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From: colfelt@news.colorado.edu (COLFELT ANDREW BRINTON W)
Subject: Re: Strange memory errors in Windows?
Message-ID: <colfelt.675492499@tramp.Colorado.EDU>
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Reply-To: colfelt@tramp.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
References: <1991May29.005554.10290@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 29 May 91 04:48:19 GMT
Lines: 33

mjf@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Michael J Flory) writes:

>Some time ago I posted with a strange and dangerous error I got running
>DISKCOPY in a DOS window with a .pif asking for all 640 K if it could get
>it.  In short, the diskcopy operation miscopied a couple of sectors every
>dozen-and-a-half or so (the number varied).  But although VERIFY was on,
>I got no error message -- I discovered it through DISKCOMP.

The best way to avoid this would be to run the DOS window full-screen.  It
sounds a little like the floppy errors could be caused by the switching of
CPU attention.  When you're 'multitasking' in Windows and performing a 
sensitive operation like copying sector-for-sector, the time-lag, skip,
stutter, whatever, the window is causing a lack of proper 'attention' to the 
process and thus bytes are getting dropped.

Try DISKCOPY in DOS, full-screen, and see if the problem goes away.  Better
yet, try the window again, with the BackGround Box checked.  If the disks
still lose bytes, try full-screen, BackGround.  One of these setups should
allow the CPU to devote sufficient attention to the copying process to
maintain good housekeeping on all bytes in all sectors.

(I presume you're running a 386, since you'd not have the windowed DOS 
option with a 286.)


-- 
______________________________________________________________________________
Andrew BW Colfelt
colfelt@tramp.colorado.edu____________________________________________________
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Andrew BW Colfelt
colfelt@tramp.colorado.edu____________________________________________________
