What the Doctor Required - The Freshest December

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ What the Doctor Required - The Freshest December / December.iso / utils / syscom.307 / scnotes.txt < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1997-04-07 | 15.5 KB | 417 lines

┌────────────────────────┐ │ System Commander Notes │ └────────────────────────┘ CONTENTS A. Installation Notes E. OS Restrictions B. What's new in version 3 F. Troubleshooting C. Disk Compression G. Technical Support D. Features H. Ordering Information A. Installation Notes Although System Commander itself only takes a few minutes to install, a number of very important decisions must be made. Even if you're an expert and never look at manuals, we strongly suggest reading chapter 3, and following those instructions. Almost all reported problems have resulted from not reading or following the instructions in this critical Chapter. Upgrading from Version 1 or 2 of System Commander See the specific notes on upgrading from version 1 in Appendix A of the manual. B. What's New in Version 3 New Security System The optional security system allows multiple users, each with a unique set of privileges. You can also create a special user name AUTOLOGIN to allow a group of users access to some selections without requiring any password. To access the password feature, from the OS selection menu, press Alt-S (Setup) and select Password security menu. You should login as the Administrator, with the password name "password" (no quotes). You can then change the administrator's password and add additional users. Full help is available at each menu. Edit files before any OS runs This powerful feature allows you to edit or view configuration files. If you are having configuration problems with your OS, this avoids having to find a boot diskette and related hassles. You can access any text file on the C: drive that System Commander is installed on. To view or edit a file, from the OS selection menu, press Alt-S (Setup). Select the file management menu. Highlight a configuration line (like AUTOEXEC.BAT) and press Alt-E (Edit/View). It will default to the highlighted line's filename, but you can change this to any path and filename. Screen Saver A group of screen savers are available. The screen saver timeout operates when System Commander is running. Once a OS selection is made, the screen saver is deactivated. Go to the Timeouts and default OS menu selection under Setup, to try out the screen saver features. Troubleshooting and Q & A The SCIN program contains a complete knowledge base of problems and solutions which our own technical support staff use. It also includes common questions and answers. To access this extensive database, run SCIN, and select Troubleshooting to start the knowledge base engine. Other new features * Automatically detects and separates multiples OSes installed prior to System Commander, including Windows NT, on top of Windows 95, on top of DOS, or other combinations. * Support for all the latest OSes and variants, including: Windows 95 OEM release with FAT-32 (build 950 B) Windows NT version 4 Windows NT disk stripping feature (all versions) OS/2 Warp version 4 Next's OpenStep version 4 * Improved disk diagnostics and MBR virus detection C. Disk Compression We do not recommend using System Commander with disk compression. Although it is possible to do so, the disk compression program can cause problems when using different DOS versions and other OSes. Disk compression software is generally designed to work with one and ONLY one OS version. As a minor point, System Commander itself must operate before the disk compression software runs. Drive swapping can cause compression or misplacement of the System Commander files. In all, there may be a number of problems and you are ON YOUR OWN should you attempt this! If you attempt to install System Commander on a system using disk compression, you MUST know which drive is the non-compressed boot drive. This is often hidden by the disk compression software. See Chapter 3 for additional details about using disk compression. D. Features With System Commander you'll be able to have multiple operating systems function on a single PC. Once installed, when you boot up, you will be provided with a menu of OS choices, based on the operating systems you install. Key Benefits * Management of up to 100+ different operating systems: up to 32 FAT compatible OSes in one partition up to 56 primary partitions on up to 14 drives up to 16 non-DOS OSes in logical partitions up to 4 OSes which must boot through a non standard MBR * Special diskette drive support boot from A: or B: even if diskette booting is turned off in your BIOS setup. * Menu selections offered before any operating system runs * Automatic management of hidden system files and configuration files such as AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, BOOT.INI, etc. * Remembers