Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!raster From: raster@itsgw.rpi.edu (Jerry D Bain) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: 386: Packed File Corrupt error Message-ID: Date: 5 Mar 91 00:26:03 GMT References: Distribution: usa Lines: 23 Nntp-Posting-Host: jec408.its.rpi.edu hollen@megatek.UUCP (Dion Hollenbeck) writes: >I just upgraded from a 286 clone to a 386-33 clone. Norton 5.0 Unerase >and Pathminder both now give me the error "Packed File Corrupt" when >I attempt to execute them. I have DOS 4.01. These programs still >run fine on my wife's 286. Does anyone know what is going on? I >have throttled back to 16Mhz and turned off cacheing, all to no avail. This is most likely related to a known problem with Microsoft's EXEPACK utility. Whenever a program that's been packed is loaded below 1000h, this very error message is generated. Needless to say, this is incorrect. This problem has been fixed in DOS 5.0 but all previous version suffer from this bug (in EXEPACK)... Until you upgrade (assuming you do), start running a TSR (or something to that effect) to use up the memory all the way to the 1000h boundry. This will force your programs in questions to get loaded without error. Another solution (less elegant) is to use an un-packing utility (like the one included with LHexe) to remove the EXEPACK code all-together (thus making the executables take up much more disk space). I dislike the latter solution as it tends to trip off virus detectors on my system (modifying executables).