China DOS Union

Some IMG files can be decrypted and written to floppy disks under HD-COPY in DOS! But they are not visible under the WinImage software in Windows! Is it because the WinImage version is too high or these IMG files are made with some encryption method?

The title is wrong. It should be: "Why can't some IMG files be opened with WinImage?"

These IMG files are not visible under the WinImage software. Write them to the floppy disk again using HD-COPY under DOS! Then save them as IMG files using the WinImage software under Windows, and they will be normal! (The MSDOS3.31 in Bear Software Stall is like this!)

It's normal. Many traditional img creation tools under DOS can't open the generated img files with WinImage. Who made it a WIN image anyway.

I thought they were broken before so I deleted them. What a pity! These IMG files can't be opened directly in the virtual machine, saying the format is wrong or something. It shows that the person who collected them didn't even use them, just downloaded them for pure collection!

WinImage software cannot open all IMG files.

Some are opened, but it's all blank. But that IMG is good.

These are all normal.

Actually, for this bug in WinImage, many IMG files can sometimes be opened normally, but sometimes they open to a blank screen, making people mistakenly think that the IMG is invalid or not recognized. There is a very simple way to fix it: if WinImage opens to a blank screen, directly drag this IMG file to its left window. At this time, it can be opened 100%. If you really can't see the content, it will prompt you to select the format of the IMG...

Get the img file into the virtual machine, then insert a blank img file into the virtual machine, and then load the old img file with hd - copy and write it into the "floppy disk" of the virtual machine. Anyway, the img that vpc can load, winimage can recognize.

If it shows blank after opening, then click "Open" on the toolbar and select the IMG file to be opened to see the content; or right-click on the IMG file and select "extract" to extract the files inside. In fact, if you select hidden files in Winimage, double-clicking to open is also blank, and like this, you can see it.

Those IMG files are all created with early floppy disk image tools (such as HDCOPY, etc.) and are in non-standard IMG formats, so no version of WinImage and virtual floppy drives can open them now. To extract such non-standard IMG formats, in addition to reading them into a floppy disk with HDCOPY and then writing them, you can also use tools like Undisk or SIMG for extraction.

Thanks to the brothers upstairs! It has benefited me a lot! I have gained a lot of insights! This is my most satisfactory post!

But I still have some questions:
1. Undisk can run under Window, but when using Undisk to extract the IMG, the boot information will be lost! Some of them still can't be extracted! It's not perfect!
2. SIMG cannot run and extract under Window. Maybe it's not the Chinese version!
3. My approach is a bit similar to that of building 8. That is, add all img files to an ISO file and put it into the virtual machine (VWare2004), then insert a blank img file into the virtual machine (I use the virtual DOS6.22 system), and then use hd-copy to load the old img file and write it into the "floppy disk" of the virtual machine.

But there is one problem: I often have more than 20 IMGs to process. To replace the blank img file one by one, I have to switch to the virtual machine settings. But every time I switch 3 times and then switch back to the HD COPY software of the DOS system, it will crash, the CPU usage rate reaches 100%, and I have to restart the virtual machine! It's really helpless!

Hehe, I use VPC in the virtual machine, which is very convenient to operate. Also, your approach is not "somewhat similar" to that of building 8, but completely the same.

But I had already used this method before I saw your post!

hdcopy seems to be able to run directly under Windows, no need to go through a virtual machine again. Just install a virtual floppy drive under Windows, and then use hd-copy to write non-standard image files directly to the virtual floppy drive.