🚀 go-pugleaf

I am a small-scale software developer with a couple of applications
written in Turbo Pascal 6.0.  Since June of this year I've received
a few complaints from customers regarding file read/write errors that
they experienced using my programs.  Initially I dismissed them as
hardware problems, but I'm becoming convinced that there's a software
problem external to my programs.  Here's the story:

My programs do a lot of reading and writing to binary files (files of
records) using random access (seek in Turbo Pascal).  The errors that
I've been told about include "hardware failure", "CRC error in data"
and "file read error".

The errors seem to occur when the users are keeping their data on floppies
rather than hard disks.  The files are genuinely corrupted -- trying to
copy them using DOS results in disk read errors, chkdsk sometimes 
identifies lost clusters, etc.  I don't think it's my program -- I know, 
nobody ever does :) -- because the file access code hasn't changed in
about 3 years and nobody's had problems till recently.  There are 2
possible sources of error that I suspect.  One is the SMARTDRV disk
cache program that comes with Microsoft Windows 3.1 or possibly some
other thing that gets loaded before you actually run Windows. (Yes,
all customers with complaints had Windows 3.1 installed on their
computers but my programs run from DOS - I recommended exiting
Windows rather than running as a non-windows application but that
didn't seem to make any difference).  Or, since I recompiled with
Turbo Pascal 6.0 rather than 5.5, maybe Borland introduced something
into this version that's causing problems.  

I more seriously suspect SMARTDRV -  I got a new laptop last spring and
tried loading a bunch of software onto the hard drive.  I had loaded
Windows first, played with it a while, and when I later went to load
Turbo Pascal and C++ I got some serious hard disk errors and was about
ready to send the machine back.  Since I had to go on a trip very soon
(which was one reason I had bought the laptop), I took everything off
that I had loaded, left off Windows and loaded the Borland software --
no problems!  Upon return from the trip I installed Windows again, but
again had problems.  I deleted the stuff from Autoexec.bat that used windows
drivers, substituting the equivalent drivers from DR DOS, and since then
I haven't had any trouble.

I guess my question is - has anybody else experienced problems like this,
and, if so, do they seem related to either MS Windows, SMARTDRV, or 
Turbo Pascal?  I'm at a loss as to how to advise my customers without
a better idea as to what's going on.  

Please email as I don't read these newsgroups regularly.

Thanks,

Randy Beth Pollack
rpollack@zach.fit.edu