Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 09:35:33 +0300 (IDT) From: Eli Zaretskii To: "Mike A. Harris" cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: Exclusive access to drive In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Precedence: bulk On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, Mike A. Harris wrote: > 1) CHKDSK is WRITTEN specifically to work WITH W95, by > syncronizing with 95's internal drive caching, etc and locks > parts of the disk. If so, it should also run and do the same from a DJGPP program. And btw, the person who started this thread said that they tried to lock the disk before launching CHKDSK, to no avail. > 2) CHKDSK or W95 is broken and will eventually trash your disk. If so, this could also happen when you run it from the DOS box. > If CHKDSK runs in W95 it is either broken, or it is specifically > designed to do so. If it doesn't run from within a DJGPP app, > then Windows is either protecting it for some reason (probably a > very valid one) or else it or windows has a problem with the fact > that a DPMI program is running it, or the DPMI program has a > problem with it itself. My problem is exactly these ``or''s: I don't understand what is it that Windows could want to protect itself from that doesn't exist when you run CHKDSK from COMMAND.COM in a DOS box. And I don't buy the assumption that CHKDSK is broken, not when we are talking about v7 of the OS (although this might happen, of course). > See above. Running any program that accesses the RAW hard disk > in WRITE mode under a multitasking operating system - wether the > program was written for it or not, and you are asking for > trouble. When you run CHKDSK without the /F switch, it's not a READ-ONLY mode, so nothing bad should happen. At the most, you will see messages that say your disk has errors, but without /F CHKDSK won't repair them. > I'd say that whatever is causing the problem is doing > you a favour. Just to remind you: this thread started when a user (not me) who is writing a shell complained that CHKDSK won't run from his/her shell. I told right there that it is not wise to run CHKDSK from Windows, so we actually agree here. However, I'd be much better off without such ``favours'', thanks a lot! (Btw: does `fsck' on Unix fail to even start when you run it in multi-user mode? I don't think so.)