[comp.windows.ms] FAQ input Pheonix Bios <>Compaq 3.3.1=Wierdness

lev@suned1.Nswses.Navy.MIL (Lloyd E Vancil) (06/03/91)

There is a wierd conflict between compaq dos and
the Pheonix Bios.  I discovered this when trying to use SYSEDIT to
rewrite my WIN.INI.  After a very minor edit I rebooted windows to activate 
the change and Windows came up in its default colors.  Mystified, I pulled
sysedit to check win.ini and found it was EMPTY!  a quick check with fileman
showed 0 bytes in the file.  Fileman copy of the file from a backup reported
a good copy but file length in the destination was still 0 bytes.  The backup
copy of WIN.INI is 8704 bytes.  Even more confused than before I dropped out of
windows and tried a dos copy of the same file.  Dos, COMPAQ 3.3.1, reported 
one file copied but a directory of the destination still showed 0 bytes.  
At this point I was thinking VIRUS...
I was not finished, Scanv showed nothing, PCmap showed nothing, Pcshell
showed nothing.  I tried renaming the backup and copying it and then renaming
it win.ini.  That worked, but when I went to windows still the defaults and
win.ini was still 0 bytes.
Paniced calles to Microsoft and Macafee ensued.  Macafee was helpful but the
upshot was they didn't think there were any viruses outthere aimed at Windows
yet.  Microsoft said I should go back to 3.3.0 dos.
That fixed it.
Wierd huh?
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