
Ŀ
 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 95/98, 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 98 (Merlin)
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 95/98, NT, OS/2, Warp, NetWare,
Unix variants, Pick, NextStep, CTOS, QNX, and most other OSes

* Can be installed into any standard FAT partition, including
the new FAT-32 option in Windows 95/98.

* 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
Windows 98        Microsoft      0 only  no         45 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.

In most cases, you will be given the option to boot from
one primary partition from the first drive.

From the Boot error message, the first charter "X" indicates
thebasic 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 OS 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 95/98 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 95/98 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.


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      End of Notes     
 

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