creation tool. It will not be directly bootable, however. So at a bare minimum you could:. Install MS-DOS from floppy disk images (no CD/ISO based install is supported for MS-DOS).
Or if you have a DOS boot floppy that has CD-ROM drivers built in, boot that and then mount an ISO containing all the unpacked MS-DOS floppy files. But basically, a floppy disk boot is going to be used one way or another. Install a CD-ROM driver into MS-DOS so that you can mount a CD as D: for example. Create an ISO based on the unpacked Win3.11 install files and mount it as D:.
Install Win3.11 from there, rather than the floppy on A:. The installation would happen more or less the same way except it won't ask you to insert the next floppy disk, as all the files it needs are already present on D:. BTW: I used a command similar to this to automagically mount and copy all files from the Win3.11 disk images into one folder (from a Linux system) to create the unpacked zip file. Osei posted on March 20, 2015 @ 23:07 UTC Hi, This is really great. I have been looking for windows 3.11 for a while. Just to remember how far the computer world has come in a very short time.
Its good you got it here for download. I will try it out. Another question I have is this.
I am very new to virtualBox and want to give it a go. If I have an image of my windows 8 box and I want to restore this on a virtual box, how do I go about this? I hope you will be able to enlighten me on this. MichaelD posted on March 27, 2015 @ 15:49 UTC I read a post asking why would anyone want to run this old OS. (I go back to 3.20) I run 6.22 because of a radio BBS system I helped develop back in the 80's. I still have it running on a old Dell Optiplex (slim line).
I know its going to die one of these days, so this site has put the bug in me to get on a newer machine. I also run a similar vintage Optiplex tower with Win98, using it as a file storage machine.
These rigs are over 25 years old, so am treading on thin ice; especially since they run 24/7. So, I go from MSDOS to Server2008 plus Win7. The fun part of 6.22 is scripting for extra memory. The BBS takes a lot of extra RAM to function. Anyone remember the old game of Eliza? My old 8088/8086 machine is used for EPROM burning and Amtor. (not that I burn any PROM's any more) What's my favorite OS?
Vista, hands down, but this old stuff is a kick to fool with. Tony Robichaud posted on March 31, 2015 @ 01:03 UTC I purchased my first computer in late 1978. MS-DOS did not exist yet but TRSDOS is what I learned to use. During the 1980's I wrote a complete set of accounting programs while being an Accounting Manager. When IBM's PC came out I slowly switched to Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS and continues to write programs. Sure, the PCs today are better but not faster for the work I was doing. I recently fired up an old Windows 98 computer and my TRS-80 portable and both work very well.
But I could not recoup an old IBM desktop running win 3.1 that had the two floppy sizes. I still have tons of 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 disks holding my old programs that worked very well during the 80's. Now I'm writing a similar set of programs that work with win 95 to win 8 and trying to get my previous stuff in text format. The win 98 has a 3-1/2 disk drive and an MS-DOS prompt that I can use but will come back here it I need to download win 3.1 I'm glad I found this site while it's still around.
The TRS-80 model 4 uses only 2 5-1/4 disks and there is no way to get my stuff transferred out of those TRSDOS disks into something like a text file I can read with more recent windows computers. Mark posted on March 31, 2015 @ 14:03 UTC Hello Kirsle Firstly thank you for this webpage and your downloads. I am looking t install Dos 6.22 in a VM. I have downloaded and installed Virtualbox as per your suggestion. I have attempted to create VM and point it to the unzipped Dos 6.22 img files but when I do I get a message saying the File is not correct and cannot load the OS? Well that is not the exact wording but you get the idea. Am I doing something wrong?
Others seem t have success so I think it must be me? VB seems to be looking for an optical file and doesn't like the.img? Please help as I really need this to work. Thank you in advance. Trent posted on May 5, 2015 @ 04:08 UTC Has nobody noticed that the Windows 3.1 floppies are messed up, or am I the only one? The MS-DOS floppies are fine, but three files on the Windows floppies are corrupt (Windows Setup brings up an 'Unable to read file' error), and the files on the Windows floppies are arranged incorrectly across the disks. For example, Setup will ask for Disk 2, and you stick it in, and then later it will ask for Disk 2 again, at which point you actually need to stick in Disk 3, because for whatever reason some files that are supposed to be on Disk 2 are on Disk 3 instead.
This happens across a couple other disks, too. Both of these issues happen in both Virtualbox and on a physical computer. Noah (@kirsle) posted on May 5, 2015 @ 18:23 UTC In the for this (these comments are shared between the blog and the /msdos page) I mentioned what the cause of this is. I got ahold of this version of Windows 3.1 from a CD image instead of floppies, so I had to convert them to floppy images myself, and not all the files fit on all the disks (there should only be 6 disk images but there's 7 in this tarball).
Windows 3.1 can still be installed from these images, it will just require more disk juggling. When you get a 'Can't read file' error, you'll usually swap in the next numbered disk and hit enter.
Sometimes you'll have to go to the previous disk instead. I'll make a note of it on the /msdos page as well.
Michael posted on May 13, 2015 @ 10:00 UTC Hi Kirsle, I think it's really cool to get some the old 90's stuff running again on modern hardware.:D But so far I have no luck.:'( I've downloaded and installed the latest version VirtualBox on my Windows 7 x64 machine. Unfortunately it keeps crashing as soon as I start any virtual machine. I've also tried to create one from scratch. I get it to boot from the first MS-DOS 6.22 floppy image, but after a few seconds I get a memory error and it just aborts the VM.
