Setting Up Multiple OS on a Toshiba Tecra 730XCDT

Initially, I installed Windows 98 on this laptop, but I've found that many DOS programs don't work well, or not work at all. I've decided to install multiple OS systems. Three in total: DOS 6.22 , Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.

In order to accomplish this, I'm using System Commander 3.0 ( this is a vintage program from 1996). It's a boot system controller and I covered it's use in my past blog  http://digitalarcane.blogspot.com/2015/01/gateway-2000-p5-100-installing-multiple.html
However, I found that I had crossed some difficult points and need to rehash this operation once again. It's a very cantankerous setup, but once it's installed in place, it's very nice. Here are the following steps. It would be best to read them through before you start.

STEP ONE

Wipe the entire drive clean with Killdisk or another hard drive wiper. Whatever you decide to use, it must be able to get to the entire hard drive--- along with the hidden boot partitions that some OS's like to create. In fact, it must also be able to wipe out the hidden boot partition that System Commander will create. Download a free version of Killdisk here http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

STEP TWO

You need a DOS boot disk with the command line utilities: FDISK and FORMAT. The best startup disk for this (that will also include a mouse and CDROM driver) can be found here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm. There's a choice of OS versions to choose from.

Once booted into DOS, run FDISK. From the floppy drive that would be A:\fdisk.

Choose 1. Create Primary DOS Partition. In my case, I have a 2 GIG hard drive. My first OS install will be Windows 3.1 with a 750MB partition. I follow the prompts and create the partition. NOW this is the important! This partition must now be made active. Going back to the main menu, we see there are now four menu selections.

Choose 3. Set active partition or Logical DOS Drive. Follow the prompts to set the 750MB partition as the Primary C: drive.

STEP 3

Install Dos 6.22. Allow the software to format the 750MB partition that was created. Once DOS is installed, the Windows 3.1 system can now be installed. It's important to know that for System Commander to work well, Windows 3.1 will generally always have to be the first install.

STEP 4

Install System Commander. After a reboot you'll see that System Commander stops the booting process, requiring a choice from it's menu. Windows 3.1 is essentially a shell of DOS 6.22. It shows up as such on the menu.

STEP 5

Choose the A MS-DOS 6.22 and you now have Windows 3.1 starting up. Now we need to set a new boot partition. This is accomplished by using the SCDISK utility that is located in the System Commander's SC folder. Double Left click on scdisk.exe.

Go to Change boot status for OS install. Here you will see the 750MB partition labled as MSDOS5.0 (a quirk of System Commander for Windows 3.1 labeling) at 0 and 1-2-3 empty. Choose the next empty place (1).

Esc to exit and then restart by CMD-ALT-DEL. Make sure the DOS boot disk is in the floppy drive.

STEP 6

Start the FDISK utility and you'll see that the 750MB  partition is now a non-DOS partition. Now a new primary partition can be created. This one is for DOS 6.22 and it will be 266MB in size.

Once the partition is created, it NOW must be made active.

STEP 7

Install DOS 6.22. 

STEP 7

Repeat the partition process for the third and final partition (for Windows 95). In this case, a 1 GB partition is created and made active.

STEP 8

This is where it gets a little crazy. The best solution in order to install Windows 95, is to install over Windows 3.1 with a Windows 95 upgrade. This keeps Windows 95 from corrupting any of the other partitions. In fact, it will rewrite some of System Commander's boot files (more on this later). NOW remember how Windows 3.1 needed to be installed first? Here, we just install DOS 6.22 and then just copy the WINDOWS folder from the 750MB partition to this one. Bypassing Windows 3.1 installation quirks. 

Go back to the SCDISK utility and make the (2) partition active and reboot into a DOS 6.22 install. Allowing for the remainder 1 GB to be formatted.

STEP 9

Once DOS is installed and the WINDOWS folder copied onto the 1 GB partition, it's now time to install Windows 95. Once complete, a fresh reboot of the system Will only boot back to Windows 95! The System Commander menu will not appear at startup! Everything that was created will seem lost. But it's another quirk of the process. 

STEP 10

Reboot with the DOS startup disk. Go to the Windows 3.1 partition and find the SC folder for System Commander. Inside is the file SCIN.EXE. Double click on this, and follow the directions for another  installation of System Commander. This time a warning will appear warning of a possible virus. This is due to the Windows 95 rewrite of the boot sector. This can be ignored.

With a fresh install of System Commander, a reboot of the system will bring back all the OS choices in the menu.

This completes the install. Additional tweaks can be made by renaming the Dos 6.22 partition (with the installed Windows OS) to Wiindows 3.1 and also arranging the System Commander boot menu options to taste (such as placing Boot from drive A: at the bottom of the list).

This laptop is the Toshiba Tecra 730XCDT. The Windows 3.1 and 95 drivers for video, sound and CDROM are still available at Toshiba's site. http://support.toshiba.com/support/modelHome?freeText=1073769796