Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!burkett
From: burkett@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Edward W Burkett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Media Descriptor .....
Message-ID: <424@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 89 00:33:43 GMT
Sender: news@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Reply-To: burkett@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Edward W Burkett)
Distribution: na
Organization: Computing Services Division, UW Milwaukee
Lines: 32


Could someone give a me a brief description of where the media discriptor
is located on a disk (hard or floppy). 

I have a hard drive and somehow the media descriptor was changed :-(
          (ST-238)                   

     I ran a modified version of command.com that had a patch 
**** that changed the echo off as the default.  It worked fine ****
     on the floppy drive but obbviously not on my hard drive.

  (command.com was modified with a program called SHELLFIX.EXE)
     
     OK ....... a dumb thing to do........

My drive still works fine but when I run chkdsk it warns me that it may
not be a DOS disk. I tell it to continue and everything is fine.

If I run PC Toolkit, it tries to read the disk and tells me I might have a
damaged FAT and will not continue.

HDCHEK, of the HDTEST package, tells me that it has an unknown media descriptor.

Is this going to be a problem.  I would like to fix the problem if I can
without having to reformat my HD.  Is it possible to edit the FAT

I'm backed up to the day before......so I can afford to play.

If nothing else I would like to learn what happened.

Email responses or post for all.
burkett@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Edward W Burkett)