Re: OT: DOS booting

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
> Exit to DOS? I'm booting to DOS, but no writing to the NTFS C: drive is
> possible. And that's what I want to do, in order to copy a downloaded
> shell32.dll.
Let me see: the shell32.dll is part of Windows, it got
corrupted, and you downloaded a copy elsewhere and are
trying to copy it to C: Is that right? Doesn't XP have
something analogous to W2K's Windows Recovery Console?
Which lets you repair a Windows setup without doing a
complete reinstall? I'm sure I've heard of such a
thing, just cannot remember what it's called.

And later he said:
>>But don't a lot of installs have to put stuff on C:?
>>I install stuff weekly. I'm a new-program-junkie.
>>Wouldn't want to give that up.
Partitioning the drive doesn't prevent your putting
stuff on C. Heck, nothing could. Windows has to rewrite
the registry files every time it boots and shuts down.
(If you ever install Windows yourself, you'll see that
though you can boot from the Windows install CD, it
immediately starts copying files to the hard drive; the
9x boot floppy used to create a RAM drive and copy
things there). Nor does moving pagefile.sys prevent
writing to C:. I cannot imagine what you're referring
to here.
And if you're installing new programs all the time,
with only one partition and nothing but a restore CD,
your PC is headed for disaster. Anyone who tries out
new software a lot should really, really follow
Jordan's advice and have a maintenance partition, with
a whole, cloned known good copy of Windows and all
really essential apps installed. Then when the one you
use for a test bed gets hosed, just boot to the other
(through the BIOS boot sequence option).

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx