3.5-inch MS-DOS 5 Upgrade May Fail with Early DOS Versions (75087)


The information in this article applies to:
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0a
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.0
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.2
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.21
    • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.22
This article was previously published under Q75087

SUMMARY

When upgrading to MS-DOS 5.0 or later from DOS versions earlier than 3.2, installation from the 3.5-inch MS-DOS 5 Upgrade disks may fail.

Most MS-DOS and OEM DOS versions earlier than DOS 3.2 do not support 3.5- inch floppy drives and thus will not be able to correctly read all the files on 720K disks. When the Setup command is run from MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Disk 1 - Setup, the message "bad command or file name" will be displayed. When the DIR command is used on one of the MS-DOS 5 Upgrade disks, all the files will not be listed, or the filenames will displayed as garbage (extended ASCII characters).

For example, IBM PC-DOS versions 3.0 and 3.1 will provide the following information with the DIR command: 
Setup Disk     Files on Disk      Files Displayed
----------     -------------      ---------------
   1               37                   5
   2               28                   0
   3               52                   27
Other OEM DOS versions may also exhibit the same behavior or display garbage.

MORE INFORMATION

To successfully install the MS-DOS 5 or later Upgrade, do one of the following:
    • Obtain the 5.25-inch MS-DOS 5 or 6 Upgrade disks if the computer system has a 5.25-inch floppy drive.
    • If another computer that is running DOS 3.2 (or later) with 1.2 MB and 3.5-inch floppy drives is available, and the current system has a 1.2 MB floppy drive, do the following:

      • Copy all files from each 3.5-inch MS-DOS 5 or 6 Upgrade floppy disk to three 5.25-inch 1.2 MB disks using the second computer.
      • Label the disks as Disk 1, Disk 2, and Disk 3 using the LABEL command. There should be six spaces between the word "Disk" and the number in the volume label (for example, Disk 1).
      • Run Setup from the 1.2 MB floppy drive on the first computer.

    • Start from a later DOS version that supports a 3.5-inch floppy drive, such as MS-DOS or PC-DOS versions 3.2 or later, and run Setup.
Modification Type: Major Last Reviewed: 5/12/2003
Keywords: KB75087
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