🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Dec16.122516.21146@concurrent.co.uk>, Neil Watson writes:

>In article <92349.214819RFM@psuvm.psu.edu> RFM@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Dec14.212902.1390@rei.com>, fox@rei.com (Fuzzy Fox) says:
>>>
>>>>   I don't think Stacker itself is unstable...either the 1.x or 2.0 or 3.0
>>>>versions, in so much as the comation of Stacker + some operating systems +
>>>>some drivers + some motherboards is unstable.  In other words, it no more
>>>>unstable than any other program.
>>>
>>>My experience seems to indicate that Stacker is as (un)stable as the
>>>person using it.
>>>
>>I take exception to this. I am as unstable as they come, but my STACKER
>>1.0 has been plunking along in a 20-meg notebook for 18 months or so.
>>I've got an unopened copy of Stacker 2.0 -- I'm afraid to mess with
>>what's been working ok up 'till now.
>>
>>BobM, PSU-Harrisburg

>I suspect that stacker (I use V2.1, but I guess it applies to all
>releases) is rather "picky" about getting stuff actually written to the
>disk!

>I run the (Windows 3.1 flavour) SMARTDRV disk cache, and have noticed
>that I seem to get a "rebuilding allocation ..." session on bootup if I
>have NOT taken care on closing down previously. By "taken care" I mean
>executed "smartdrv /c" to flush the buffers before switching off.

>I THOUGHT that smartdrv intercepted the 3-fingered-salute and did a
>flush, but it appears not to....


>I think that this (user) instability may have a lot to do with some of
>the stacker problems that people have. I guess that if you let the PC
>sit for a while before switching off, then the "timed" flush sorts
>things out too.

Aye, 'tis true that the "three-fingered salute" in the middle of an app will
giving you the "Updating allocation map..." message.  I've also encountered
a "volume damaged" (aka "you should have backed up your hard drive, dummy)
error on doing so--twice.  After the second time I scrapped Stacker and
have had no more bad sectors arise (version 2.0).

What happens when a program hangs up, though?  You can't exit normally and
gracefully.  You have no choice but to reset the machine.  I always tried to
avoid needing to turn the machine off while programs were actively running,
but it wasn't possible 100% of the time.


Tim Irvin
******************************************************************************
Microsoft Windows--from the folks who brought you EDLIN.