The only dangerous tool from a LiveCD (CD which boots FreeDOS from a fake diskette, then loads CDROM drivers to get access to the remainder of the CD/DVD beyond the initial 1.44MB) is Fdisk as it can change/ruin the master boot record (MBR), which contains information about your harddisk layout.
Format ought to do a number on you also You know I was raised or rather reared as my English teacher would say on DOS. I used FDISK each time I installed DOS and up to windows ME used it there when I built a new computer or had to install a new drive. I understand about using FDISK to partitions a primary and secondary section of your hard drive. As a matter of fact that's how you setup a new PC first after putting the PC together you had to run FDISK to partition a primary and secondary section of your hard drive. For a LONG TIME THE PARTITION COULDN'T BE BUT SO BIG FORGET WHAT THAT WAS Then I used format to format my hard drive and then I would install DOS or Windows which I must admit I knew how to do. Now it's all magic and when the magic doesn't work windows doesn't install or won't install what do you do? Well I had to retire because of a physical problem and my wife wanted to give me a PC. I on the other hand didn't want a DELL or COMPAC because all you really get is an ISO file. So I found a local computer store that built my computer from what I had saved and bought and then added what I didn't have and built this system for me. Not knowing what windows Vista had in it, I knew there were different version but not much else, I decided on Vista premium because that's what they recommended and I was immediately sorry, why? Because my fax software I had WinFax Pro would not work on my vista premium nor any Vista for that matter. Well went looking for a fax program that would work in Vista I have to have Fax and couldn't find one. The only way to get fax capabilities in windows vista was upgrade to Ultimate. Not a big problem right? I called or rather bought Vista Ultimate on line and tried to install it. No problem you would say again, brand new computer, real fast dual AMD processors, plenty of memory 4 gig and hard drive space you can get lost in. It wouldn't install. I used the only option I had and that was I called Microsoft. I was in that magic moment 60 or 90 day period that it didn't cost 60 dollars to talk to them. I don't have the time or energy to type all that I had to do but it took them and me 2 days of calling staying on the phone for hours un-checking numinous system settings to get it to load and believe me I don't want to have to go thru that again. My new mother board has the capabilities to have mirrored drives and on one failure to load he asked me if I had mirrored drives. Of course I didn't have mirrored drive but I do have 2 hard drives the same size. What that had to do with Ultimate not loading on to premium I have no idea. It should have been a snap, new computer, new operating system, just upgrade from Premium to ultimate but I knew Microsoft and you do to I guess they never do things the easy way. Why would something so simple have to be so hard. Well that's the reason why I want to load from the CD if at all possible. I said send me the Ultimate CD and I will install it from there. They said it wouldn't do any good same thing would happen seems that the CD I had did have Ultimate on it and It was installing from the CD. It had all the windows Vista on it the key told it which one I had bought. So I was trying to install windows Vista Ultimate from the CD<BG> Windows anytime upgrade disk FreeDOS can only access FAT filesystems, not NTFS for example which Windows uses nowadays almost exclusively. By the way Steve Gibson use freedos for his program called Spin Rite and he has NTFS working in freedos. Version 6 works with FAT or NTFS so freedos could do the new file system. I wish you are someone could talk him into letting the Freedos community have the information. Then I could see my opther hard drives.<BG> Ron Spruell Sr. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
