Once apon a time Dave Freeman said, 'Re: Plea for help!' to Simon Byrnand...

Hi Dave,

 DF> It's not necessarily true that there was 33Meg there after the crash.
 DF> Some terminal programs (and I don't know if NComm is one of these or
 DF> not) buffers download files to a temporary location and then copies it
 DF> to the final location when completed.  Most terminal programs also

Yes I confirmed the file was there, and since running Disksalv the file
has been reported as 33MB....NComm downloads directly to the destination
file and has a 4Kb buffer, so if it crashes you could loose up to 4Kb of
the end of the file.

 DF> buffer a certain amount of the download to write at once.  Finally,
 DF> depending on the reason for the crash it's quite possible that you'll
 DF> have lost that particular file no matter what you do to your hard
 DF> drive.

Yes, I'm not worried about that file at all, it was just one of the AVI
files off the Windows 95 CD, so I havn't lost it or anything ;-) I have
since deleted it anyway..

 DF> I have heard of problems with DiskSalv 2 before.  If you can get your
 DF> hands on AmiBack Tools it might be worth using that instead.  You may
 DF> even pick up a cheap copy floating around these days...

I will have to try and find some more disk repair programs, the trouble
is that I'm using DC-FFS which most older programs dont seem to support.

 DF> You aren't terribly clear here on what you are actually doing during a
 DF> reboot sequence.  Are you just letting the computer do it's own thing?
 DF> Do you run something near the start of your startup-sequence that
 DF> delays the startup until unvalidated drives become validated?  Are you
 DF> stopping it from running the startup-sequence at all?

I have tried booting without the startup sequence, and I've been examining
everything in great detail - I'm in no hurry to use the computer, so I've
been taking my time trying to figure out how to fix it, rather than just
format and start again ;-)

Some observations so far:

* Booting with the Startup-sequence doesnt help.

* When it crashes (after approx 2m 15s) 99% of the time it goes straight
  to a software failure alert, 1% of the time it gives a software
  failure requestor instead. By comparing the address of the crash to
  the list of tasks shown by Xoper just before the crash I've conclusively
  proved that its the DH0 process which is crashing and that no other
  programs are involved.

* I can run Disksalv on the partition, but even when Disksalv 'locks out'
  the DH0 device, the validation, and hence the crash still occurs, and
  long before Disksalv gets time to finish. To get around this I have
  used Xoper to freeze the DH0 process, which puts validation on hold.

* After doing this, I can run Disksalv to completion, but Disksalv (latest
  version 11.32) finds nothing whatsoever wrong, in either Repair or
  Validate mode. After rebooting the problem is still there.

 DF> If this fails I'd be looking to grab yourself something like AmiBack
 DF> Tools which you can boot from (floppy that is) and work on the hard
 DF> drive from there.  It's pretty good at fixing things up.  Expect to
 DF> lose one or two files though from the sounds of it.

Booting off a floppy doesnt help unfortunately, because the validation is
completely automatic, and begins no matter what as soon as the partition
is mounted.

On the drive I have two partitions - a 730MB partition, which is the one
giving the trouble, and a hack-around 40MB partition. I've now renamed
the 40MB partition to DH0, copied the system software over, and turned off
automounting for the old partition, so I can at least use the computer ;-)

When I make a fresh attack at the faulty partition I just manually mount
it.....

 DF> I tried muFS quite some time back and ended up discarding it as not
 DF> being worth the effort in maintenance.  It works really well but is
 DF> generally more trouble than it's worth in a basically single-user
 DF> environment.  It's also fair to say that it is only a partial solution
 DF> to a truly multi-user file system such as that supported on Unix
 DF> machines - it doesn't really do things like a unix fs where some tasks
 DF> have their own ownership and group to enable them to run quite
 DF> peacefully.

I found much the same, good system, but difficult to get in and fix
problems when something in your startup-sequence crashes the computer!

I also found a rather large loophole - all you have to do to gain full
access to protected partitions is boot off a disk and use HDToolBox to
change the dos-type back to FFS! Whoops, now I've told everyone ;-)

 DF> Perhaps the above suggestions will be of some use to you.

Yes thanks, so far you're my only reply...

I have worked out how to fix the problem, and I'm currently in the process
of making myself a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor cable so I can just borrow a
3.5" hard drive from work, copy everything across, format the offending
partition, and copy everything back. In fact I'm planing to mount a 3.5"
IDE socket neatly on the left side of the case just behind the PCMCIA
slot, as later on I also want to connect a IDE CD-ROM I have sitting around
here :-)

Regards,
Simon

... Aquamortis: To continue watering a plant weeks after it has died
--- FMail/386 0.98a