Yes, the rufus way works, and so far it's the only way I know to make a FreeDOS USB boot.But it partitions and formats the drive without alignment, which will produce excessive write/erase activity of the flash memory and prematurely wear out the drive.That's not a problem if you're just flashing a BIOS or something, but it is if you will be often updating files.
BTW, if you use the trishtech link, there is a problem installing FreeDOS into VirtualBox, at the "install freedos to hdd" screen. If you just go ahead, you will get rolling "illegal instruction" messages.Workaround: Press Tab, then add " raw" (no quotes) to the boot line, then press Enter.
Install Freedos To Usb Flash Drive
Thankfully, there are tools around that can help you accomplish this with the minimum of effort, and not lead you through a huge multiple step process full of manual commands. Here are 5 such tools that will put either FreeDOS or MS-DOS onto a bootable USB flash drive allowing you to update the BIOS firmware from DOS but without a floppy drive.
I recently bought a Lenovo notebook computer that runs on FreeDOS. Then later on I installed Ubuntu Linux on it without any problems. Because of some DVD drive problem, I had to return the product as it was still under warranty. But before I could do that, I had to reinstall FreeDOS back which I found pretty easy thing to do. Here is how you can install FreeDOS on any PC that is able to run Windows or Linux:
Using gparted, I created two 4096MB fat32 partitions on a 32GB USB flash drive, and then used unetbootin to install FD13LIVE.ISO on partition 1 using "ISO mode", and FD13FULL.IMG to partition 2 using "Floppy IMG" mode and rebooted.
To use the biosdisk utility to create a BIOS flash image, first download the latest raw BIOS image for your system from your manufacturer's website. Make sure, however, that you always get the BIOS executable and NOT the Windows executable. You then have one of two options: create a ISO or install the image for your bootloader.
You should format a pendrive with FAT16 and flag it as "boot" (you may do this through a GUI with gparted or partitionmanager). Then, after mounting the flash drive, select under distribution FreeDOS and your mounted stick. The app will automatically download the image for you and copy it to the drive. Finally, you may copy everything you want to flash there (BIOS, firmwares, etc).
If your manufacturer only provides an exe file and you were not successful following the prior advice, you can update your bios creating a Windows PE flash drive and from there flash the bios update as normally.
I was looking into this so bad. My Bios update images are big enough to not fit into the default floppy or usb installer of freedos specially that I want to boot it over pxe. This definitely helped me.Thank you.
I tried using gparted to partition the drive, formated it as Fat32 and set the Boot flag. once done I cannot see how to install the OS and add the executable. I have an image file of Freedos, if I try making the flash drive with it then it's not bootable. Any help is greatly appreciated.
This image can then be copied to a floppy drive, flash drive, etc. e.g. cat freedos-spinrite.img > /dev/sdX (where sdX is the device node for your USB stick). I almost never bother doing this because I can never find an empty, usable flash drive when I need one....it's also more work and takes longer than using grub or tftp menus. And it's slower to boot a USB stick than a disk image stored on the local hard disk or on my tftp server.
I need to upgrade the BIOS of a Field PG M3, I downloaded the zip upgrade of the BIOS, I extracted it and executed the program MakeUSB.exe,; the program does not locate the USB pen drive and says I need a a Flash module with an installation of FreeDos.
Install unetbootin using apt-get install unetbootin Run unetbootin and: Select the distribution FreeDOS. Select your USB flash drive Click OK. This will download FreeDOS to create a DOS bootable flash drive.
Note: The USB flash drive format must be FAT32 so that you are able to boot the system from USB flash drive. Here you can learn more about How to convert the USB flash drive format to FAT32.
Before booting the system from a USB flash drive or CD-ROM, please let your computer enters the BIOS configuration first, here you can learn more about How to enter BIOS configuration. After entering the BIOS configuration, there are two kinds of BIOS screen which are UEFI mode and Legacy mode, please refer to the following steps in order.
Boot the system from USB flash drive/CD-ROM in BIOS - UEFI mode. In UEFI mode, you are able to select and choose the item via Arrow Keys and Enter of keyboard, Touchpad or Mouse.
Setup DOS-bootable USB drive: download the DOS-flashable BIOS firmware from the OEM e.g. support.dell.comDetermine USB drive device (e.g. /dev/mmcblk0) by issuing this command before and after USB drive insertion:
Update BIOS: extract/copy ALL the BIOS self-extracted files to the root of the FreeDOS flash drive from Linux.Insert the USB flash drive into the PC to be flashedUpon powerup, choose to boot from the USB drive.This might require pressing F12 key.In the BIOS boot device menu, look under Legacy boot. If Legacy boot is not enabled, it may need to be enabled to see the FreeDOS USB drive.Do NOT install FreeDOS, just boot to DOS when prompted by FreeDOS.In FreeDOS prompt, type the name of the .exe or .bat file for the firmware update as per OEM instructions.The flashing process may take several minutes.
1) Deleting the ACS-6XXXX from device manager (also checked the delete driver box when confirming the delete). Do not hit the scan for new devices or ACS-6XXXX will be re-installed.2) Than I installed the USB 3.0 NEC Controller Driver for WIN 7 64. =P7P55D-E%20Deluxe&f_name=USB3_V10170_WinXPVistaWin7.zip&f_type=22&os=30As soon as i installed this driver windows discovered my SATA 3.0 hard drives and the USB Controller. ACS-6XXXX no longer shows up.
My new laptop Lenovo G50-80 with free DOS and I wanted to install Windows 7 Pro 64bit by using USB pendrive. I can boot this pendrive in BIOS but when I go to Windows 7 installation > select language, time & currency & keyboard input method > Install now > then it show :
This week I was at point where I had everything to get started : a motherboard and CPU, graphics card, IDE hard drive, power supply, and a Compact Flash to IDE adapter with a 2Gb CF card. I did not, however, have a floppy disk drive nor a CD-ROM drive. And it turns out installing MS-DOS without a FDD can be a tricky thing!
I used this guide to set up DOS 6.22 on a Toshiba Laptop that doe snot have a Floppy Drive. I used the original 2GB IDE Drive for now. I had issues with the partition from the previous OS. I ended using DISKPART in windows 10 to clean the drive and then created the VMDK. That solved my FDISK problem and I formated the drive. DOS setup went great. After the drive was moved back to the real PC Windows 3.11 also installed without a hitch. 2ff7e9595c
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