[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Un-Movable Files

TMCLELLA@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA (Tim Mclellan) (10/31/90)

After installing ACCPAC BPI accounting package, I wanted to optimize my
fixed disk using Norton's Speed Disk.  To my surprise, every EXE file in
the ACCPAC directory and subdirectories was identified as "un-movable".
 
A little investigation and playing around found that copying the files
to a different named directory made no difference.  When I renamed all
the EXE files to EQE, that did it - they could be moved in Speed Disk.
 
What I'm wondering is what attribute allows ACCPAC to designate some
files as un-movable, yet by changing their extension, they become
normal files?
 
Any hints would be gratefully appreciated.

fisher@sc2a.unige.ch (11/23/90)

In article <1088@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA>, TMCLELLA@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA
(Tim Mclellan) writes:
> After installing ACCPAC BPI accounting package, I wanted to optimize my
> fixed disk using Norton's Speed Disk.  To my surprise, every EXE file in
> the ACCPAC directory and subdirectories was identified as "un-movable".
>  
> [...]

Same thing occured at a friends with the file `LH113C.EXE', a self-extracting
archive containing the lharc archiver.  It turned out that the EXE header
was in some fashion considered non-standard by Norton's `speed disk'.  You
must understand that any program reorganizing clusters on your disk should
be very carefull about possible protection schemes involving "special" files
(read-only, system, *.com files renamed as *.exe, bad tracks, whatever...).

I understand that these things are now more or less illegal in the US (because
this is considered potentially dangerous to the user's data, and rightly so),
alas we still have have a lot of this crap going on in Europe.

I guess the only solution is to rename the files before optimizing!

Markus Fischer, Dpt. of Anthropology, Geneva CH.