Thanks, Ben - highly welcome precision ! Do you by chance know about another thing in that context - it's about the phsical arrangement of Windows system files on a HD:
I have the imression (but I'm not sure, unable to produce a positive proof) that Windows installs not only a MBR and related things at the beginning of the HD, and these are in a way protected against overwriting. But there is a smaller region at the very _end_ of the HD's range which seems to be occupied by "secret" Windows files too. And I made the experience (on a laptop HD with Win98 pre-installed and a tweaked Toshiba-BIO: thus maybe an additional complication) that hard formatting this HD did _not_ liquidate those Win-files at the end of the HD. I suspect that some of the hardware-related things (e.g., the key mapping) are "secured" there (too); which would explain why it's so difficult to have a clean (DR-)DOS correctly working. // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2004-02-22 The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net
