MS_DOS in XP vs 98SE

OldBuzzard · Feb 22, 2005, 10:18 AM

OK...I'm officially 'puzzled'. My wife is doing a lot of 'family tree' research, and is paranoid about losing the files. So, I went to here WIN98SE partition, and wrote a little DOS.bat file that would give her 2 generations of backup. nothing fancy, just 3 COPY commands.

I was testing it with just one command in the MS_DOS prompt, to make sure that I hadn't totally forgot my DOS 'skills'. Everytime I tried to execute the command, I would get an error message "Invalid Directory", and nothing would copy. Well, I was short on time, so I left it, and decided the I would work on it later.

Now, I'm on my XP Pro partition, googled MS-DOS, and found a site or two, and cheked, and what I had been doing was in the right syntax and all, and it SHOULD have worked. Well, I wrote it in notepad, and saved it as a .bat file, and tried it, and THIS time it worked like I expected it to.

Well, I go BACK to her 98SE partition, so that I can put the .bat as a shortcut on the desktop, and tested it, and danged if it didn't do the same thing....told me: Invalid Directory

Why would it work in XP, and not in 98SE? Is there something that I'm missing?

Here are the copy statements that I have:

copy R:\Genbkup\v2\*.uds R:\Genbkup\v3\
copy R:\Genbkup\v1\*.uds R:\Genbkup\v2\
copy G:\Sierra\GLE85\*.uds R:\Genbkup\v1\

Note: I got the same error in 98SE even if I didn't use the *.uds wildcard and used each specific file name.

**dj_stick** · Feb 22, 2005, 10:28 AM

have you got the drive letters correct? sometimes in a dual boot the drive letters might be re-arranged in the different OSes

OldBuzzard · Feb 22, 2005, 12:00 PM

Got it working

It seems that the DOS version in 98SE didn't like the last \

I removed those, and it works just like it's supposed to now

Feb 22, 2005, 10:18 AM	#1
OldBuzzard DH's oldest Geek Join Date: May 2003 Location: Oberlin, OH Posts: 2,783 Rep Power: 145 System Specs	MS_DOS in XP vs 98SE OK...I'm officially 'puzzled'. My wife is doing a lot of 'family tree' research, and is paranoid about losing the files. So, I went to here WIN98SE partition, and wrote a little DOS.bat file that would give her 2 generations of backup. nothing fancy, just 3 COPY commands. I was testing it with just one command in the MS_DOS prompt, to make sure that I hadn't totally forgot my DOS 'skills'. Everytime I tried to execute the command, I would get an error message "Invalid Directory", and nothing would copy. Well, I was short on time, so I left it, and decided the I would work on it later. Now, I'm on my XP Pro partition, googled MS-DOS, and found a site or two, and cheked, and what I had been doing was in the right syntax and all, and it SHOULD have worked. Well, I wrote it in notepad, and saved it as a .bat file, and tried it, and THIS time it worked like I expected it to. Well, I go BACK to her 98SE partition, so that I can put the .bat as a shortcut on the desktop, and tested it, and danged if it didn't do the same thing....told me: Invalid Directory Why would it work in XP, and not in 98SE? Is there something that I'm missing? Here are the copy statements that I have: copy R:\Genbkup\v2\.uds R:\Genbkup\v3\ copy R:\Genbkup\v1\.uds R:\Genbkup\v2\ copy G:\Sierra\GLE85\.uds R:\Genbkup\v1\ Note: I got the same error in 98SE even if I didn't use the .uds wildcard and used each specific file name. __________________ When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY Last edited by OldBuzzard; Feb 22, 2005 at 10:26 AM.

Feb 22, 2005, 12:00 PM	Thread Starter #3
OldBuzzard DH's oldest Geek Join Date: May 2003 Location: Oberlin, OH Posts: 2,783 Rep Power: 145 System Specs	Got it working It seems that the DOS version in 98SE didn't like the last \ I removed those, and it works just like it's supposed to now __________________ When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY