CASE HISTORY # 7 (Part I)
by the Disk Doctor


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Copyright (C) 1987,  the Disk Doctor.

First published in the Rochester (PC)^3 News:
   Picture City PC Programming Club
   PO BOX 20342
   Rochester, NY 14602
The Disk Doctor may be contacted at this
address, or via CIS [73147,414].

This material may be reproduced for internal
use by other not-for-profit groups, provided
this copyright notice is included.
----------------------------------------------


2:18pm
I had just finished uploading my
spreadsheet to the MainFrame.  I looked up
to see S. standing in the doorway.  "You
need some help from the Disk Doctor?" I
asked.

"Yes. How did you know?"

I waved her in.  "I saw the diskettes in
your hand.  What seems to be the problem?"

"These disks are no good. I tried to
install the program on my hard disk, ya'
know, and now it won't work anymore."

She handed me the 3 disks.  It was a
database program I was only moderately
familiar with.  "Did you say 'anymore'?
The program was working before?"

"Right.  You see, my brother uses this
program all the time and it was his
recommendation that I buy it.  I don't
know anything about computers, you see.
They just put one on my desk, and I'm
supposed to figure out what to do with it.
Anyways, when the software came in, I went
over to his house, so he could show me how
it works.  He opened the package and it
ran fine on his machine. But as soon as I
copied it to my hard disk, now it won't
run anymore."

"You mean the copy on your hard disk?"

"No, silly!  These disks.  The original
disks!"

"I see.  Did you ask your brother for
help?"

"Well, he's out of town this week, and
besides, he makes me feel like such a
dope, especially when it comes to
computers.  I'm too embarassed to tell him
I goofed up my disks.  That's why I came
to you.  The guys in the office looked at
it, and they said if anyone could help,
you could."

"I'll do whatever I can.  Tell me, what
does the computer say when you have the
problem?"

She shrugged her shoulders with a goofy
little giggle, "It doesn't say anything.
It's a just machine, ya' know."

I could see I wasn't going to get anything
further out of her.  So I tried the
program myself (after I dumped all my
memory-resident programs and enabled the
write protection on my hard disks).  There
were no error messages.  The keyboard just
locked up, requiring a cold re-boot.



2:22pm
As soon as I powered up my system again, I
ran a CHKDSK on disk #1.  No obvious disk
errors.  Likewise on the other 2 disks.
"I wonder why the program comes on 3
disks?" I pondered aloud. "Over half the
space is free on each disk.  Did you
delete any files?"

"No, not me."  She looked over my
shoulder, "Why, is there anything
missing?"

I fired up my disk editor to look at the
directory.  There were no deleted files.
"Hmmm.  That's interesting."  I pointed to
the DIRectory listing. "These 4 files are
all the same size --65,536 bytes.
Something's fishy here." I studied the
disk using a disk-map utility. No bad
sectors.  No lost chains. No cross-linked
files.  The files were in contiguous
sectors.  "How did this happen, S.?"

"Don't look at me. Those are the original
disks, right out of the box."

"Now don't get upset.  Just tell me
exactly what you did when you copied the
files to your hard disk."

"Well, I don't know a thing about
computers, you see.  But my brother, he
uses 'em everyday.  So before I left his
house, he typed in a back-up file, to
automatically install the program on my
computer."

"A backup file?  Are you sure?"

"Yeah.  All I had to do was start my
computer and type INSTALL."

"Oh.  You mean a BATCH file.  Here it is,
'INSTALL.BAT'."  There was a copy of
INSTALL.BAT on each of the 3 disks.  I
TYPEd the batch file to the screen:"

MKDIR C:\RX
CHDIR C:\RX
COPY A:\*.*
PAUSE INSERT DISK #2
COPY A:\*.*
PAUSE INSERT DISK #3
COPY A:\*.*

The batch file looked okay to me.

I closed my eyes to concentrate.  Why did
these disks stop working all of a sudden?

Was it something to do with the INSTALL
batch file?



**************  GADZOOKS!  **************

Holy Badly Blotched-up Batch file!!!  Will
the Disk Doctor admit defeat? Has our hero
finally met his match? Tune in next month
for the exciting conclusion...  Same
Batch-time.  Same Batch-channel.