Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!beartrk!cjp
From: cjp@beartrk.beartrack.com (CJ Pilzer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: share.exe and large media
Summary: Share protects FAT
Message-ID: <442@beartrk.beartrack.com>
Date: 4 Sep 90 23:31:41 GMT
References: <1990Sep1.183023.24393@momenta>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Bear Track Computer Co., Takoma Park, MD.
Lines: 22

In article <1990Sep1.183023.24393@momenta>, mart@momenta (Martin O. Gates) writes:
> 
> 	I am running dos 4.01 on one of my machines and I get a warning at
> boot time that I should load share.exe for large media.  When I look at the
> manual entry for share I can find no justification for loading it because I
> have large media.  Can anyone explain why I should load it or better yet
> tell me why I should not?

The reason for running share is protect the FAT and the data on your hard disk
from corruption.  The usual way for recent programs to access dos files is 
through the use of handles assigned by dos.  In the first version of dos there
was no such service.  At that time, files were access through File Control 
Blocks (FCB).  File handles were introduced in ver. 2.0.  In order to stay
compatible with users of ver 1.0, some authors continued to use FCB's.  In
fact, SIDEKICK still uses them I think.  If one of these programs is run
in a partition larger than 32 megs. it will corrupt the FAT and make all
data in that partition unavalible.  Programming to prevent this damage is
included in SHARE.EXE along with other code for use with shared files.

If you just copy SHARE.EXE over into your root partition (or where you
keep COMMAND.COM), it will be automatically loaded when necessary without
any further action by you, when you boot the computer.