It seems like a terribly unstable product.:-( Do you have any suggestions for me? Noah (@kirsle) posted on May 13, 2015 @ 17:22 UTC What are the specs on the Windows 7 machine?
It should have enough RAM to allocate some to a virtual machine while still having 50% for the host OS. Iirc MS-DOS VMs default to only needing some low amount of memory (like 128MB or something? DOS/Windows 3.1 wasn't a very memory hungry system by today's standards), you can probably just use the defaults. If your host OS has only 1GB of RAM altogether that could be an issue still, though. VirtualBox as a product is really stable; I haven't had any issues with it.
If your computer is like 10 years, get a new one.;). Michael posted on May 18, 2015 @ 12:39 UTC Hi Kirsle, Thanks for your reply. If my computer was 10 years old, there would be no need for a VM since a computer from that era should be perfectly capable to run Windows 3.11 as its primary OS.:-) Actually my computer is quite new (Intel Core i7 with 8 GB RAM). So that shouldn't be a problem. I've also tried this on another machine (Intel Xeon with 8 GB RAM) and the result is the same. VirtualBox just keeps crashing every time.:-( In the meantime I was able however to install Windows 3.11 using DosBox. That worked like a charm.:D Of course you don't get a snapshot mechanism with DosBox, that why I would prefer a VM.
Max posted on June 17, 2015 @ 08:05 UTC If you like DOS and/or its software you can participate in a new international project. We are looking for 100 users and 10 developers (to start), from all over the world who want to use DOS and if we find them, it will be back (updated and free, of course). The new software for this OS will be available, too.
If you are interested – contact us: [email protected] and let us know that you want to use either DOS or its software so we could add you to the users list. In addition, we invite programmers interested in working on the DOS kernel, drivers and software.
Skip to: Introduction This walkthrough covers installing MS-DOS 6.22 from the original installation diskettes. Why write this in 2013? That's a very valid question, to which there are a few answers:. Setting up a fully working DOS system will give you great appreciation for how far computing has come. For old-timers, it will be a walk down memory lane; for youngsters who've never used nor even seen DOS before, it should be quite an eye-opening experience to experience first hand both how primitive DOS was and yet how capable it could be.
A working physical DOS system is the most authentic way to (re-)experience classic PC games. Does an amazing job of supporting DOS games on modern platforms, but for perfect accuracy, including the full memory management experience (which can be a game unto itself), a real DOS system can't be beat. There is a dearth of detailed information about MS-DOS on the internet.
This makes sense as MS-DOS predates the web as we know it today, but I don't want knowledge of this system to be lost to time. I did a significant amount of research for this project, and I want to document and share what I've discovered and re-learned for future reference. Perhaps most importantly, why not?
This project was inspired by a previous project to, my first computer that, not coincidentally, ran MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Rebuilding and enhancing it from a hardware perspective was a fun experience, and now I'm doing the same from a software perspective. Honestly, if you have no appreciation for old hardware or software, then this is definitely not for you. If, however, you share my passion for technology, not only for the new hotness 1 of today but also the old and busted (and tried and true) of yesterday that got us to where we are today, then I think you'll find this interesting. If you have some old hardware lying around then I hope you'll follow along, but even if not I think you may still find some of this interesting enough to read. As an alternative, if you want an easy-to-install version of DOS that includes some nice modern conveniences, check out. It's a great project that I highly recommend.
For this project, though, I want a (mostly) authentic, original MS-DOS installation. Note: I provide download links for all discussed software in the relevant section where it's discussed. Links point to the original download location for each file wherever possible, but for the files that no longer have an official source (or a reliable one, in the case of the files hosted on Microsoft's amazingly unreliable FTP server), I've linked to a local copy you can download instead. Prerequisites.
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Old hardware - if it has ISA slots you're probably good to go; anything newer may require some extra work, but it should still be possible to get at least a basic working system installed. Alternatively, you should be able to get this up and running in a virtual machine with or, but as with the note about FreeDOS above I'm primarily interested in an authentic experience for this project, which is what's documented here. A 3.5' floppy disk drive and at least one floppy diskette (two or more recommended) - It may be possible to hack together a solution that will work from a bootable CD-ROM (see this for details if you prefer to try that route), but MS-DOS is really only intended to be installed from floppy diskettes. MS-DOS 6.x installation media. If possible, I suggest using or tracking down any original installation media you may have had (in my case, I was able to pull the original MS-DOS 6.2 diskette images off of my Packard Bell recovery CD) or picking up a set on eBay - unless you want a full boxed set, the media itself is quite cheap. If you don't have access to any legit copies and don't want to go the eBay route, you can find a copy online easily enough (I recommend the ). I don't generally condone piracy, but given this is twenty year old software that's no longer commercially available, I see no harm at all here.
Patience, basic CLI experience, and a willingness to tinker - this process will take some time, and you'll likely run into issues here and there that'll require some extra time/effort/thought to work out. Part of the experience here is the journey itself, so if you get immediately frustrated at any given setback you will not enjoy this project. Basic CLI experience is also expected; I hope to provide enough guidance to get you through this project without the need for too much prior experience, but I have to assume you have at least a basic familiarity with the command line.
Tip: I also recommend grabbing a copy of either or if you're running Windows on your main computer, or and if you're running Linux (both should be available in your package management system). You'll probably need/want to unpack some of the software and drivers listed below on your main computer before copying it over to your new DOS system, and some of these are packed in fairly obscure (for today) formats. These applications should cover all the software I tried to unpack, so having these tools available in advance will save some time and hassle. Preparation Relevant Software:. Unless you have physical installation media, you'll need to write the floppy disk images to real diskettes.
RawWrite is a simple way to do this in Windows.
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