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Solve : Installing MS-DOS 6.0 over MS-DOS 5.0 - will I lose my data??? |
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Answer» LAST night I had one of those heart-stopping moments when my pc went wrong - the oldest and most stable of the four computers we have at home...... Its a Viglen Professional 486 PC, model 4DX33, November 1993 vintage, with what must be a very small hard drive and a 3.25 inch floppy drive. It is being run using MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. Yesterday my next door neighbour gave me an almost new wide-screen monitor, and in attempting to get it working with this pc I have, to cut the story short, corrupted MS-DOS, such that I can no longer access the hard drive. Last night I succesfully reinstalled MS-DOS 5.0 and then Windows 3.1, apparently without losing any data. This morning, in attempting to get the mouse cursor to appear on MS-DOS Works, (and obviously not knowing well enough what I was doing) I started installing MS-DOS 6.00 - but when I got to the part of Setup which says "To have Setup configure your hard disk choose the recommended option (which was to configure the first hard disk). If you choose this option all files on the disk will be removed" Horrors!! I don't want to lose any data - I mustn't - so I aborted the process. I thought (!) that I might be able simply to GO back to MS-DOS 5.00 and work with that, but restarting (ctrl+alt+del) with the MS-DOS 5.00 Setup disk in drive A eventually brought the message "MS-DOS version 5.00 files cannot be installed on you hard disk because all the primary partition table entries on your disk are already in use. To create a set of MS-DOS version 5.00 disks, press enter" I duly made a set of v.5.00 disks, though I do have my original 1993 disks anyway, but these were of no help. The situation now is that I can only run the A drive - I can't change to/access the C drive, so I can't get to my data (which is all in Works - both DOS and Windows 3.1 versions). Most of it is financial and membership information relating to various organisations I am involved with, going back 30 years in one case, and it would be impossible to resurrect it all by transcribing it from paper records, apart from the time involved, so I'm FEELING rather at my wits end. When I reinstalled MS-DOS 5.00 last night no data was lost. Would installing MS-DOS 6.00 on top of it really wipe all files, including the data, from the hard drive, as the on-screen wording suggests, or is it just the operating system files which will be removed?? Are there any other options open to me? I should be most grateful for any advice. Thank you. From a devastated and distraught 72 YEAR old in North Wales, UK peterb |
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