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From: kabra437@pallas.athenanet.com (Ken Abrams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: "Packed file is corrupt" means what?
Message-ID: <1065@pallas.athenanet.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 16:53:20 GMT
References: <2364@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU>
Organization: Athenanet, Inc.,  Springfield, Illinois
Lines: 20

In article <2364@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU> yee@edison.seas.ucla.edu (John Yee) writes:
>Hi, we need some help around here with our new machine.
>Under some circumstances, running some programs (those compiled by
>a Microsoft compiler), we get the message "Packed file is corrupt"

This is caused by the EXE packer that comes with the MS compiler.
It (usually) only occurs when the program load into RAM starts below
the first 64K segment boundary.  The quick and dirty way to avoid the
problem is to load enough things memory resident to fill up the first
64K.  Adding more BUFFERS is probably the easiest way.  When you get
the free memory down below 576K (589,824) as shown by CHKDSK or MEM
then the problem should disappear.  
I have heard rumors that the problem will not occur with (not yet released)
MS-DOS 5.0.

-- 
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Ken Abrams                     uunet!pallas!kabra437
Illinois Bell                  kabra437@athenanet.com
Springfield                    (voice) 217-753-7965