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From: cctr132@canterbury.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: question about dos
Message-ID: <1990Nov28.131211.10020@canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: 28 Nov 90 00:24:06 GMT
References: <1990Nov26.172206.244@eng.umd.edu> <1427@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl>
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Lines: 34

In article <1427@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl>, joris@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl 
(Joris Linssen) writes:

> yun@eng.umd.edu (Dragon Taunter) writes:
> 
>>I have been handed down an old AT with 512K ram.  It has a full hard
>>disk which I do not want to overwrite.  How do I upgrade to a newer dos?
>>I suspect that there is more to it than copying over everything in /DOS
> 
> Well, this is supposed to be easy:
> 
> 1. Boot your computer from floppy with the new DOS version.
> 2. After confirming date and time enter SYS A: C: from the command line. 
>    This will transfer two hidden files from floppy to hard disk.
> 3. Copy the DOS utility files from A: to the system subdirectory on your hard 
>    disk, for example C:\DOS
> 4. Say a quick prayer and reboot you computer from hard disk. Normally this 
>    works (but then, when does something work normally in a DOS environment :-),
>    but should a problem occur, you can always restore your old version with 
>    the same procedure. 
> 5. In case of trouble contact your local DOS whizard,    

Good advice *EXCEPT* step 2 should also include the instruction:
         COPY A:COMMAND.COM C:\
This definitely needs to be done up to (MS) DOS 3.3 (some OEM versions may 
have SYS copy COMMAND.COM automatically) - don't know about DOS 4, as have
never installed it.

Without copying the new version of COMMAND.COM to your hard disk, you will get 
a "Bad or missing command interpreter", or some such, error message.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nick FitzGerald, PC Applications Consultant, CSC, Uni of Canterbury, N.Z. 
 Internet: n.fitzgerald@canterbury.ac.nz            Phone: (64)(3) 642-337