Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Jason Chall wrote:

> You might hookup a voltmeter and watch the voltages while the disk is
> running, especially if you have a meter with a min hold function. The
> voltages might be fluctuating only under load. Might also wiggle ribbon
> cable while transferring data to see if this causes problems.

I have been accumulating evidence that the controller and the linux drive 
(hdb) and CD-ROM drive are okay but the DOS drive (hda) has problems with 
the partition table possibly due to monkey b virus which rewrites the 
partition table (but keeps a copy elsewhere to fool you with).
1.  Spinrite said the four DOS partitions were all larger than the drive.
2.  Fdisk said the first partition was 100% of the drive and the other 
three about 42%.  This adds up to about 220%.
3.  F-prot found no viruses, but it does not find monkey B, an old DOS 
virus that we have had before, which at one point made C: disappear while 
retaining D on a computer.
4.  Linux is so far working perfectly if I boot from a floppy disk and use 
loadlin and kernel on it (bypassing the DOS hd partition table).

Apparently the DOS partition table can affect linux.  I have not mounted 
any DOS drives yet and things are working just fine.  I did several dus in 
a row on the whole linux partition, no problems.

I will go pick up a writeprotected DOS boot disk with killmonk on it from 
a friend who certifies it to be virus-free tomorrow.  If that fails, then 
I am supposed to repartion/reformat the drive, unless someone has other 
ideas on how to fix a partition table.  This is my drive with Win98 and 
ghostscript and WORDVIEW on it and FAT32 and I may just put Win98 on a 
separate computer instead and drag it out when needed to read WORD since I 
now have linux ghostscript and scanner software.

scandisk and f-prot found no problems (other than a corrupt himem.sys - 
would this have messed up the partition table or is it just a symptom not 
a cause?).  I have not tried running DOS programs other than f-prot from 
the hard drive.