rzi@philpav.tds.philips.se (Roman Zielinski) (11/04/90)
Some days ago someone complains that *curse.exe* (i.e. the tool replacing the mouse-arrow by a tiger-cartoon-figure in win 3.0) creates non-movable blocks. I looked a little in my 386-system and noticed that Nortons *sd* reported a number of areas marked by X, *NonMovableBlks*! 2 areas was occupied by the boot staff 1 was msdos.exe (i localized it to \windows directory (its the *old* win 2.x-like executive) 1 was a lost cluster that could be corrected/removed by chkdsk /f The only strange thing is why msdos.exe is nonmovable? - - if I rename it to msdos1.exe the X-marking disappears! - - I fetched a new copy from MSDOS distrib diskettes (You have to use "expand.exe" to uncompress!), and the same occurs - the file is nonmovable only when it has the funny msdos.exe-name... Can someone explain that????? Roman +-------------------------------------------+ _--~--_ | Roman M. Zielinski | ---- / \ ---- | Philips Tele & Data System AB | ---- ( |^^^| ) ---- | S-115 84 Stockholm, Sweden | ---- \ \ / / --- | tel +46 8 782 1373 | |=====| +-------------------------------------------+ |=====| | NET ADDR: rzi@pav.tds.philips.se | |=====| +-------------------------------------------+ ~~U~~
terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr) (11/07/90)
rzi@philpav.tds.philips.se (Roman Zielinski) writes: > The only strange thing is why msdos.exe is nonmovable? > Can someone explain that????? Sure. Norton thinks that anything "strange" is non-movable because it might be copy-protected. MSDOS.EXE is (last I looked) a 1-byte file. Now it is not possible to have a 1-byte EXE. MS-DOS sees an invalid header and loads it as a .COM, but Norton doesn't know about that. If you call Norton, you might ask them about a program called "SDPROBE" which will tell you lots of useful things about why files are not movable, as well as debugging information about SD itself. Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US terry@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381
decomyn@penguin.uss.tek.com (11/08/90)
rzi@philpav.tds.philips.se (Roman Zielinski) writes: >Some days ago someone complains that *curse.exe* (i.e. the tool replacing >the mouse-arrow by a tiger-cartoon-figure in win 3.0) creates non-movable >blocks. > >I looked a little in my 386-system and noticed that Nortons *sd* reported >a number of areas marked by X, *NonMovableBlks*! > >2 areas was occupied by the boot staff >1 was msdos.exe (i localized it to \windows directory (its the *old* > win 2.x-like executive) >1 was a lost cluster that could be corrected/removed by chkdsk /f > >The only strange thing is why msdos.exe is nonmovable? >- - if I rename it to msdos1.exe the X-marking disappears! >- - I fetched a new copy from MSDOS distrib diskettes (You have to use > "expand.exe" to uncompress!), and the same occurs - the file is nonmovable > only when it has the funny msdos.exe-name... > >Can someone explain that????? Most likely, Norton's sd is looking for a combination of System attribute bit and one of the names that the DOS programs can have (IBMBIO, IBMDOS, MSDOS and IO) without checking the file extension (as far as I know, all of these have a .SYS extension). Of course, if the MSDOS.EXE file doesn't have the System bit set, then it might be looking for the name on any executable file. An easy test would be to copy some text file to MSDOS.COM and see if Norton's flags it as unmovable. In any case, it's probably just a bug in the program. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brendt Hess a.k.a. | Disclaimer: Opinions? I don't even work here! Vergil William de Comyn a.k.a. |----------------------------------------------- Payne Hirds | Life is not a zero-sum game: decomyn@penguin.uss.tek.com | don't treat it as such.
korpela@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) (11/08/90)
rzi@philpav.tds.philips.se (Roman Zielinski) writes: >I looked a little in my 386-system and noticed that Nortons *sd* reported >a number of areas marked by X, *NonMovableBlks*! > ... >1 was msdos.exe (i localized it to \windows directory (its the *old* > win 2.x-like executive) > ... >The only strange thing is why msdos.exe is nonmovable? The reason that MSDOS.EXE was listed as unmovable is because of a "feature" of Norton's SD that lets you specify files which will not be moved. MSDOS.EXE is, by default, specified to be unmovable. Apparently Norton wanted to be sure that no one has renamed their MSDOS.COM system file to MSDOS.EXE. (Or perhaps he was afraid that future versions of MSDOS would use system files in EXE format). To allow MSDOS.EXE to be moved you must do (from SD) 1) Set Options 2) Unmovable files 3) Remove the stupid filenames It's as easy as that. Removing a file name from the list of unmovable files will not change the file attributes nor will it make system files movable. /\ korpela@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu Internet /__\ rioch BKYAST::KORPELA 42215::KORPELA DecNet / \ of Chaos korpela%bkyast@ucbjade Bitnet (_____________________ <aka Eric Korpela>