Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!polyslo!jdudeck
From: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Hard drive problem (SPINRITE II)
Message-ID: <25e6dfdf.2f40@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 24 Feb 90 19:26:23 GMT
References: <1643@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 30


In article <1643@crash.cts.com> elund@pro-graphics.cts.com (Eric Lund) writes:
>
>No, this was definitely Spinrite II.  I talked with several users (and saw the
>frustration on their faces) as they tried to fix their drives.  The worst case
>was an AT&T computer user who interupted the program as instructed, exited the
>program, and turned off the machine.  Later, it wouldn't boot.  He had a hell
>of a time (since it was an old AT&T dos) getting it up and running again.  He
>had to install a new DOS on the system, and his old DOS didn't take kindly to
>that idea.  He did get his system working, but it consumed several hours.
>
>This incident is undeniably linked to Spinrite II, but if it was the
>"interrupting" that did it, or the main program that did it, who knows.  I
>also suspect his old system didn't help matters, but I'd rather believe the
>fault lied in his interruption of the program.  

Hmm, interesting.  This would suggest that Spinrite II is not fully compatible
with some of the older or less-IBM compatible systems.  I don't know all the
details of how AT&T's are different, but I seem to notice that AT&T users
often have questions that nobody else seems to have.

Did the user follow the part of the instructions about having nothing else
in memory when running Spinrite?

As for problems installing a new version of DOS, this is of course one of
the things us DOS users always tear our hair out over, and isn't related
to AT&T, Spinrite, or anything else except the lack of thought of DOS's
designers.  In 9 cases out of 10, it is not worth the bother to try to
install a new DOS version without reformatting and then restoring your
files from backup.

-- 
John Dudeck                           "You want to read the code closely..." 
jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu             -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching 
ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549          Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.