[comp.os.msdos.apps] WP 5.1 file weirdness after Norton file recovery???

sutton@lamar.colostate.edu (Richard Sutton) (05/21/91)

OK, our secretary managed to scramble the FAT & root directory on a
floppy via Word Perfect 5.1 . (Apparently switching to another floppy
for Document #2 is bad news!) Anyway, I managed to match the clusters
with a hardcopy of the file & get a file that WP can read/write.

BUT, at the end of the final cluster is some random trash not in the 
original file. When you arrow down to the bottom of the file, WP takes
you back to the top!! Doing a Cntrl-PgDwn at the end of the document
throws you down to pg 163 or so, and it's a 7 page document!

I looked at another WP file to see what Hex character ended the file then
tried this at the end of my problem file. Still problems!

Has anyone encountered this and found a solution?

Thanks,

Rich

fisher@sc2a.unige.ch (05/23/91)

In article <15056@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, sutton@lamar.colostate.edu (Richard Sutton) writes:
> [disk crash...]
> BUT, at the end of the final cluster is some random trash not in the 
> original file. When you arrow down to the bottom of the file, WP takes
> you back to the top!! Doing a Cntrl-PgDwn at the end of the document
> throws you down to pg 163 or so, and it's a 7 page document!
> 
> I looked at another WP file to see what Hex character ended the file then
> tried this at the end of my problem file. Still problems!
> 
> Has anyone encountered this and found a solution?

I had similar problem when I wanted to get a quick-and-dirty PTR manual:
use a LPT1 redirector, and do a printscreen on every possible help-screen...
The resulting file had some control characters, which caused the same problem
(especially one the the ctrl-X, Y, Z or [).  I simply used a binary editor to
convert *all* control characters to `?' (use any standard 7-bit ascii char,
not one of the extended chars...).  Everything went just fine after that.
In fact, you only risk to loose some characters of the extended character
tables or some formatting code...

Looking at some WP files, there seems to be no special ending section.  Your
problem is probalby just that the file-size entry in the directory is too long,
resulting in WP trying to interpret the garbage following the regular file.

Good luck,

Markus G. Fischer, Dept of Anthropology, Geneva CH       fisher@sc2a.unige.ch