On Sat, 23 Dec 2000 13:08:35 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> Hello Arachnids:
> One of the major problems I have in trying to accomplish very meaningful
> and important tasks with a machine running Windows 95 and above is that
> the machine doesn't behave very well with the version of DOS that is
> installed into Windows 95.
> I have a proposed solution, but I hesitate to resort to this without first
> getting some advice from others who may have tried the same. Don't try
> this at home without first experimenting with this technique on a machine
> belonging to someone you might want to get even with.
> Here is what I have in mind:
> Given a machine with Windows 95 installed on a hard drive having a FAT 16
> partition, and the partition's size not being too big to be recognized by
> your favorite DOS version, would it be OK to boot to a floppy being a DOS
> system disk, and then fix the hard drive's operating system simply by
> doing "A>sys C:" Theoretically, that should fix it. Now my question is:
> would employing such a measure fix the hard drive "permanently", i.e,
> would I not easily be able to restore my original Windows 95 installation
> simply by re-booting to a Windows 95 system disk floppy and then using the
> SYS command again to transfer the operating system files back to the hard
> drive? Has anyone ever tried this?
As far as I know the following effect can also be acheived with later
versions of DR-DOS, but I don't know how it'd be done. Maybe the
following will joggle some DR user's memory.
Download the Russian version of PTS-DOS from PhysTechSoft. Unzip and run
MAKEBOOT. Reboot from the resulting floppy and install PTS-DOS. The
installation automatically creates OLDBOOT.SYS and puts it in the root
directory, attribbed +ASHR.
No idea whether the Paragon version can do all this, but I've taken a
recent look at it (briefly) and I doubt whether it's trustworthy.
Add the following at the TOP of config.pts (NOTE: if config.pts does not
exist (it will after a fresh install) PTS-DOS uses config.sys)
;To keep any boot choice from being offered simply place a "$"
;in front of the name of that section, such as [$slow@Windows95]
[slow@Windows95]
sysboot c:\oldboot.sys c:
[med@Win3x Compatible]
windows on
;windows on turns off optimizations which are incompatible with Win3x
;To boot straight to Win3x incompatible DOS, comment the next line...
[fast@Pure PTS-DOS]
;...and uncomment the following one (after adding the "$" to
;above sections)
;[PTSDOS]
;Any section named PTSDOS or COMMON is always processed by default
windows off
;there'll be a shell command here which'll load either autoexec.bat or
;autoexec.pts
Only caution I have is to make sure there's a copy of Win95 command.com
somewhere other than c:\.
You'll have a choice of what to boot; I've just tested it, works fine
(though I don't have the GUI part, just a Win95 install disk).
Try it and you'll have two choices: Purchase PTS-DOS to avoid the boot
wait, or simply type "uninstall". That works fine too - I just tested
it... not on my normal drive, of course!
Bob
Starts April 1, 2001
-- Arachne V1.69, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
