Installing ReactOS

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Installing ReactOS on a real machine

From a Setup CD-ROM

• Insert the ReactOS setup CD-ROM into a CD-ROM drive and reboot your computer. On the next boot, the ReactOS setup utility will start.
• Follow the instructions on the screen to install ReactOS on your computer.
• After the installation has finished, remove the setup CD-ROM from the CD-ROM drive and press "Return" to reboot your computer. Now, you can start ReactOS by selecting it from the boot menu.

Technical Notes

Modifications performed to the Hard Disk to boot ReactOS

FreeLoader

FreeLoader, the ReactOS boot loader, is composed by two files: an executable (FREELDR.SYS) and a configuration file in Windows INI format (FREELDR.INI). The two files are copied to the root directory of the active partition

The FreeLoader boot code, that is the small program that loads FREELDR.SYS, can be installed in many ways, depending on the pre-existing operating system. The setup logic tries the following steps in order:

• If the Windows NT/2000/XP boot manager is found on the active partition, the existing boot manager is configured to boot ReactOS. The FreeLoader boot code is written to a file named BOOTSECT.ROS in the root of the active partition, and an entry named "ReactOS" is added to BOOT.INI pointing to BOOTSECT.ROS.
  • The Windows NT/2000/XP boot manager is detected by the presence of the files NTLDR and BOOT.INI in the root directory of the active partition
  • To uninstall FreeLoader, delete the file BOOTSECT.ROS and remove the "ReactOS" entry from the hidden BOOT.INI file.
• If MS-DOS or Windows 95/98/ME is found on the active partition, the original boot sector is saved to a file named BOOTSECT.DOS in the root directory of the active partition. The FreeLoader boot code is then written to the boot sector of the active partition. FreeLoader thus becomes your primary boot manager, and from its boot menu you will be able to boot both ReactOS and your pre-existing operating system
  • MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/ME are detected by the presence of the files MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS in the root directory of the active partition
  • To uninstall FreeLoader, boot from a MS-DOS or Windows Restore floppy disk, and run the command "SYS C:". After this, the BOOTSECT.DOS file can be safely deleted
• If none of the known operating systems is found on the active partition, the original boot sector is saved to the file BOOTSECT.OLD in the root directory of the active partition. The FreeLoader boot code is then written to the boot sector of the active partition. FreeLoader thus becomes the primary boot manager. Note that you will have to edit the FREELDR.INI configuration file by yourself to boot the pre-existing operating system, because FreeLoader has no knowledge of how to do it.
  • To uninstall FreeLoader, restore the boot sector of the active partition from the BOOTSECT.OLD file. The details on how to do so are dependent on the operating system you are running

Note: If the active partition uses a FAT32 filesystem, the boot code does not fit into a single sector. Microsoft uses sectors number 0 and 12, while FreeLoader uses sectors number 0 and 14, so there should not be any conflicts with existing boot loaders.

Note: The support for other operating systems will be improved in the future

Installing ReactOS on the Bochs emulator

Emulators

An emulator is a software program that provides a virtual hardware platform. Software instructions that would be run on hardware are now interpreted by the emulator software. This allows you to "run" a different kind of computer hardware and its software in a window on your computer. Although the performance of the software run on a virtual computer will be much slower than on real hardware, it provides several advantages:

You can try out a completely different operating system without tinkering with your real system. You can run potentially unstable software without the fear of damaging your real system. For operating system developers, it provides a way to debug the system without constant reboots.

Bochs

Bochs (pronounced "box") is an emulator written for the PC. It can run on both DOS/Windows and Linux operating systems. It emulates an x86 hardware system and has emulation for the 386, 486 and Pentium CPUs. It also provides IO port and BIOS emulation. Bochs can run Linux, DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT 4, ReactOS and many other operating systems. The software was initially written by Kevin Lawton and is now maintained by the Bochs SourceForge project. Although this project provides the latest Bochs binaries, we recommend that you test ReactOS with the Bochs binaries provided by our reactos.com download page.

Downloading and Using Bochs with ReactOS

Downloading Bochs

The reactos.com site provides several Bochs distributions: ReactOS disk images only.

These downloads are available from the same page as the ReactOS binaries on reactos.com (under Software, ReactOS).

If you want to use an emulator other than Bochs, then the disk images only download would be more useful. Disk images only are also useful if you want to try out a newer version of ReactOS and already have Bochs. The Bochs only download is useful for when an updated version of the Bochs emulator is available on the reactos.com site.

Using MTools

MTools are used to copy files to and from the disk images. Run mtinst.bat to have MTools configure properly. This batch file copies the mtools.exe file to the various MTools commands (eg. mcopy, mmd). These files are used by binst.bat (used to update the ReactOS files on the virtual disk).

To upgrade the ReactOS files on the virtual disk, copy the ReactOS binary distribution directory (named reactos) into the directory where Bochs is installed. Then run binst.bat to copy the new files into the virtual disk (be sure to have run mtinst.bat at some time in the past before doing this).

Running ReactOS under Bochs

Run the freeldr.bat file in the Bochs directory. To switch to booting with FreeDOS, run the freedos.bat file.

Installing ReactOS on the VMware emulator

VMware

Virtual Computing

A Virtual Machine is a software program much like an emulator that provides a virtual hardware platform. Software instructions that would be run on hardware are caught buy the virtual environment and depending on the instruction are either run on the native CPU or emulated in software. Virtual Computing allows for much fast operation then standard emulation as a result of the ability to run the majority of the instructions on the Native CPU. This process allows you to run a virtual computer in software on your computer. The performance of the software on a virtual computer will be only slightly slower than on real hardware. Overhead can still be a problem for disk IO and CPU instructions that must be emulated but in general it is much faster then a total emulation system.

Advantages:

• You can try out a completely different operating system without tinkering with your real system.
• You can run potentially unstable software without the fear of damaging your real system.
• For operating systems developers, it provides a way to debug the system without constant reboots.
• The performace is much faster then a true emulator such as bochs.

VMware itself

VMware is a popular commercial virtual machine for the x86 CPU family. It can run on Windows NT, 2K, XP and Linux/FreeBSD. It also provides IO port, BIOS emulation, networking and sound support. VMware can run a number of different "guest" operating systems including *DOS, Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP, ReactOS, Free Unices (*BSD, Linux) as well as many others. VMware is free for 30 days, after that you must purchase a license from their website.

VMware company site

Limitations

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