Hi All im new here on the forms. i have instaled MS-DOS 6.22 on an old pc. But it will not boot to ms-dos. i have used the F5 key witch did not work. i get the non system disk message. when i use the ms-dos start up disk to get to an a promet it works from my floppy. when i switch dir. to C: and try to change dir. to dos it gives me an invalid switch. please direct me to the corect Q&A post that can help me. Or if some one can shine some light on this for me please. thanks in advance.Welcome to the CH forums.

Did you transfer system files from the floppy to the hdd using SYS C:

Please read this advisory post.

Yes i have done that and thank you for posting back so quickly.
I have read most of the Q&A when it come to installing may be i have just been LOOKING in the wrong place in the Q&A. Though my problem is still going on.

OK the PC in question is a Packard bell model #P160119601, the motherboard is Agna-6wmm7, it uses PC-100 ram 64 megs, hard drive is a WD Caviar 84AA, The OS is MS-DOS 6.22. It has a floppy 3.5 and a DVD ROM.

I had downloaded the MS-DOS 6.22 disk image from the net. i used a programme called winimage to write them to 1.44 floppy. 3 disk and even made a start-up disk from this very disk that works. I did the install and it went very well. it told me to remove my floppies and reboot. this is where i end up with the problems it will not boot. (Non-System disk or disk error) "i did the "sys C:" comand. i have checked that "autoexec.bat file as well. when i use the start up disk it will start up and take me to an "A:" so i changed drives with "C:" then "Dir/w" to brang up the files and Dir. when i use "CD/MS-DOS" it gives me (Invalid switch - /MS-DOS)

i have 20 files listed on the c drive. they are "ATTRIB.EXE, CHKDSK.EXE, DEBUG.EXE, EXPAND.EXE, FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, MEM.EXE, SYS.COM, EDIT.COM, QBASIC.EXE, SCANDISK.EXE, XCOPY.EXE, DRVSPACE.EXE, MSD.EXE, UNDELETE.EXE, COMMAND.COM, [MS-DOS], WINA20.386, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT.
IT IS 20 FILES USEING 923,927 BYTES

am i missing something
CD/MSDOS.....drop the -wow, someone is still using outdated OS.i can now get in too the MS-DOS Dir. had to change what i typed in the prompt i typed "CD\MS-DOS" instead of "CD/MS-DOS" but it still does not boot. this is how my autoexec.bat looks.

C:\MS-DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\MS-DOS
SET TEMP=C:\MS-DOS
MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((437) C:\MS-DOS\EGA.CPI)
MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=437
KEYB UK,,C:\MS-DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS

And yes some people still use this old stuff that's why i am re learning all the things i forgot about dos being my first PC was an 8088. that's pre386DX stuff. lol when you don't use knowledge it becomes forgoten. and i REALLY FEEL old now

so any thoughts on what i am missing other then my own memory. lolWas the HDD FDisked and set as the Primary active partition prior to installing DOS ? ?Yes i fdisk and formated FAT 16 Quote

set as the Primary active partition