Tom Ng <ADVI8733@Ryerson.Ca> (06/19/91)
(This probably belongs in a FAQ list...) Does anyone know why msdos sometimes doesn't take you seriously when prompted with 'Abort, Retry, Fail?' on read-errors? Often when I select abort or fail the dos just goes ahead and retry's anyway. I haven't noticed any pattern to discern why it does this. ------------- G'd day, ay! Bitnet:advi8733@Ryerson.Ca Usenet:...!tmsoft!ryescs!tng -Tom Ng "Insanity is merely a higher state of awareness."
rschmidt@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (roy schmidt) (06/21/91)
In article <91170.021723ADVI8733@Ryerson.Ca> ADVI8733@Ryerson.Ca (Tom Ng) writes: > Does anyone know why msdos sometimes doesn't take you seriously >when prompted with 'Abort, Retry, Fail?' on read-errors? Often >when I select abort or fail the dos just goes ahead and retry's >anyway. I haven't noticed any pattern to discern why it does this. THis is more likely a manifestation of the application (or even DOS utility) that called the "read from disk" routine. If the application designer has not done a good job, then the only response the application can handle on an abort is to continue the program, and if the program is in a loop which is terminated once the data has been read, then it will try to read the data again, regardless of the response you gave the "read from disk" routine. The variations range from an endless loop condition (forcing you to reboot) to "x" number of retries before the program goes on to other routines. Some applications do trap the error code from the disk routine and react accordingly...unfortunately this is not the majority of apps.... -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roy Schmidt | #include <disclaimer.h> Indiana University | /* They are _my_ thoughts, and you can't Graduate School of Business | have them, so there! */
noesis@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (60276000) (06/21/91)
has to do with flawed programming & which command in DOS you're using
ex: for DIR first the FAT is read. if you <abort> of <fail> then it
will not attempt to re-read to FAT, but will continue with the
next step instead of crashing back to the prompt. the next step
would be read the root dir. this continues for quite a while.
apparently no one ever tried to <abort> or <fail> during beta testing.