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1993-02-16
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Creating an Emergency Boot Disk
By Kenneth Johnson, Chicago Computer Society
An emergency boot disk allows you to boot your computer from the
A: drive, thus bypassing the C: drive which may be damaged or
otherwise unaccessible. In such a case, a boot disk can allow
you to get into your system and diagnose (and hopefully solve!)
the problem. An emergency boot disk is especially critical if
you are modifying your system configuration and/or
"experimenting" with your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files. One
small mistake and you may be unable to boot off your C: drive.
An emergency boot disk contains the hidden DOS system files
IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (or their generic equivalents) and
COMMAND.COM. It should also include a modified AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS, also any device drivers and utility programs you
might need. Create your emergency boot disk with these steps:
1. Format a disk in the A: drive with the /S switch (FORMAT A:
/S). This will format the disk and copy the DOS system
files and COMMAND.COM to the disk.
2. Copy your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to the A: drive,
then modify them to remove any programs or device drivers
that aren't necessary to get your system running. For
example, in an emergency it probably isn't necessary to load
ANSI.SYS or a print cache, or connect to a network. Also
change any path references in the AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS from the C: drive to the A: drive, since you'll
need those programs and drivers on the boot disk.
3. Copy programs and drivers that remain in your modified
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files from the hard drive to the
emergency boot disk. For example, if you are running a
program such as Stacker or Disk Manager, you'll need their
drivers on the boot disk to access your hard drive.
4. Copy any utility programs you might need to the emergency
boot disk. These should probably include a text editor,
UNDELETE, UNFORMAT, and MIRROR, and diagnostic programs you
use such as MSD or INFOPLUS.
5. Once you have your emergency boot disk set up, make at least
one copy of it with DISKCOPY (DISKCOPY A: A:). Write
protect all copies of the boot disk and put them in a safe
and convenient place.
===================================================
Author Information: Kenneth Johnson is Training and Support
Manager at the law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago. He
writes a monthly Beginner's Column and is contributing editor for
Hard-Copy, the Journal of the Chicago Computer Society.