Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!phco
From: phco@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (John Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: SYS command
Message-ID: <5600@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 17 Oct 88 14:20:34 GMT
References: <5150@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: phco@ecsvax.UUCP (John Miller)
Organization: Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lines: 30

In article <5150@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> dmurdoch@watdcsu.waterloo.edu ( D. Murdoch - Statistics ) writes:
>Yesterday I accidentally wiped out the system files (IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS)
>for MSDOS 3.2 on my hard disk.  Figuring that the space for them was still
>there, I attempted to use the SYS command to transfer the system from a 
>floppy onto the hard disk, but got the message that there wasn't enough space
>for the system.  After that, I tried all kinds of things to give extra space
>in the first few hundred clusters on the disk, in the first few 
>root directory entries, and so on, all with no
>success.  I had to resort to manually moving the files onto the disk
>and hoping to get them in the right spots.  I was lucky; it worked.

IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS have to be the first files on the disk.  Besides being
marked as "hidden" and "system" files, these are also marked as "read-only"
so they cannot be deleted or altered by the usual DOS commands.  However,
SYS also respects the "read-only" status of the files and refuses to write
over them.  The way to get around this is to use a utility such as PC-TOOLS
to (1) change the attributes of IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS from "read-only" to
"read-write" and (2) delete IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS.  Then you can use SYS
to transfer the new versions of these files.

It would seem that SYS should tell you that your hidden files are protected
and ask for confirmation of your request to replace them.  It should also
tell you what version of the software you already have on the disk.  I guess
that's asking a bit much of Microsoft, though.  :-)

-- 
                        John Miller  (ecsvax!phco)
                        Dept. of Pharmacology, Univ. of N.C.-Chapel Hill
			CB#7365   1026 FLOB
                        Chapel Hill, NC 27599       (919) 966-6966