Re: Fw: help

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Irene Silverman  on Sun, 26 Jun
2005 08:52:28 -0400


> Having spent countless hours on a profile

probably with lots of disk reads/writes to the floppy, too. Floppies are
notoriously susceptible to failure when used heavily -- I would never keep
anything essential on a floppy, except maybe as a backup. It sounds like she's
overwritten her original "profile file" (whatever that is) filename with a
directory listing -- she doesn't say whether it is a XyWrite dir listing or a
DOS dir listing, which would be important autopsy info for understanding what
went wrong.

She should get out of XyWrite and drop to DOS to do her investigating. She
needs a file viewer -- LIST is good, Notepad will do in a pinch, & the TYPE
command is the last resort. Do a DIR command on the floppy, then use e.g. TYPE
commands to look at each raw file on the floppy that is listed by the DIR
command, and don't assume that you know the content of any file -- look at
everything. "TYPE FILENAME1", "TYPE FILENAME2", etc etc -- look at *all* files
on the floppy. Don't *write* to the floppy anymore until she determines
whether her file still exists.

If she can't find her file, there's a remote possibility that it, or some part
of it, remains on the disk, and could be rescued with an UnErase utility, but
judging from the tenor of her msg, that might be too technical. 

The file is likely toast, but without being able to look at it... The real
lesson: write master files to the hard disk. Writing to floppies is idiotic.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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