🚀 go-pugleaf

There's a cute program called crabs that the literature
at my local user group  says is innocuous, but which
has caused a problem that  I think I can solve by zeroing my hard
disk. I would lose a couple of days work doing that; so if you're
able to suggest a less painful way out, please do.  
FYI, crabs is an ACC file that causes small crab-like creatures
to eat your screen.  I have talked to people  who ran it
on floppy-only systems, and who say that in their cases it
was indeed innocuous.

Here's the best description of the bug I can manage now:

I put CRABS.ACC and CRABS.RSC in C:, the logical
drive on my SH204 where my other ACC files reside.  Upon booting
I found that crabs did indeed eat my screen (cute).  Clicking
on CRABS!! in the desk accessory menu froze the screen; I warm
booted, and after a little bit of this decided that enough was
enough, and deleted the files.

Upon rebooting, I discovered the following:  My ST reads and loads
the files in my AUTO folder on my A: disk, looks at the C: disk
(presumably--the hard disk makes brief noises) ---and reboots.
(Enter endless loop...)

Could the problem have been caused by trying to delete the file
while it was running, so that the init thing loses?  Is
there a way to tell the machine to boot gently (without
dying when it sees something it doesn't like, or running the
ACC files, so that I can look at the directory space)?
Is there *anything* I can do, short of reformating my hard disk?

Suggestions/advice/help would be much appreciated.

Lije

BTW:  Even if you don't have advice, be warned...

Elijah Millgram
lije@oz.ai.mit.edu