I bet nobody wants to touch this one!

I have read that the IO.SYS is impossible to edit. Is this true? I would like to learn how to edit it if possible. Can somebody direct me to a good website tha might talk abou this. There are a few things in it that I'd like to edit. Thank you.

Who in the bloody hell told you it's impossible? I HAVE DONE IT BEFORE! It works fine! All you have to do is unATTRIB the System, Read-Only, and Hidden attributes on it. Then get a good hexadecimal editor; don't use DOS's EDIT program unless you're in Binary mode (file menu) and extremely careful. Hey, give me the email address or website of whoever said you can't edit IO.SYS, they have a lot to learn. Disassembling and recompiling IO is a bit tedious, the ASM code is about a meg in size.
Any, yes, I did edit IO.SYS, just switched some messages and edited some text. Didn't modify any code, because I can't decifer machine opcodes by looking at them. Make a boot disk to try it on, then go to A: and ATTRIB IO.SYS -R -H -S and get a good hex edior. You don't need those attributes on it in order to boot, but it protects against accidental deletion and editing.

Ok. How do I set EDIT to binary mode.

OK I found it.

I opened IO.SYS in binary mode and edited some text and it came back with bad results. I was just trying a little test edit. I wanted to make the startup read something besides "Starting Windows 98...". Anybody know what I did wrong. I have a fresh IO.SYS waiting.

I just tried editing IO.sys on a boot disk and everything worked fine but twice the same failed on a hardrive.

When you edit text strings inside of a binary file, you can not change the length of the strings. So if you're trying to make it say something other than "Starting Windows 98..." for example, which is 22 characters long, your replacement has to be 22 characters as well. A hex editor would maintain that length because changing characters overwrites the existing ones, it does not remove them and then replace them - thus giving the opportunity to change the length of that string. Edit on the other hand, unless you're using Insert and are careful not to Backspace, will not maintain that length. Anyway, so your new string would have to be 22 characters or less. If it is less, pad the end with spaces. For this type of work I generally rely on debug.com. It's basic but it's on all systems I encounter and I've gotten pretty good with it over the years.

I kind of figured that. I dont know a lot about this but I do know that it is a touchy file. I was making it say:

"Starting MS Dos 710..."
"Starting Windows 98..."

They are the same lenth but it still came up with bad results on the Hardrive but worked fine on a floppy. I will try again maybe i made the same stupid mistake twice. My next goal is to learn to use debug. I don't know if it is tough or not but I'll figure it out. i haven't failed yet. See you

I got it to work. I must have made the same mistake twice and not relized it. i changed a few things and everytime it came up good. thank you.