In <l03020901b090aab9f14f@[140.78.50.18]>, on 11/13/97 at 01:15 PM,
   Alfred Novacek <Novacek AT POP.IDV.UNI-LINZ.AC DOT AT> said:

>This boot sector is loaded during system boot, and the code contained
>within gets executed. This code determines, which files from the boot
>partition (C:) must be loaded in order to continue booting.

>Another restriction that I remember roughly is that there are two or
>three files that must be placed physically in the first sectors of
>the partition's data area, or DOS will not boot, too.

This restriction in respect of DOS was lifted at PC-DOS 4.02 and with
MS-DOS 5.00.

Prior to this the BIOS and DOS files had to be located at the
beginning of the partition and be contiguous.  Now, they are just
ordinary files and may be stored anywhere within the first 1024
cylinders.  They do not even have to be contiguous anymore.  (The boot
loader knows how to follow a FAT chain).

>One thing You may try is to boot Your system from a DOS diskette
>(same version as the one You are trying to restore) and execute the
>SYS command with appropriate parameters. This will update the
>partition boot sector and place those critical system files in their
>appropriate places.

You will need to boot the system with a Windows 95 boot diskette
containing the specific version of DOS 7.0 that you want to restore,
and use that version to format the hard disk before restoring all
files.  Note that the DOS client CANNOT restore long file names
(however, windows 95 will not boot unless you either stripped long
file names or restored the long file namesed files).

I install a "quicky" version of Win95 to a temp directory (C:\KICKER)
either by restoring a short-name version of Win95, or by doing a
CD-ROM install (with no options, this doesn't take very long).  Then
use the 32-bit client to restore the original backup image and press
the RESET BUTTON (do not shutdown).  Shutting down windows 95 causes
it to re-write the MSDOS.SYS file resulting in the KICKER version
rebooting rather than the newly restored version of Win95.

You can then discard the temp version of Win95 (C:\KICKER).

You do, however, have to format the Hard Disk with the version of Win
95 you will be putting on it BEFORE putting any MS-DOS 7 / Win 95
files on it.

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Keith Medcalf       (416) 410-5791       http://www.dessus.com/ IBM
OS/2, LAN Server, DB2, TCP/IP, DOS, Windows 95,  Windows NT
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