Windows 1.0 DR5 and Alpha originality

[Lucas Brooks]

I spent some time trying to find deleted files on Windows 1.0 DR5 and Alpha disks today. I did not find any recoverable files except for PAINT.EXE but here are some info about those disks. Note there are some evidence of bad dump/modification.

DR5
Created by: COMPAQ Personal Computer MS-DOS 2.0x (not online)
File order: Not alphabetical
File date: Not consistent
Deleted files: None
Interesting find (Disk 01):

Strange 21 that should be 00. It causes the wired Accessed date (01/01/1980) of those files to show up. I bet those are the results of bad dump or manual alteration.

Alpha
Created by: IBM PC-DOS 2.0x
File order: Not alphabetical
File date: Not consistent
Deleted files: Present but only PAINT.EXE is recoverable
Interesting find (Disk 01):

[...]

More files with 21 instead of 00.

I don't think those exclamation marks (21) were from normal access without write protection because 01/01 1980 12:00:00 AM is 01 00 21 00 rather than 00 00 21 00. Also there is no creation and access date if those files were copied using DOS 2.x and 3.x. It looks like this only occur on the first disk for some reason .

The next thing to do is to analyse the slack space after each file and see if there is anything useful (ie: code and documentation fragments, maybe some useful root directory entries).