🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <95038.153748U12570@uicvm.uic.edu>,
Ed Garay  <U12570@uicvm.uic.edu> wrote:
>Has anyone heard of applications, commercial or otherwise, to protect
>DOS/Windows system files, some directories etc. from inadvertent corruption?
>Something like At Ease, MacGuard or Mac Control for the Macintosh.

We used Disk Manager, which will create a "Non-DOS" partition that can
be tagged as Read Only.  The Disk Manager software doean't actually
call it a Non-DOS partition, but a Read/Write partition.

Unfortunately, this has 2 drawbacks.

1.  You can't make the
boot-partition read-only.  By using a shell= statement in config.sys,
you can force it to use command.com and autoexec.bat on the D:
partition, and have the D: partition be a disk-manager Read Only
partition.  So Drive C: would have no more than the 2 hidden DOS
system files, and config.sys.  Use attrib to hide, and make all 3
read-only, and hope.  Plus, then you can put a few needed writeable
spaces on c:, such as the Windows Swap file, and a fake windows
directory with ini, grp, and win.com.  Copy "clean" copies of these at
each reboot, and everything always looks the same, and you can keep
your real windows files on the protected D: drive.

2.  ANY attempt to write to a disk-manager read-only partition will
hang the machine totally.  This makes debugging installs no fun, and
the use of a tool within an app that mysteriously writes to D: that
wasn't tested is catastrophic.

We used it, knew it's limitations, and would rather have Boot ROMS.
Now we simply map over C: and hope noone guesses.

There may be other, better solutions out there, and I'd like to hear
about them.

Doug MacFarlane
Director, Academic Technology
DePaul University