the last selection made * Choose from a number of unique sound effects when System Commander's menu appears * Select a time-out period to automatically make a selection * Automatically saves newly installed DOS versions * View partition information and change bootable status * Master Boot Record and DOS partition boot record virus detection and repair * View and edit files such as CONFIG and AUTOEXEC at boot time Technical Highlights * MS/PC-DOS compatible, all released and beta versions, 3.0 and later * DR-DOS/Novell DOS compatible, all released and beta versions 5.0 and later * Fully compatible with Windows 95, NT, OS/2, Warp, NetWare, Unix variants, Pick, NextStep, CTOS, QNX, and most other OSs * Can be installed into any standard FAT partition, including the new FAT-32 option in the Windows 95 OEM release. * No bytes remain resident in memory * Comprehensive boot validity checks and recovery E. Operating System Restrictions Each OS has specific installation restrictions defined by the OS vendor. For your convenience, we've summarized the key aspects of OSs relating to installation limitations on the hard disk. This is not a comprehensive list and vendors may change the limitations in future versions. In general, if an OS can be installed somewhere, System Commander can boot it. The chart shows where the bootable portion of the OS can be installed. Every OS can be installed in a primary partition on the allowed hard drives. Some OSs can install into a logical partition, which is a portion of an extended partition. When known, we've also shown the manufacture's minimum partition size for its installation. To install applications, and/or have any free disk space to work with, you should always allocate more disk space than the minimum size shown. Newer versions, than those specified, will usually require a larger minimum disk partition. Boot Logical minimum OS Name Vendor Drives partition size notes ───────────────── ────────────── ─────── ───────── ─────── ───── AIX IBM 0 only no BSDI Unix Berkely Softw 0 only no Coherent Unix Mark Williams any no 15 MB CTOS Unisys 0 only no DOS all 0 only no 1 MB DOS/V IBM/Microsoft 0 only no 3 MB FreeBSD all any no 80 MB Interactive Unix SunSoft 0 only no 20 MB Linux all 0 or 1 yes 15 MB 8 Netware v2 Novell 0 only no 20 MB NetWare v3 & v4 Novell 0 only no 55 MB 2 OpenStep Next 0 only no 120 MB NT v3.1 Microsoft any yes 90 MB 1, 3 NT v3.5 Microsoft any yes 100 MB 1, 3 NT v4.0 Microsoft any yes 120 MB 1, 3 Open Server SCO 0 only no 100 MB 5 OS/2 v1.x IBM 0 only no 20 MB 1 OS/2 v2 to v4 IBM any yes 40 MB 1, 4 Pick Pick Systems 0 only no 1 QNX QNX Software 0 only no Solaris SunSoft any no 70 MB 7 Theos Theos Software 0 only no 10 MB UnixWare Novell 0 only no 80 MB 5 Venix Venturcom 0 only no 100 MB Windows 95 Microsoft 0 only no 40 MB 1, 6 Windows 95J Microsoft 0 only no 80 MB 1, 6 notes: 1 - OS can be installed in the DOS partition. 2 - This OS is launched after DOS is booted. Information is stored in a separate non-bootable partition. 3 - A portion of the NT boot software is installed in the DOS partition. 4 - If installed outside the DOS partition, OS/2 requires IBM's boot manager to be installed in a separate partition during installation. Boot manager is not required once OS/2 is installed, when using System Commander. 5 - The installation may move partitions around, causing problems for other OSs. In addition, when partitions are moved like this, System Commander may replace your OS descriptions with generic names. Menu names are associated with the physical partition number and not the data in the partition. No data is lost, but you may want to go through and update each OS description under the Setup option, and verify Local special options are set correctly for each OS choice. 6 - The boot portion is similar to a standard DOS, but significant portions of the OS can be installed on other drives. 7 - Solaris documentation indicates it only supports booting from a diskette when installed on any drive other than drive 0, but System Commander will properly boot Solaris from any IDE drive, without a Solaris boot diskette. Some SCSI controller/drive combinations may not allow anything other than booting Solaris from the first disk. 8 - Source code can be changed to support booting off of other drives. F. Troubleshooting Most problems are easily resolved as described in the manual under Chapter 6, Troubleshooting. The SCIN program contains a complete knowledge base of problems and solutions which our own technical support staff use. It also includes common questions and answers. To access this extensive database, run SCIN, and select Troubleshooting to start the knowledge base engine. System Commander's installation always provides an Uninstall option, available from the hard disk or the diskette. Refer to the uninstallation instructions, should you need to do this. BootXY. If immediately after installation a "BootXY." message