Cannot Access Compressed Drives After Removing Windows 95

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft MS-DOS operating system versions 6.0, 6.2, 6.22

This information applies to both Microsoft DoubleSpace and Microsoft DriveSpace. For MS-DOS 6.22, use DRVSPACE in place of DBLSPACE for commands and file names.

SYMPTOMS

If you upgrade to Windows 95 on a computer with a compressed drive C, and then uncompress drive C in Windows 95, you may lose access to all other compressed drives if you later remove (uninstall) Windows 95.

CAUSE

When the uninstall information was saved, the real-mode compression driver and other MS-DOS system files were located on the host drive for compress- ed drive C. Because drive C is no longer compressed when you remove Windows 95, the host drive is no longer available and the real-mode compression driver cannot be restored. Therefore, any remaining compressed drives are not mounted and cannot be accessed.

RESOLUTION

To work around this problem, create a small new DoubleSpace drive and then delete it. This creates a Dblspace.ini file and loads Dblspace.bin into memory so that you can mount the remaining compressed drives. For information about how to do so, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q100763
   TITLE     : Using Compressed Floppy Disks without a Compressed Hard Disk

MORE INFORMATION

Even if you choose to save your existing system files during Windows 95 Setup, you may be unable to successfully remove Windows 95 if your system configuration has changed significantly since the uninstall information was saved.