Conference hydra::amiga_v1

5223.0. "Startup sequence problem" by CADSYS::MURATORI (Rich Muratori, SEG/CAD, HLO2) Wed Nov 20 1991 13:55

I am entering this note on behalf of my son, who is the Amiga expert in
my household:

Rich

-----------------------------------

   I have experienced problems with my startup-sequence under
both Workbench 1.3 and 2.0.  I have concluded that it is not
a virus (unless it's a brand new one), because neither VirusX
nor ZeroVirusIII have picked up any viruses in the system.
However, it may be some problem with the LAMER virus as
explained below.  The following is an account of the problem
and the events connected to it.

   Not long ago, ZeroVirusIII performed a scan of all the files
on my entire hard drive.  It was, for the most part, clean
except for a trace of the LAMER virus which ZeroVirusIII
proceeded to remove.  ZeroVirusIII proceeded to inform me
that this program called itself from your startup-sequence
and the call looked like a blank line if viewed from an
ASCII reader.  So, to make sure everything was okay, I left
ZeroVirusIII and entered Cygnus Editor Professional.  I
CD'd via the file requester to the S: directory, but my
startup-sequence wasn't listed.  I pushed the screen to the back
and opened a shell to examine the S: directory.  No startup-
sequence was listed by a dir.  However, the startup-sequence
is TYPEable from the Shell, and LOADable from an ASCII viewer.
This puzzled me so I tried to copy the startup-sequence from
S: to RAM:  It worked fine, and a dir of RAM: showed the
startup-sequence as being fine.  So, I tried copying the
file back to the S: directory. The copy command seemed to work
fine,  but a subsequent dir of S: again showed no startup-sequence.
I then tried every way possible to get at the startup-sequence.
I used Diskdoctor, Quarterback Tools, the Rename command,
but to no avail.  Because I can still boot my machine and
modify my user-startup, I forgot about the problem and wrote
it off as a 2.0 bug or quirk.

  Recently, however, I booted my 3000 in 1.3 mode and I
had a SERIOUS problem.  Keep in mind that the 1.3 system
runs from a different partition on the hard drive, so it
is not the same S: directory or startup-sequence.  After
loading my startup-sequence into TurboText, I made some minor
changes, and tried to save the file.  This time, I got a
DOS error number which is not even listed in the TurboText
manual.  Subsequent tries under CygnusEd produced the same
undocumented error:  Dos Error 0.  So, I used the shell
to look at the 1.3 S: directory and found no startup-sequence.
I now cannot copy, rename, or create a new file with the
name startup-sequence in the 1.3 S: drawer.  This is an
annoying problem for me, because without any startup-sequence
I cannot boot my machine automatically!  I have to hand
type in a startup sequence or manually execute one from
a script.

   Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

- Casey Muratori

    Possibly the S directory is corrupted, making some files invisible.
    I recommend analyzing your disk with Quarterback Tools---it is good
    at finding corruption problems, and sometimes fixing them.  Before
    doing the analysis be sure to backup everything.
    
    If all else fails format the partition and restore it from your backup.
    Be sure to use a file-by-file backup---just backing up track-by-track
    and restoring won't fix anything.
        John Sauter