appears, see Chapter 7, Troubleshooting under Messages from System Commander at boot up for reasons why this might occur and how to easily correct for it. The first charter "X" indicates the basic type of error that occurred. These problems include: 0 - Error reading the master boot record 1 - No DOS partition found on drive 0 2 to 5 - After looking at all 4 partitions, either the DOS partitions that were found had: disk errors reading sectors, or more likely, the SYSCMNDR.SYS file in the root directory was not found A - Disk error reading FAT B - Disk error reading SYSCMNDR.SYS C - Defective cluster encountered F - Could not find SYSCMNDR.SYS in FAT-32 partition G - Problem reading SYSCMNDR.SYS file H - Contents of SYSCMNDR.SYS are damaged The second "Y" character indicate the error code returned from the hard disk BIOS. It may indicate the hard disk or controller has some type problem, or could indicate bad partition information on the disk. Errors "0" and ">" are not a BIOS error, but indicate the desired data was not found on the disk. BIOS error codes are: "Y" Character Hard Disk BIOS error ───────────── ─────────────────────── 0invalid or missing data 1invalid drive or command 2missing address mark 3 write protected 4 sector not found 8DMA overrun (time-out) :bad sector detected ;bad track detected >invalid or missing data @ECC error during read AECC error during read Pdisk controller/drive problem pseek operation failed ▒time-out - no response others undocumented BIOS error For example, a error message BootA@. indicates that System commander was attempting to read the FAT, but the controller found an ECC error (which indicates a defective sector in the FAT data area). At a minimum, run DOS's SCANDISK on the drive and have it correct any errors. Be sure to perform the optional surface scan within SCANDISK. As another example, the error message Boot2>. appears. This indicates that the SYSCMNDR.SYS file could not be found in any primary partition on the first drive. To fix this, boot from a diskette and perform a full install. Bad Diskette or SCIN.EXE program problems In very rare cases, the SCIN.EXE program on the diskette could be corrupted. This might occur if the diskette drive is slightly out of alignment. To correct this, go to a Windows 95 or DOS prompt. Have a spare 1.44 MB diskette ready. Run: diskcopy a: a: This will copy the original System Commander installation disk (Source) to the new diskette (target) which is aligned precisely to your diskette drive. When this is complete, make sure the new target diskette is left in the drive (do not use the original System Commander diskette). At the Windows 95 or DOS prompt, run: a: del scin.exe attrib -h scin.tmp copy scin.tmp scin.exe Now switch to the A drive and run INSTALL again. No further problems should occur. G. Technical Support If you followed the steps in Chapters 3 and 4, you are unlikely to have any problems. Chapter 7, Troubleshooting covers some of the rare problems which might be encountered. Seemingly bad problems like "Invalid COMMAND.COM" are usually solved easily, and are described in Chapter 7 as well as the SCIN troubleshooting database (see prior section for details). Technical support is available to registered users for 90 days after purchase. If you call after this period, please have a credit card ready for a nominal charge per call. All technical support calls require your serial number and version number, which is found on your diskette label. For technical support to help you quickly, if at all possible, please run the SCOUT utility from the hard disk or diskette. This utility will run several diagnostics and collect key data about your system. This data is written to a file SCOUT.TXT Print the file, or include the file with your e-mail or FAX. (408) 296-4385 (Tech support, 9 am - 5 pm PST M-F) You can also reach us by email at SUPPORT@V-COM.COM. Please include a brief description of the problem, and the version and serial number found on your diskette. It is also helpful to describe what OSes and versions you are using, and how the drive is partitioned. While we can help you with problems related to System Commander, we cannot assist you with using or solving problems within a specific OS. You might want to contact the OS vendor or a third party help desk such as the consultant's at AMERICA'S Help Desk may be able to help. They offer help at $2 per minute at 1-800-768-6656 (The first minute is free). H. Ordering Information To purchase additional copies contact us at: V Communications, Inc. 2290 North First St., Suite 101 San Jose, CA 95131 USA (408) 965-4000 (Sales) (408) 965-4014 (FAX) We also offer very attractive volume discounts and multi-site licenses. Contact our Sales department for additional information. Additional information is available at www.v-com.com, our System Commander Web site. ┌──────────────────────┐ │ End of Notes │ └──────────────────────┘