Message-Id: <s4bb5a4e.066@calderauk.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 12:12:42 +0000
From: Matthias Paul <MPaul AT calderauk DOT com>
To: opendos-support AT delorie DOT com, paul-ma AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de
Subject: Re: Cant install OpenDos (Help!)
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Hi Bob, hi all

On 98/01/13 you wrote:
>I havent been able to install OpenDos 7.02. I have tried three times and
>each time the install fails to sys my C: drive and then locks up.
>[...] 

When exactly does it lock up? Which file is about to be copied?

>Am I doing something wrong here? Do I have to remove everything and
>start from scratch re-fdisk, re-format and everything? Cant I just
>install it over the top of M$ DOS?

No, the INSTALL should work. This is a very unusual problem. Again, just to make it
sure, you are attempting to install "DR-OpenDOS", not one of the betas, aren t you?

There are only few reasons for the problem I can imagine (mentioning them does not
mean, OpenDOS could not cope with these conditions, but it might help to isolate the
problem):

- Do you use any extra drivers to access your hard disk, like DiskManager, DoubleSpace,
  DriveSpace, a security driver?
 
- Do you have partitions on the drive, which are not formated as FAT12 or FAT16,
   that is FAT32, HPFS, NTFS, etc. Have you previously used your FAT partition in
  conjunction with Long Filenames (might cause password problems under OpenDOS)?

- Is the logicall structure of your drives 100% ok under MS-DOS? Run SCANDISK, DISKFIX,
  or NDD to verify everything is fine.

- Do you have a LBA drive (or SCSI)? OpenDOS might access the drive differently
  than MS-DOS. AFAIK recent issues of MS-DOS use the LBA entries, whereas OpenDOS
  allways uses Sec/Cyl/Head. Usually this should not be a problem, but if your drive s
  info is not consistent, this might only effect one of the OSes, not both.

- Do have enough free space on the drive (ca. 7MB required)?

Please try to exit the OpenDOS INSTALL to directly go to the OpenDOS prompt without
installing the product. See if you can access your C: drive without problems. If even this
doesn t work, press F5/F8 when the message "Starting DR-OpenDOS..." is displayed.
If it works you have at least the possibility to install OpenDOS manually...

If you cannot solve the problem, please provide detailed info on your harddisk partitioning.

Matthias


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