I'd just set bootgui=0 in msdos.sys to stop Windows 95 from booting automatically, and set up a proper DOS environment using DOS 7.x that you got with Windows 95 (especially if it is a version with FAT32 support).
That is a totally valid idea, but I just formatted the flash memory and copied the files back from my Windows 3.11 / DOS 6.22 installation quick. The whole storage conundrum is a different issue altogether that could be a whole new post. I played around with it for quite some time, but I didn't find an adequate solution, so for now I will just accept that I have 504 MB and that's it.
I know this is a 4 month old post, but for future reference, 504MB is more than enough for a 95 install. You can reduce a 95B install footprint down to about 50MB by editing setuppp.inf to remove some of the bundled junkware (IE3, messaging, installers for AOL, comcast etc).
see here: [http://toastytech.com/evil/lab.html#rem95](http://toastytech.com/evil/lab.html#rem95)
from memory, setuppp.inf is contained in precopy\_02.cab. It's worth doing - 50MB is still 10% of your drive capacity but it gives you a full win95 desktop environment which can be handy for various reasons.
No worries about the age of the post, I always appreciate good advice! I already unselect a lot of stuff when I install 95, but with your advice, I could probably make it a lot smaller, so thank you!
The reason I swapped back to 3.11 on this machine wasn't necessarily the disk space though, more so that it was very slow. I have the board maxed out at 8 MB RAM as far as I know, and the 486DX-33 isn't that fast either. Maybe I will check again if / when I upgrade it to a 486DX2-66 as that seems to be the fastest 486 chip the board can handle.
Ah, yes, I never spotted that before. A 486 is perfectly fine for 95 but with only 8MB of RAM you're down there flirting with the minimal requirements. From experience with 16MB or more you can do quite a lot with 95, even on a 486. It's a shame your board is limited to 8MB. Personally I wouldn't expect much of a performance increase with Win95 even if you upgraded to a 66, it really wants more memory especially if you're to use more than one program at a time.
I figured it's the memory, not overly worried about it, I'm fine with 3.11 for now. (Although I'm not completely sure the board maxes out at 8 MB but I don't really have the money to try it with more right now.) And you're right, I remember our childhood 486 running 95 just fine. Oh well, I still have my P1s that have more memory and run it fine :)
But experimenting with slimming 95 down is definitely on my list now!
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