Question,
I was board last night so in the name of science I figured I’d run a couple experiments on my Win98 Machine. I deliberately deleted the IO.SYS from the root directory to see what would happen. After deleting it I successfully restoredthe file using a Windows 98 boot disk by using the SYS c: command.
I decided to try this with the MSDOS.SYS file as well. Upon getting my error message I tried to use the same method to restore the system files. Guess what, It restored them but I still couldn’t boot the computer. Upon checking the C:\MSDOS.SYS file, (created by the boot disk) I discovered that the only line was “;W98EBD” which would explain why I still couldn’t boot.
I tried four different methods of restoring including; using the copy command to restore the original. I made a copy of it before deleting. I eventually had to retype the entire MSDOS.SYS (line by line) to get the computer to boot. I know there must be an easier way of doing this.
Question:why can’t I use the Copy command to copy the MSDOS.SYS from the A: to the C:. I tried several commands: a:\copy msdos.sys\*.* c: nothing seemed to work. Is it possible to do this? I even tried renaming the file to MSDOS.OLD thinking it might havesomething to do with the fact that its a system file (possible in use when I booted from the boot disk).
I used a:\attrib MSDOS.SYS -h -r -s so I know that the System, hidden and read-only attribute was not the reason I couldn’t copy. Can someone provide any incite into to this problem?
EBCDIC