X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to opendos-bounces using -f Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:58:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "Paul O. BARTLETT" To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: Random Lockups with DR-DOS 7.03 In-Reply-To: <40CF5940.32064.21C57E@localhost> Message-ID: References: <40CF0305 DOT 10732 DOT 9898147 AT localhost> <40CF5940 DOT 32064 DOT 21C57E AT localhost> X-PGP-key: ftp://ftp.smart.net/pub/bartlett/pgpkey X-PGP-keyid: 0xF383C8F9 X-PGP-key-fingerprint: E62D 2E2C 7BCD 08CB B742 A937 26A9 1532 Organization: SmartNet Private Account MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: opendos AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk 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