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Thread ID: 37558	2003-09-11 01:46:00	CPU Speed 9x/Dual Booting/Fdisk Partitioning	rsbluck (4539)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
174507	2003-09-11 01:46:00	Re earlier discussion on CPU speed limits for 9x, I am grateful to Nathan Mercer for pointing me to the MSKB article 312108 . This confirms that there could well be a problem with 9x running on CPU's with speeds of 2 . 2Ghz or more, due to the timing calibration code in the NDIS driver within 9x . (1) Since dual booting with with 9x was a nice to have but DOS is a must, and assuming that DOS 6x does not contain the 9x NDIS code, I am hoping that dual booting with a DOS FAT16/XP NTFS partitioned system would overcome the CPU speed problem . Your thoughts please . (2) If the answer to (1) is positive and starting with a blank new 80 GB drive, is it possible to boot up with a DOS system disk from A, and then run Fdisk to create a 2GB FAT16 primary partition and a 78 GB Extended partition, into which XP would be subsequently installed? Can the extended partition be this big? I have heard of a 2 GB limit in some MS articles . Without 9x on the system or access to Partition Magic, the options for initially partitioning a new large drive may be limited . Appreciate your help .	rsbluck (4539)
174508	2003-09-11 02:19:00	First of all get your FAT16 Partition in by booting up with your DOS Disk and using FDISK, and don't worry about Partitioning for XP, leave that to XP. Install DOS and then boot XP from CD, you can then create the partitions from there, You can have 78GB partition but I would advise against it. Splitting it up into smaller sections is better speedwise, as having a whole drive with that much space can fragment the files all over the place making the computer run like a snail. Also to partition 78GB would probably take an 1/2 hour - 1 hour and would you want to wait for that? I'd set aside a small partition for a swapfile, that way less fragmentation of files. Also make that partition FAT32 or even better FAT16, as they use larger block chunks which has been proven to be faster than running a swapfile in NTFS. It wouldn't matter which filesystem you installed XP in as you can only use FAT32 or NTFS, which none can be read by DOS without special drivers. I'd go with NTFS for security and stability. I'm not sure if DOS comes with Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS), these drivers were used to create a Standard API for Network Interface Cards (NIC) and I believe were first used in Windows for Workgroup (WFW), but later on were developed for DOS, but it usually requires installing the drivers off your NIC's driver diskette. So I'm assuming you are safe from this timing calibration code.	Kame (312)
174509	2003-09-11 03:38:00	If you need just DOS without Windows then it may be better to manually install DOS7 from a Win98SE boot disk and CD, rather than DOS6.22. There are swings and roundabouts as DOS 7 doesnt have all the facilities of the earlier DOS.	Terry Porritt (14)
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