A couple of months ago I purchased Microsoft Word Junior on 3 original floppy disks, plus a manual. There is a Program Disk, a Utilities Disk, and a Backup Disk (which is basically another copy of the Program Disk) all with original and genuine labels.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it working, as there is Microsoft copy protection interfering. When making an image of the floppies using WinImage, there is a bad sector. I don't believe it is actually bad, but this is part of the copy protection.

Is anyone familiar with Microsoft copy protection from the mid 1980s? I am happy to post photos of the disks and manual or provide a directory listing should people want more information.

The reason I purchased this is that I have never heard of a Junior version of Microsoft Word before. Since it is only on 3 floppies, I assume it is a cut down version.

I believe MS doesn't have any copy protection on their media, unless it's a game (from MGS or something). Just take a look at Windows disc, no copy protection at all. But then, I may be wrong. If someone have any idea about this, I also would like to know.

I believe it was not unusual for software companies to have copy protection on their floppies in the mid 1980s. They eventually stopped this practice because it was unreliable at times and made for some unhappy customers.

But you are right in that it was mainly games that were copy protected. Windows floppies were not copy protected, but perhaps Microsoft copy protected some of their application software which sold for hundreds of dollars back in the day? I don't think Windows was as expensive as Word, Multiplan, etc?

But then again, I have old Office floppies that doesn't have copy protection on it.

Their development tools, Visual XXX (VB/VC/VS), which is much more expensive than the Office suite, isn't even copy protected at all...

I know - it seems strange. Perhaps they started rolling out copy protection on certain products, before they realised that it only served to annoy legitimate users?

But it is definitely copy protection causing problems for these disks, as there are error messages mentioning it.

There are documented references to copy protection in Microsoft products for Mac and PCs:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1 ... 16,6237672

http://schinnell.org/ramb/ramb9502.html (end of article's first paragraph).

Are you sure its not just a bad read? Can you install the program without problems?