Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 14:47:44 +0100 From: Matthias Paul Subject: Re: Where to start To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Reply-to: Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de Message-id: <9684F951E7@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de> Organization: Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen Precedence: bulk On Wed, 04 Mar 1998 Daniel Josef Dekok wrote: > Will i have to delete/format anything to install opendos? (i know i can > delete my old dos directory afterwards) I can't perform any > reasonable backups, so im worried about losing everything on my PC :) Usually everything should work fine (without loosing anything). However, since DR-DOS provides more features and allows for better fine-tuning the system, there might be some caveats for unexperienced users of MS-DOS who upgrade to DR-DOS (please have a look at the backlogs of these mailing lists for details). Personally I haven't run the INSTALL/SETUP program for a long time now (I usually install OSes manually), so I actually don't know what happens if you upgrade from 6.22 to 7.02. In former times, INSTALL/SETUP saved the old OS for UNINSTALling the new OS, until you said you want to delete the old OS. This should still be true. If you are running Windows95, INSTALL will now install LOADER (a multi-boot loader) automatically. I don't know, if there is a similar option to install LOADER from out of INSTALL when upgrading from DOS 6.22. However, if you have a MS-DOS boot floppy and all the MS-DOS files from the \DOS\ directory saved somewhere, there's nothing to go wrong. After installing DR-DOS you'd need to SYS the drive again from your MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk, and afterwards install LOADER. You should than be able to switch between MS-DOS 6.22 and DR-DOS 7.02 at boottime, so you can at any time fall back to MS-DOS until your DR-DOS configuration is fine-tuned for your purposes making MS-DOS pretty much obsolete. Have fun... Matthias PS. Despite what I said above, switching OSes is always a good time to make a full backup of the system. Resonable backup solutions (especially for older and medium-powered systems) are so cheap these days, that noone should ignore them. There's always a first time for the big disaster... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, GERMANY eMail: Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- Caldera Digital Research Systems/OpenLinux: http://www.caldera.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------