Dual boot. An excellent idea. I think that XP might give you fits, however. I don't think it likes it when you do that, so you would have to keep XP from knowing that it wasn't the only bootable OS on the system. This could get hairy. I think if you used partition magic to shrink the current WinXP partition, loaded your DOS on a new partition in the empty space, and then used LiLo to choose between the Win and DOS partitions, it might just work. It might also corrupt your WinXP install, so make sure you have a backup. :) ********** Another thought: make a bootable DOS CD-ROM with all the necessary programs loaded on it, and then boot the machine with the CD whenever you need to do your analysis. You might need to make a space on the hard drive for working files, but I think it would probably be the least intrusive method. For that matter, if the program is small enough, you could also do the same thing with a couple of floppies and a DOS ramdisk. That's what I've seen several dos-based tools do that come from Compaq and even from Microsoft. The utilities seldom can fit on a floppy anymore, so the boot floppy creates a ramdisk and then the subsequent disks copy their bits of the program to the ramdisk and it is all run from there. It's a bit of a kluge, but it is still an option. You can decide on its viability, I suppose. ********** Another thought that may render much of this discussion moot: Brand new hardware may not even boot or may not run properly with an older version of DOS. Driver issues could be nightmarish if they rear their ugly heads, and things may crash unpredictably. Maybe it IS best just to try running it in a window under WinXP. :) Kevin Finch Network Administrator DST Systems, Inc. 816/435-6039 krfinch@dstsystems.com JD Runyan cc: Sent by: Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: why do this? (was re: DOS emulation owner-kclug@marauder.i under Windows XP) lliana.net 01/10/2002 09:44 AM On Wed, Jan , at 08:22:43PM -0800, josh Herr wrote: > I agree Hell if you want I have about 3 486 machines > you could talk me out of any one of them for about a > mcdonalds big mac and a pack of camels. Win Xp is too > bulky for just running a dos program. I would assume that this machine would be used for more than just this one application, so windows XP may serve them better than a dedicated DOS machine would. I would suggest a bootloader that would allow you to run DOS, and XP if this application isn't used all of the time. There are some good commercial bootloaders, or you could probably get lilo or grub to work for you as well. -- JD Runyan "You can't milk a point." David M. Kuehn, Ph.D.