# How can I boot Vista in DOS MODE?



## truthseeker

Hello,

Is there a way I can boot Vista into DOS MODE without having Windows run at all?

Thanks


----------



## sobeit

you can download a dos boot disk from bootdisk.com.


----------



## truthseeker

sobeit666 said:


> you can download a dos boot disk from bootdisk.com.


I dont have a floppy drive. I only have DVD drive and HDD.

Isnt there a way to boot vista into DOS by pressing some F key combo?


----------



## sobeit

truthseeker said:


> I dont have a floppy drive. I only have DVD drive and HDD.
> 
> Isnt there a way to boot vista into DOS by pressing some F key combo?


nope, vista does not have dos. It does have a command prompt but its not dos. Just type command in the run box.


----------



## truthseeker

sobeit666 said:


> nope, vista does not have dos. It does have a command prompt but its not dos. Just type command in the run box.


That is a waste of time, as the swapfile cannot be securely erased this way as command is run from withing windows. I need to boot into DOS before windows loads.

Im using Eraser, and I need to boot Vista into DOS somehow so I can run their DOS based program callled eraserd.exe that securely wipes my swapfile.

Any suggestions how I can boot into DOS to do this?\\

P.S Using BCwipe etc which claims to wipe swapfile in windows is not a secure way to wipe it, so I need to boot to DOS somehow. NOTICE the word "boot", not running Dos from windows typing "command".


----------



## sobeit

you can try a win98 bootdisk. It was the last to have a version of dos. or you can use the ultimate boot cd.


----------



## truthseeker

sobeit666 said:


> you can try a win98 bootdisk. It was the last to have a version of dos. or you can use the ultimate boot cd.


Doesnt look like ultimate boot cd allows a person to boot into DOS.

Any other ideas?


----------



## slightlines

Doesn't Eraser have an option to securely delete the contents of the swapfile upon restart?
I believe it works like chkdsk, in that it accomplishes the task while the machine is booting into Windows.
I haven't tried it on Vista yet, but it works on W2K.
...at least, Eraser 5.6 did.


----------



## jcgriff2

If I may ask... whay do you want to "wipe' the swap file?

Why not just turn Virtual Memory to... OFF?

This would get rid of the page file... assuming your system has enough RAM to support the programs that fire at boot-up. What about "trimming" such programs via HJT ... or even SysInternals Autoruns?

Just a thought here... may be I am missing something obvious.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2


----------



## MusicMan374

Google DOS Boot Disk ISO file. ISO is a CD image file, so it will make a cd a dos start-up disk.


----------



## jcgriff2

truthseeker said:


> Hello,
> 
> Is there a way I can boot Vista into DOS MODE without having Windows run at all?
> 
> Thanks


Hi again Truthseeker,

May be I just missed all here... but looking back at your opening statement a question now comes to mind...

Do you want to simply boot into DOS and nothing else? What do you mean by "boot Vista.."? Are you speaking of the x86 or x64 hardware?

I guess that I am just not clear on the original issue at this time. Apologies.

Thanks...

jcgriff2 (JC)


----------



## sobeit

sobeit said:


> you can try a win98 bootdisk. It was the last to have a version of dos. or you can use the ultimate boot cd.


oops, somehow I missed this reply, ultimate boot disk does boot to dos.


----------



## truthseeker

I wanted to boot into DOS to do a proper file wipe of the Vista swap file called "pagefile.sys".

Eraser comes with a proper pagefile.sys program, but it needs to be run from pure DOS.


----------



## jcgriff2

Hi. . .

By a "file wipe" do you mean to delete it?

JC


----------

