Is it possible to create a "DOS" disk with Windows XP?

You could always try but I doubt it as XP had an emulated DOS not a true DOS

No, it’s not. You may be better off getting FreeDOS, burning it to a CD, booting from it, and then formatting your floppy.

Although there’s a way of making a DOS bootable USB key that may be adapted to a floppy.

I don’t have a floppy drive to test this, but…

“In Windows XP however, the floppy format option in My Computer an offer to “Create MS-DOS Startup Disk” is present.”
http://www.petri.co.il/create_dos_boot_floppy_disk_in_windows_xp.htm

One potential problem – XP install CDs did not recognize SATA drives. I don’t know how that might affect your situation.

@jaytkay XP install discs with SP2 or SP3 come pre-loaded with SATA array drivers. The older pre-service pack discs however required a floppy disk with the specific SATA drivers on them and you could load them in as an optional install step during XP setup.

@ApolloX64 Thanks, I did not know the later disks included SATA. Still curious if the DOS disk will have SATA drivers.

You can add the SATA drivers to a DOS disk just by copying them to it, but whether or not they would actually work inside the DOS environment is questionable. Never tried it yet, maybe I’ll experiment this weekend.

Thanks everybody. Indeed, when I boot my new Win7 PC with a DOS 6.22 floppy, DOS doesn’t recognize its SATA drive or any of my external USB drives. So I had hoped that I could make a DOS disk from my old XP machine that would recognize the SATA drive.

In case you haven’t been following my other related questions. I just bought a new PC with Windows 7 (64 bit). But I have a favorite old DOS program (an editor that I use to write stories with; I don’t much care for MS Word or any of its freebie work-alikes; and Wordpad and Notepad are the other extreme too bare-bones) won’t run under the Win7 command line. So I want to boot DOS on my new machine when I want to write—but of course, it needs to access the MyDocuments folder on my C: drive (SATA).

Also, for some reason, my DOS program won’t run under DOSBox either.

Easy one! link

That will run just about any DOS program you could imagine in a nice controlled environment.

Edit: Also forgot about this guy. Useful info on this site. There is another DOS launcher I am thinking of but it hasn’t come to mind yet, let me sort through my files and I’ll see if I can find it.

Edit (again sorry): Forgot about these guys, and also this free OS you can use as well. Sorry for the edits, was wracking my brain and hard drives for answers lol.

Ahhh, running DOS is the goal.

Another option is Virtualbox – Set up a DOS VM with networking (and shared folders).

Thank you! That was one I was trying to remember lol

@jaytkay – woot! You gave me the answer. I was trying to use the FORMAT command at the command prompt to format a DOS disk, and it didn’t have the /S option any more. It never occurred to me to use MyComputer to format a DOS disk. I was able to create a DOS floppy from XP that way. Then, guess what? Win7 can also create a DOS floppy that way, too, which I did.

Now, the funny thing is that when I create a DOS floppy from Win7, and then boot DOS from it, it can run my DOS program. But it can’t run my DOS program from the Win7 command line. How bizarre!

Anyway, problem solved :-D