It's because of the undocumented and weird calls MS put into windows in part to thwart DR-DOS back in the day. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

It's because of the undocumented and weird calls MS put into windows in part to thwart DR-DOS back in the day. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code ) That said, work's happened to make FreeDOS boot windows 3 at least under special circumstances (I'm not sure if this kernel made it into the current FreeDOS or not): https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-running-windows-3-1/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-runnin...