to Sys or not to Sys

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August 18th, 2002, 01:50 PM
Skinsfan

to Sys or not to Sys

I know that sometimes you need to sys a drive, but I'm not sure about the syntax and when you would use that command.

For ex, if you had dual boot with win98 and NT and you removed the NT partition and wanted to boot back to win98, is that when you use the sys command ? If so, what's the syntax (just sys c:) ?

And in what other cases would you "sys" something.
August 18th, 2002, 05:05 PM
ralph3124

SYS C:

copies the system files (COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS-plus another hidden file) from the system diskette (on floppy from A:\ drive)
to your C:\ drive.

The system diskette (AKA: system disk, restore disk, bootable floppy) MUST be the same version as the drive you're copying to.

Hope this helps.

Ps. You only need to do this if you have a problem booting to the drive......
August 19th, 2002, 02:30 AM
Skinsfan

so that means you can create a win98 boot floppy and then if you have trouble booting the C drive with win98 on it then you can simply "sys" the drive and it will boot, right?
August 19th, 2002, 11:23 AM
AlaricD

According to the MS KBase article, Removing Windows NT from a Windows 95/98 Dual-Boot Installation, SYSing the C: should do the trick.

Quote:

so that means you can create a win98 boot floppy and then if you have trouble booting the C drive with win98 on it then you can simply "sys" the drive and it will boot, right?

If you're getting a "Non-system disk or disk error" message, it should.
August 19th, 2002, 03:06 PM
tiberiuscan

I use a program called delpart which I believe is still a freebie.
http://www.michalferber.com/downloads.asp
August 19th, 2002, 03:34 PM
chris wolf

tiberiuscan:

Quote:

Delpart is a DOS based utility that will remove NTFS partitions from hard drives. FDISK is unable to remove some types of NTFS partitions. DELPART can wipe clean a hard drive, and then you can use FDISK to create partitions normally. -michal ferber software

skinsfan was wondering how to replace windows nt's bootloader, not how to remove ntfs partitions. delpart will not 'sys' a drive (make it bootable to dos or windows 9x). ralph3124 and alaricd are correct.
August 19th, 2002, 04:21 PM
tiberiuscan

Quote:

Originally posted by chris wolf
tiberiuscan:

skinsfan was wondering how to replace windows nt's bootloader, not how to remove ntfs partitions. delpart will not 'sys' a drive (make it bootable to dos or windows 9x). ralph3124 and alaricd are correct.

Didn't say they were Chris, just offered an option for removing an NTFS partition that a lot of people aren't aware of.
I have used the sys command in the exact way alaricD suggested and it does work. Skinsfan also said he had already removed the NTFS partition.