Particularities of Operating Systems
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Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000–2010
Appendix B.
Particularities of Operating
Systems
B.1
DOS-type Operating Systems
B.1.1
Supported Versions
Acronis Disk Director Suite supports the following versions of DOS-type operating
systems:
•
MS-DOS 5.x–6.x
•
MS-DOS 7.0 (not a separate product but is included in Windows 95)
•
MS-DOS 7.1 (not a separate product but is included in Windows 95 OSR2/98)
•
MS-DOS 8.0 (not a separate product but is included in Windows Me)
•
PC-DOS 5.x–7.0
•
DR-DOS 7.x
Acronis Disk Director Suite will detect MS-DOS 7.x/8.0 as a separate operating system only
if it is not a part of the installed Windows operating system, but was instead installed on
your computer with help of the SYS command.
Acronis Disk Director Suite recognizes the following special cases:
•
MS-DOS 5.x–6.x or PC-DOS that has Windows 95/98/Me installed over it
•
MS-DOS or PC-DOS that has Windows NT/2000 installed over it
Acronis Disk Director Suite may not support some DOS versions (for example the Japanese
version). In these cases, system and configuration file lists should be edited (for example,
font files should be added) to avoid conflicts between different copies of these operating
systems.
B.1.2
Boot Sequence
DOS boot sequence consists of the following stages:
1.
The boot sector (after being loaded into memory and receiving control) scans the
root folder for the first DOS file. Upon finding one, it loads the first several sectors
(the loader) into memory, assuming that they are positioned contiguously on the
disk, and passes control to the loader.
2.
The loader loads the rest of the first file (boot manager) into memory and launches
the program.
3.
The boot manager initializes the memory, scans the partition structure and assigns
letters to partitions, defining the DOS boot partition on the way.