Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1993 14:25:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: JMILLER AT CHESS DOT EISC DOT UTOLEDO DOT EDU
Subject: hard drive partition information lost
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Organization: Edison Industrial Systems Center

Has anyone observed djgpp affecting partition information on a hard drive?
A hard drive was wiped out when running a program compiled with djgpp v 1.09
with a modified go32 distributed with display. The first program issued a
system call to a second compiled program in a while loop waiting for an 
exit status of 0. Due to a program error, the exit status was never 0. 
The resulting tight loop could not be broken with ^C or ^break. Likewise
there was no response with the Vulcan nerve pinch. The machine was reset
via the hardware reset button but would not boot. FDISK indicated that
there was no valid partition information so the drive was reformated.
The system was running 4dos 4.02, emm386, himem.sys and DOS was loaded
high. The disk caching program combi was used with no write caching.
If anyone has thoughts or suggestions as to precautions to be taken to
avoid disasters of this type, they would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance



John Miller