Mail Archives: opendos/2004/06/16/21:32:03
Paul,
Well, if you can sort-of boot DR-DOS, you should be able to
overcome your Config.Sys and Autoexec.Bat problems via
the F8 key (or F5?).
Then perhaps NDD can fix your partition problems? Or
Partition Magic? Or Fdisk?
If you get that far, so things boot normally again, I'd suggest
you try M$-DOS Himem.Sys and Emm386.Sys from M$W98
(copy then to C: if required).
Any instability problems I've had in the past with DR-DOS
7.02+ have been caused by Emm386.Exe, so that's why
I have suggested the above. You can possibly use DR-DOS
Himem.Sys with M$-DOS Emm386.Sys, although there's
probably no point.
Interestingly, when Caldera released their DR-Webspyder
2.0a demo disk, they used a DR-DOS 7.02 kernel with a
re-compilation of the DR-DOS 6.0 version of Emm386.Exe
(or was that Emm386.Sys? - I can't remember just now)!
This old DR-DOS Emm386 doesn't have all the features
of the newer editions, nor give you as much free memory,
but I have found it to be extremely stable. Perhaps Caldera
found the same thing when putting their DR-Webspyder
disk together?
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul O. BARTLETT [SMTP:bartlett AT smart DOT net]
> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:58 AM
> To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> Subject: Re: Random Lockups with DR-DOS 7.03
>
> Folks, I am afraid that I've gotten in over my head here. Several
> years ago, when I had a different, and more powerful, computer, I
> partitioned the drive (with Partition Magic from Win98) and installed
> DR-DOS 7.03 on one partition. Everything went well, but before I could
> do much with it, the power supply blew out and took a lot of the
> hardware with it. (Because I am poor, a kind soul gave me another
> machine.)
>
> As I said when I started this thread, I basically did the same
> thing on this (other) computer. But things keep going from bad to
> worse, and I think I am so much out of my depth that I may just have to
> give up any idea of using two OS's on this machine (as much as I liked
> DOS and am coming to dislike Win98).
>
> This afternoon I was getting the same results as I have had in the
> past, random lockups. So I decided to try to boot and use the native
> DR-DOS COMMAND.COM instead of NDOS to see what would happen. Now all
> h*** has broken loose.
>
> I went into CONFIG.SYS and commented out the line SHELL= specifying
> NDOS and uncommented the line for SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM. Unfortunately,
> perhaps, through a lack of attention, I forgot to comment out of
> AUTOEXEC.BAT any lines that would have required NDOS to be loaded as
> the command processor.
>
> When I booted, once it got to the command prompt the system went
> berserk. Black screen with a cursor racing madly everywhere across the
> screen. Then the printer (HP laser on the parallel port) started
> spitting out pages with nothing but C:> about every twenty lines or so.
>
> I booted with an emergency floppy, and the partitions are now
> messed up. They *were* as follows:
>
> 127MB FAT: at the front of the disk, DR-DOS installed, bootable
> 511MB FAT: logical in an extended of the same size, visible to both
> DR-DOS and Win98 (D: to both)
> balance of the HDD: FAT32, Win98 installed, bootable
>
> Unfortunately, the 127MB FAT partition at the front of the disk is now
> hidden. DR-DOS cannot see it if I boot from a floppy. I can FDISK
> from the floppy, but I really don't know enough about FDISK to do any
> repairs that way (and any documentation in the DR-DOS "DOSBOOK" is
> currently unreachable). If at all possible I would like to salvage
> that partition, because I had already started loading stuff on it.
>
> Booted into Win98 and fired up Partition Magic (v5.0). Partition
> Magic will let me unhide it, but just before I tell it to do so, it
> comes up with a dire warning, "OS/2 and Windows 95/98 do not support
> multiple visible primary partitions. If you unhide this partition and
> then boot OS/2 or Windows 95/98, data loss can occur." So I chickened
> out. (P.S. I have been using the Boot Magic boot manager that comes
> with Partition Magic. I can still attempt to boot into DR-DOS on the
> first partition, but, as I say, things go berserk.)
>
> What started out as a simple project to install a congenial DOS has
> turned out to be a can of worms. I am over my head and am wondering if
> I should just give up and resign myself to Windows. I guess
> non-specialists are just supposed to be slaves of Bill Gates (or go to
> Mac).
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Paul Bartlett
> bartlett "at" smart "dot" net
> PGP key info in message headers
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