Boot Up Problems

[stealth]

I have a machine in front of me, it is running MS DOS v6.22, when you try to boot up it brings up a corrupted screen, basically the screen is that of the MS DOS Startup menu but seriously corrupted, I suspect a virus somewhere but can't find one. I have gone into the DOS directory and have found that something has replaced the A's and B's in the filenames with smiley face's, a white face and a black face. Does anyone know the ASCII codes for these??

[Igor M]

Hi,

It can be the virus work, but it can be the corrupted data on the hard drive either. So try to run scandisk and some antivirus software. As for ASCII codes for these faces, the black one has 01 hex code, and white one - 02h. Usually such faces in file names mean you have directory area corrupted.

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Good luck, Igor M

[stealth]

Looks like it is the Hard Disk, speaking to a colleague, he has seen this before, the filename errors and also the continuing scandisk errors, even a full format and reinstall didn't cure the problem. Looks like the Hard disk is on the way out.

[Reg Patton]

I wouldn't necessarily say that your drive is on the way out. I've had similar problems in the past and managed to get out of them. What you probably need to do is to do a clean boot from a floppy, then low level format your drive. The "FORMAT" command from DOS is not sufficient. You need a special program for this. I have an old one called Speedstor, but it only addresses drives up to 2GB in size.

Caution: if you are going to perform this procedure, you will need to know EXACTLY what your drive parameters are. If you enter them into the formatter incorrectly, you risk considerable and irreversable damage to your drive.