I need to know which files I need to boot dos from a hard drive. I booted from a floppy proceeded to fdsik/mbr then fdisk then formated and made a partition active. I then copied auto.exec.bat, command.com and config.sys to C:\.......I get a error select proper boot disk ....what am I missing to boot my drive to dos so it comes up c:\>

Thanks Deweyit isn't auto.exec.bat, it is autoexec.bat. That may be your problem, also, check for other codes that may be typed wrong.That was just a typo I have the file name right
GaryI guess you could just copy all the files on the boot disk to c: but if you want dos then you will need to install dos.Have you tried entering SYS C: at the A: prompt to transfer the system files from the boot floppy to your hdd to make it bootable??? You could also have used the S PARAMETER of the Format command to do the same (Format c:/s)

Which bootdisk are you using???The syntax may need to be sys a: c: in some instances. EASIER still would have been to format it as a system drive in the BEGINNING - format c: /s
Config.sys and autoexec.bat aren't NEEDED to "bare boot".That is what I am doing I have done it before and cannont figure out what I am doing wrong. I use this to teach a group of kids about basic dos commands. I have removable hard drives that we have formated with the /s switch we then made a dir called dos and put the commands we are working on in the dos directory. The Autoexec.bat points to the dos directory. I just can't get the hard drive to just boot to a command prompt without the floppy..
These drives had linux on them before we started so we did a fdisk /mbr then a format with the /s switch. Did I miss something?

Thanks for the sounding board.
DeweyIf you have other filesystems than FAT on you HD you should delete the partitions with fdisk after fdisk /mbr


-fdisk /mbr

fdisk (delete the existing partitions)
(create a new partition)
then format c: /s

hope this helps
uliWe did delete all partitions using fdisk and made a new partition that we formatted..Thanks for the help I copied the system files from the floppy to the hard drive as suggested above A:>sys a: c: and it now boots as needed. The other item that was missing was that I had neglected to set our new partitions as active. Thanks again to those who responded.
Dewey