Message-Id:	<s47d70e8.050@calderauk.com>
Date:	Thu, 27 Nov 1997 13:08:38 +0000
From:	Matthias Paul <MPaul AT calderauk DOT com>
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com, opendos-support AT delorie DOT com,
	paul-ma AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de
Subject:	Re: adding opendos to a win 95 computer
Mime-Version:	1.0

Hi,
>Andrew Jardine asked:
>I'm running Win 95 upgrade on top of ms-dos 6.22.  I'd like to run opendos,
>but I'm worried that simply launching the install against my Win 95/dos
>partition might mess it up somehow.  Can I safely load it without worrying
>about Win 95 having a fit?  
It should work with COD 7.02 B1+, which s INSTALL is Win95 aware and will
automatically install LOADER to select between OpenDOS and your
previous OS (Win95+MS-DOS 6.22). However, OpenDOS is still beta at
the moment.

>Can I get back to ms-dos if I need to?  
Of course, OpenDOS has an UNINSTAL utility, but you can also select between
your OSes using the LOADER menu.

>What I'd really like to do is load Opendos in a logical drive and access it with
>my boot manager so the dos files under Windows 95 are accessable, but I
>don't suppose there is any way to do that is there?
Since OpenDOS, MS-DOS and Windows95 all use FAT, you will be able
to access files across these systems. However, there are some special
precautions because of Win95  somehow FAT-incompatible way to 
handle it s VFAT long-filenames, which clash to our password protection
scheme, the DELWATCH and some of the UNDELETE mechanisms, and 
also to OS/2 extended attributes, all introduced years before Win95.

What does this mean for you? From DOS you can only see the SFNs, and
sometimes you might have problems to access files, which OpenDOS 
interprets as password protected though they are not. From MS-DOS/
Windows95 you will see password protected files as hidden files, but not  protected. Using OpenDOS disk maintenance utils like DISKOPT will
destroy Win95 LFN s, though the files itself will remain accessable under
their SFNs, but Windows would have alot of trouble. Of course, the same 
applies to most other (older) disk tools (from 3rd parties), not especially 
written to be Win95 compatible. Instead of MS-DOS 6.22, OpenDOS *can* 
use LFNs if you load the seperate LONGNAME driver, which also is still in 
its beta phase...

Given modified boot sectors (which might require some manual work),
OpenDOS 7.02 B2+ also supports booting from other *physical* drives 
than A:/C:, but not from other *logical* drives (it will always use the active
primary partition of the corresponding physical drive). So, if you only have
one harddisk with multiple partitions, than OpenDOS can only boot from
C:. If you have two harddisk, it can also boot from D: (given that the 
second hard disk also has an active primary partition), but you are not
able to boot from drives beyond D:, Having a 3rd or 4th hard disk will
also allow to boot from E: and/or F: 
If you have multiple primary partitions (the OS/2 FDISK can create them),
only one of the potential C: drives is active at the same time. This would
allow to have OpenDOS and Windows95/MS-DOS in strictly seperated
boot file spaces. Information interchange would than only be possible only
on the other logical partitions or via floppies.

If you are worried too much, please just wait for the release version, 
and don t use a beta. And, it is always a good idea to make a full
backup and (once more) to check the boot disks before installing a 
new OS...

Matthias


------------------------------------------------------------
Matthias Paul
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web: http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html

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