Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Louis S. <lps...@gm...>]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:41 AM, Eric Auer <e....@jp...> wrote:
>
> Hi Louis and Jerome,
>
> as advanced user, I am against installers zapping my MBR without
> even looking at it. I would need a bootable CD to repair my boot
> menu, or would need to know how to do that with DOS. Enough users
> neither have boot repair CD prepared nor know how to use DOS tool
> methods for restoring a backup of their MBR.

I am not advocating this.


> As mentioned probably a few weeks ago, please overwrite the MBR
> ONLY if it was empty... By EMPTY, I mean no code present at all.
> Which is the state that you will probably see when you bought an
> empty harddisk or made a new virtual computer to install DOS on.

This almost never happens for 99.999% of users.  I have a hard arguing
for this as the only sane behavior.

> You can mention in the readme that users can issue [some command]
> at the DOS prompt after booting from the CD to overwrite the MBR.
> That will allow them to do that at their own risk IF they want.

> You could even add a dialog to ask the user whether they want to
> overwrite their MBR, but this includes the risk that people would
> say yes without careful thinking. Also, as said, this should ONLY
> be required if the MBR was empty before. So I suggest to grab and
> backup a copy of the MBR first. Second, check if it had boot code
> and only third, only if not, write the boot code which was missing.

I am advocating this.  Big red warning screen.