Bootable IMG file is broken ??

[methanoid]

Twice I have downloaded and written to USB with Balena Etcher and both times when booting the resulting USB (BTW, contents of which are NOT visible on Windows PC) I get same error and failure to load:

"Bad or Missing command interpreter \FREEDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM \FREEDOS\BIN /E:2048 /P=FDAUTO.BAT"

Then asks me to enter path to correct file but KB is not responsive (works in other FreeDOS USB sticks).

Tested previous release image and identical so puzzled. Suggests to me the image wasn't correctly built???

I managed to view contents of USB by extending partition above 512Mb and then Windows would allow me to view it. I can bypass the loading of the FreeDOS stuff with F5 but then I get a new error if I run the HDPMI32i.exe and SBEMU.exe telling me its missing "CSDPMI*B.zip"

[volkertb]

Assuming you're preparing the USB drive from a Windows environment:

Just to rule it out, could you try flashing the image file with another version of Balena Etcher, or using an alternative tool such as Rufus? I know that there are some recent versions of Etcher that were a bit buggy.

Note that when you try flashing it with a different tool, you may first have to manually unpack the .img file from the .xz file using 7-Zip.