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Q80890: Drives Inaccessible After Upgrading from Compaq DOS

Article: Q80890
Product(s): Microsoft Disk Operating System
Version(s): MS-DOS:5.x,6.0,6.2,6.21,6.22
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): 
Last Modified: 17-DEC-2000

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft MS-DOS operating system versions 5.0, 5.0a, 6.0, 6.2, 6.21, 6.22 
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SUMMARY
=======

Compaq technical support has confirmed that extended drives created with
FDISK.EXE and ENHDISK.SYS under Compaq's original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
version of MS-DOS 3.2 or earlier may be inaccessible after upgrading to MS-DOS
5.0 or later.

MORE INFORMATION
================

The ENHDISK.SYS device driver made it possible to access multiple MS-DOS
partitions created by earlier versions of the MS-DOS FDISK utility on fixed disk
drives. ENHDISK.SYS was used under Compaq MS-DOS 3.2 and earlier to provide
partitioning support for hard disks greater than 32 MB.

ENHDISK.SYS had to be the first device driver installed in the CONFIG.SYS file.
This was done to ensure consistency for drive assignments through all the
utilities that support partitioned drives created by earlier versions of the
FDISK utility.

Compaq technical support recommends backing up the hard drive prior to running
MS-DOS 5.0 or later upgrade. If the upgrade has already been performed, and the
extended drives are inaccessible, use the MS-DOS UNINSTALL disk to restore the
previous version of MS-DOS.

Take the following steps with the old version of MS-DOS installed:

1. Back up all necessary data on the hard drive.

2. Repartition the hard drive with the MS-DOS 5.0 FDISK command.

3. Format all drives on the hard disk. For example:

  format c: /s

4. Restore necessary data.

For more information, query on the following words here in the Microsoft
Knowledge Base:

  "combine" (without the quotation marks) and "fdisk ENHDISK.SYS" (without the
  quotation marks)

For further information contact Compaq technical support.

The Compaq product included here is manufactured by a vendor independent of
Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's
performance or reliability.

Additional query words: 6.22 5.00 5.00a 6.00 6.20 ENHDISK 3.1 3.00 5.0a 3rdparty

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Keywords          :  
Technology        : kbMSDOSSearch kbMSDOS621 kbMSDOS622 kbMSDOS620 kbMSDOS600 kbMSDOS500 kbMSDOS500a
Version           : MS-DOS:5.x,6.0,6.2,6.21,6.22

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