🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello, everybody!

The following is part of a posting to one of the newsgoups. I am
submitting here the relevant part, which I believe to be of interest
to the readers of VIRUS-L/comp.virus.

Regards,
Vesselin

Subject: MSDOS 5.0 chkdsk WARNING!
Date: 30 Oct 92 19:12:47 GMT
From: john@attcan.UUCP (John Benfield)

[stuff deleted]

(This is NOT an official report from Microsoft or AT&T. It's just
 my own friendly posting to try to help)

Program: chkdsk
O/S    : MS-DOS 5.0

Symptoms: Users running chkdsk with the /f option have 256 copies
          of the FAT written onto their hard disk starting at the
          first copy of the FAT. The result being that all directory
          information and a significant amount of the data in the data 
          area are irrecoverably destroyed.

Affected users: Any users using 256 sector FAT's. 

How to tell if you're at risk: 

          Run chkdsk WITHOUT the '/f' option and check the 
          "Total allocation units on disk". If this number is
          more than 65280, you're at risk. DO NOT USE CHKDSK TO
          CORRECT ANY DISK PROBLEMS if this is the case. You'll
          trash your disk.

Solution: Call Microsoft and request the 5.00A upgrade. They know
          about the problem and they've fixed it. They've also done
	  some diddling with the following programs: (though I don't
          know what they did to them.)

	deloldos.exe	diskcomp.com	diskcopy.com
	doshelp.exe	dosshell.exe	dosswap.exe
	emm386.exe	expand.exe	format.com
	himem.sys	mirror.com	qbasic.exe
	recover.exe	setver.exe	undelete.exe
	xcopy.exe

Apparently, the only place that Microsoft posts information of
known bugs is on CompuServe in something they called the Microsoft
Knowledgebase. If there's anyone out there who regularly reads this
forum on CIS, maybe you'ld like to volunteer to cross-post to this
group? 

[stuff deleted]

- -- 
Vesselin Vladimirov Bontchev          Virus Test Center, University of Hamburg
Tel.:+49-40-54715-224, Fax: +49-40-54715-226      Fachbereich Informatik - AGN
< PGP 2.0 public key available on request. > Vogt-Koelln-Strasse 30, rm. 107 C
e-mail: bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de    D-2000 Hamburg 54, Germany