Jo22 wrote on 2024-06-13, 18:33:

Well, it would be good if LFNs are being preserved during copy operations.
Though on plain MS-DOS 7.1, there's no LFN support enabled by default, as far as I know.

The Win9x DOS understands long file names. Try "DIR /N"

The Win9x XCOPY will preserve the long file names.

I would use these flags when copying a Win9x install: XCOPY C:\*. * D:\ /h/e/k/r
/H - Copy hidden and system files
/E - Copies any subdirectories, even if they are empty
/K - Copies attributes (as opposed to resetting read-only attributes)
/R - Overwrite read-only files (so you don't get errors on msdos.sys, etc)

kingcake wrote on 2024-06-13, 18:49:

Fat32 has file attributes but no permissions. You're thinking about NTFS.

You're right about those file systems.

I wasn't explaining myself properly, sorry about that.

wbahnassi wrote on 2024-06-13, 20:06:

No I think he means if you try to copy from system files that are open with exclusive access by the system then the copy will fail on those files, so it's better to copy outside the live OS.

+1

That's what I meant to say, thanks. ^^

I wasn't sure about the details, though.
I just remembered for sure that Windows 9x prevented things like "Format C:".

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 20:11:

The Win9x DOS understands long file names. Try "DIR /N" […]
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Jo22 wrote on 2024-06-13, 18:33:

Well, it would be good if LFNs are being preserved during copy operations.
Though on plain MS-DOS 7.1, there's no LFN support enabled by default, as far as I know.

The Win9x DOS understands long file names. Try "DIR /N"

The Win9x XCOPY will preserve the long file names.

I would use these flags when copying a Win9x install: XCOPY C:\*. * D:\ /h/e/k/r
/H - Copy hidden and system files
/E - Copies any subdirectories, even if they are empty
/K - Copies attributes (as opposed to resetting read-only attributes)
/R - Overwrite read-only files (so you don't get errors on msdos.sys, etc)

Hi, I was thinking about doing these things from Real-Mode DOS because that's what I used to use in the MS-DOS 6.20/Windows 3.1 days.

I continued doing such things in the DOS 7 days, but that's when LFNs got in the way.

Some DOS utilities provide LFNs in pure MS-DOS 7.x, too.
So LFN aware file managers like Norton Commander 5.x and File Maven may support them under pure DOS, too.

Would be cool, because of null-modem connections, so the target PC could boot up via a small boot up disk containing LFN-enabled DOS 7.1 and all incoming data could be writen to C: (CF card).

PS: Thanks for explaining the switches, too.
It's good to know, including the OP and me. 😅

The XCopy way surely looks brilliant (and most probably is) but i had some issues with some files being locked by the OS itself (when using a command-window to do this). I'm sure it would be possible to do it from pure DOS but then i would have needed to use some pcmcia/dos drivers to enable the card-slot in order to do the xcopy.

I tried a few modern tools that runs on W10 but they seem to not work with anything older than XP essentially (complaining about filesystem, etc).

I ended up swapping in a smaller CF into the ide-slot of the machine and made a fresh install. Using that fresh install on CF i could then image the card usin win32diskimager and send that. So the road was a bit longer, but in the end it worked out nicely.

But thanks for the many good pointers here. They will be quite good to know about in the future (Macrium, etc)

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 20:11:

The Win9x DOS understands long file names. Try "DIR /N" […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2024-06-13, 18:33:

Well, it would be good if LFNs are being preserved during copy operations.
Though on plain MS-DOS 7.1, there's no LFN support enabled by default, as far as I know.

The Win9x DOS understands long file names. Try "DIR /N"

The Win9x XCOPY will preserve the long file names.

I would use these flags when copying a Win9x install: XCOPY C:\*. * D:\ /h/e/k/r
/H - Copy hidden and system files
/E - Copies any subdirectories, even if they are empty
/K - Copies attributes (as opposed to resetting read-only attributes)
/R - Overwrite read-only files (so you don't get errors on msdos.sys, etc)

Oh, will definately try those switches as well. Thx douglar

my03 wrote on 2024-06-14, 14:43:

The XCopy way surely looks brilliant (and most probably is) but i had some issues with some files being locked by the OS itself […]
Show full quote

The XCopy way surely looks brilliant (and most probably is) but i had some issues with some files being locked by the OS itself (when using a command-window to do this). I'm sure it would be possible to do it from pure DOS but then i would have needed to use some pcmcia/dos drivers to enable the card-slot in order to do the xcopy.

I tried a few modern tools that runs on W10 but they seem to not work with anything older than XP essentially (complaining about filesystem, etc).

I ended up swapping in a smaller CF into the ide-slot of the machine and made a fresh install. Using that fresh install on CF i could then image the card usin win32diskimager and send that. So the road was a bit longer, but in the end it worked out nicely.

But thanks for the many good pointers here. They will be quite good to know about in the future (Macrium, etc)

Just for documenting this, you could have continued on errors using the /c switch. The files in use are not important, I believe it's the swap file, temp files etc

my03 wrote on 2024-06-14, 14:43:

The XCopy way surely looks brilliant (and most probably is) but i had some issues with some files being locked by the OS itself (when using a command-window to do this). I'm sure it would be possible to do it from pure DOS but then i would have needed to use some pcmcia/dos drivers to enable the card-slot in order to do the xcopy.

Maybe you can still see them if you restart in DOS mode ? There are DOS PCMCIA drivers.

If your new image is used on a system with different hardware and can't boot because of because of a vendor specific storage device or something (nforce drivers are notorious for that), start windows in safe move, start regedit and delete HKLM\Enum\

https://www.tiplord.com/hardware/devicemanagertips.html

The Configuration Manager is the ring 0 component of Windows 95 that controls hardware resources and changes in hardware configuration. Its database is the device tree, stored under HKLM\Enum\. The nodes of the device tree represent devices or bus controllers