Hi! >> Is there a way to make FreeDos ignore that there is a floppy >> present upon boot, i.e. force a boot from the harddrive?
Normally you would use your BIOS / CMOS setup to select which has priority - harddisk or floppy or USB or CD/DVD or maybe network or other, depending on BIOS support... Sometimes you can also get a boot drive selection menu pop up during boot by pressing a hotkey at that moment. In dosemu, you can run "xdosemu -C" or "xdosemu -A" when you configured both to be bootable, for example like: $_vbootfloppy = "diskimage.bin +hd" $_floppy_a ="threeinch" $_hdimage = "freedos fatimage.bin" The mentioned file names are files or directories (!) in ~/dosemu/ and the config is in ~/.dosemurc but it is common that dosemu supports some other locations for those files as well. The "+hd" means that you can boot from either floppy or harddisk. I assume other virtual computers also let you configure from which drive you want to boot. You can also install a boot manager ( grub4dos, syslinux, grub, *metakern* ) on the floppy. The boot manager can either make sure to ALWAYS ASK you from which disk you want to boot or it can be configured to ALWAYS boot from HARDDISK (maybe giving you a chance to press a key to stay on floppy). If you do a normal "SYS A:", you configure the boot- loader on the floppy to ALWAYS boot from FLOPPY. Note that all three "always ..." only apply when the BIOS tries to boot from the floppy at all - but I recommend to configure the BIOS to default to ignoring bootable floppies, also reduces virus risks a bit :-p You can always temporarily enable floppy booting again in your BIOS config / setup if you really want to boot one... Of course "always skip the floppy and boot from for example the harddisk" could also be implemented with not-bootable floppies, forcing the BIOS to skip (maybe with a warning message) to the harddisk or some other candidate drive. I hope this helps you to understand both problem and solution :-) Also, DOS boot loaders do know from which medium you boot DOS, but of course only the boot loader on exactly that medium itself is run. So you can simply put the settings for whatever you want to happen when the BIOS attempts to boot from floppy on THAT floppy! Eric :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
