Tried that - many times, and many ways. Installed DOS-6 on C: drive,
followed by install of ME on D: drive (i.e. an Extended Partition), and also
had an extra copy of DOS-6 on another E: drive extended partition. This was
all on the same physical hard drive, of course. Boot Magic doesn't work with
ME, because it declares C: as a "DOS or Win98" boot - it can't distinguish
between them - and ignores the E: drive altogether. When I select the
former, Boot Magic doesn't know about the DOS/ME being different in this
respect from old Win98, and merrily launches DOS - which immediately goes to
Win-ME because Dual Boot with DOS isn't normally allowed.
Boot Magic really isn't that sophisticated - it just launches whatever was
installed on C: drive - and that is the problem. You still need to solve the
Microsoft Dual Boot issue on your own.

Luckily with your prompting, I googled through over 300 websites on the
DOS-WIN-ME dual boot problem, and found one very simple, and quite commonly
known, PATCH utility that effectively converts WIN-ME into what "would have
been" Win-98 service pack #3. It works great. The patch brings back the F4
key to boot to "previous operating system" (DOS), and goes back to the
swapping of .W40 and .DOS files depending on which one you were in - just
like WIN-98SE. Initally you do lose the SAFE MODE option, but that can be
gotten by choosing Shift F5 for Step by step, and decline to install Windows
Drvers - which opens Win Safe Mode. Or, much simpler, you can add a line to
the Autoexec.bat "WIN d:/m" which also launches Safe Mode.

In my very brief testing, I found I could F4 to start up in DOS-6.22,
type in the command "WIN" - which launched Win 3.11 that I happened to have
also installed on C:drive during my testing. Or I could choose to "Start with
Command Prompt" - which got me into DOS-8 (Win-ME version). Or finally, I
could simply launch into Win-ME. There you have it - a choice of 4 O/S's with
this patch. But at least it mainly givs me a chance to very occasionally use
DOS-6 for a specific application program, and yet not waste the laptop, but
use Win-ME, most of the time, for reall daily work. Just what I needed.

Several of those sites confirmed that DOS was indeed "removed" in Win-ME
because that was intended as the first real "Office Product", and it would be
far too dangerous, after 20 years of open use, to let the common folk have
access to the powerful commands in DOS. In fact, Microsoft told a "little
white lie" - as they often do - they did NOT really remove DOS, but merely
"hid it away" - which the patch uncovers, and makes WIN-ME dual boot with DOS
- without the need for Boot Magic.

Here are the links for the PATCH - they contain nearly identical information.
There is also a lot of vehement discussion on the web, about these patches,
by O/S and GUI purists. No matter - it works, and addresses a need for some
of us.
But DEFINITELY - this is the last kick at the DOS can, since all O/S's after
Win-ME do not provide any DOS access, short of putting a copyof DOS on a
seperate physical drive, and using Boot Magic.

(1)
"Real DOS-Mode Patch for Windows Millennium
By Reines [MFD]"
http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/

(2)
"Has Real-mode DOS been removed
from Microsoft's Windows ® Millennium Edition?"
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm


Thanks


"Mike M" wrote:

If you have Partition Magic then you should also have Boot Magic in which
case use Boot Magic as your boot manager and install Win Me to one
partition and your preferred flavour of DOS to another and use BM to
select which to boot. Alternatively install Win Me in one partition and
Win 98 or 98SE in another and boot 98/98SE if you want real mode.
--
Mike Maltby



ASTROJAZ wrote:

Thanks for confirming my suspicions about ME. However, if you grant
that Microsoft did NOT screw up, and simply, finally, removed Real
Mode from Win ME, then how do you explain that they put it right
back in, with Win-XP? This newer O/S that followed ME, does have a
start up option to go to Command Prompt, which ME no longer did.
Perhaps it isn't DOS-6, but DOS-8, and maybe it is even no longer
Real Mode - don't know. But I wouldn't even mind booting into ME's
own version of DOS-7 at start up. Unfortunately, there is no way to
turn off ME and occasionally get into a full DOS mode.

I assume one of the three "variations" you mention, is using
Partition Magic's Boot Manager - which as I said, does not solve the
problem, since it simply starts up ME and leaves it upto that O/S to
multiboot, which it can't. Further, it may be that other so-called
boot managers you mention, do the same thing as PM - don't know. I
did the Google thing several times, and it wasn't "my firiend" as you
suggest, since I spent hours on searching for the "hack" you mention,
with no more luck than the Knowledge Base here. Perhaps you can point
me to a specific site, or at least what search string you used to
find the hacks you mentioned, to get ME to boot DOS.