From: Bob Jonkman Organization: SOBAC Microcomputer Services To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 01:04:37 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Recovering a STACVOL.DSK X-Confirm-Reading-To: bjonkman AT sobac DOT com X-pmrqc: 1 X-PM-Encryptor: QDPGP, 4 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12a) Message-ID: <2F121C2420@clarke.sobac.com> Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi all: Some time a go I installed DR-DOS v7.02 on my mother-in- law's computer in order to be able to use Stacker on her 55 Mbyte hard drive (it's an eight-year-old computer, when 55 Mbytes was a big deal). Worked like a charm, until a power failure this past weekend. Now, no matter what I try, I can't get Stacker to load. The computer boots OK (mostly), but shows as drive C: the actual hard drive, not the stacked drive. No sign of a D: STACVOL.DSK is still intact. Running STACKER.EXE always gives the error "Stacker not loaded", no matter what the parameters. I suspect it's to do with a corrupt STACKER.INI file -- the one in the root directory is 55 bytes in size, but contains only three block characters when viewed with the "type" command. In contrast, STACKER.INI on one of my computers contains =====Start Quote===== /I- /P=1 /F=32 /DIR=C:\DRDOS C:\STACVOL.DSK,SW =====End Quote===== While DOSBOOK alludes to the existence of STACKER.INI, it says, more or less, "you should never need to modify this file yourself". Is STACKER.INI documented somewhere? Is there an exhaustive list of command switches? Can I re-construct STACKER.INI by hand for her computer? Any other hints on recovering the stacked volume? Which are the actual files to get loaded during the boot process? What's STACLOAD.EXE? (.COM?) STACKER.BIN? STACHIGH.SYS? I think I figured out the difference between STACKER.EXE (the User Interface for regular Stac operations on the Hard Drive) and STACKER.COM (the utility for un-STACking floppy drives). Just as a matter of interest, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are still OK. Of course, they generate a pile of errors when the stacked volume isn't loaded, but that's expected. I've renamed them and substituted minimal files, just enough to boot. As I understand, I don't need to list device drivers for the Stacker components to load. I've tried running the SETUP from the DR-DOS v7.03 distribution. At first it said I needed some 600 Kbytes to run SETUP, but when I freed up that much space (by judiciously deleting some of the files in C:\DRDOS) it wanted some 6 Mbytes to perform a complete install. Of course, all the space on the disk is used up by STACVOL.DSK... I've restored the C:\DRDOS files by manually PNUNPACKing them from the v7.03 distribution (leaving me with a mixture of v7.02 and v7.03 files -- thank goodness DR-DOS isn't as particular about version numbers as MS-DOS!) Any hints gratefully appreciated! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.0.2 -- QDPGP 2.60 Comment: Ensure authenticity and non-repudiability iQCVAwUBOCZn8aLoCveuM+mJAQG3qwQA3IU/dRDNxdu0ocr7r5CHNSyxC2fqeN+9 cz0o+uXY8A6+/B1qg043mLfeyZLbBrM1D10P1FPH0xhSxk3/Fy+BdslbIpf+ho4B kb2EhB3QjlJDDFwr58wcpquQYiOTsJVwmRiZmkny6CrWmHp3ofCSQwSXB+IWsR7Y wW2dnShCI1Q= =Ab44 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ===== Bob Jonkman Voice: +1-905-793-4537 SOBAC Microcomputer Services E-Fax: +1-603-308-6118 4 Gold Pine Court mailto:bjonkman AT sobac DOT com Brampton ON Canada L6S 2K6 Networking -- Office & Business Automation -- Consulting RSA Fingerprint: 9FAF A6AC B567 BC10 8973 7CF0 CB27 0317 RSA ID: 0xAE33E989 mailto:bjonkman AT sobac DOT com?subject=send_key Web site temporarily at http://www.geocities.com/bob_jonkman