Laurent;

Reading your post it sounds like drive letters are still moving around. This
could cause problems with the Startup.mar finding correct information. No, when
you BOOT your cache is cleared, you shouldn't be able to start Guide without the
CD in the drive unless you've installed it somewhere. Check your Guide Shortcut
path,,, and the paths drive letter. If your CD drive becomes a different letter
GUIDE cannot find the drive, or finds a wrong drive as defined in the Startup.mar
and somehow starts Guide with the information that required to be installed on
your hard drive.

I don't remember why but back in '94 I too had problems with my ZIP drive.
My final solution was to hardcode the ZIP drive's drive letter as H:\ I used the
technique I posted earlier. I can't remember for sure but something tells me
there's something in Windows which tells 'zip' type drive/s to be inserted into
the drive strings 'prior' to CD drives. Or, it could be the iowatch.exe that does
it, dunno. Anyway, have you tried labeling your ZIP drive with a "higher"
character than your CD drive?

Remember when you hardcode label a drive;
1) your ZIP drive must be attached and powered on 'prior' to BOOT
2) all three positions in Device Manager > Settings have the same character
a) Drive Letter Assignment
b) Start Drive Letter
c) End Drive Letter
d) you should not make any changes to the SCSI section of Device Manager
3) other drives should not be labeled or include the hardcoded letter of your
ZIP drive
a) that's why I suggest using a higher drive letter than your CD drive
b) you could even label the ZIP drive Z:\
4) you can always go back and change the settings again or return to initial
settings...joe :)

Laurent Zimmermann wrote:

> Thank you to Kevin and Joe for their explanations about the drive letters.
>
> Concerning the star blops, I have made some tests
> Using Guide 7, version of 6 december 2001
> Startup.mar contains "18 drive e:\"
> No Guide 7 CD ROM in drive
> No copy on the hard disk
> The Zip drive is external SCSI
>
> 1. Zip drive connected and powered (letter e:)
> No Zip disk inserted
> Guide displays the "blob stars" that Stuart described.
>
> 2. Then I unplugged the power cord
> Zip drive still present in the Windows Explorer
> and in [Control Panel | System | Device Manager]
> Guide seems to cause the system to hang.
> Killing Guide with Alt-Ctrl-Del work well.
>
> 3. Made a refresh of the Device Manager
> No more Zip drive neither in Windows Explorer nor in Device Manager
> After the launch of Guide, the system stops responding :-( => Reset
>
> 4. After reboot, CD-ROM drive has letter E:
> Guide displays the "blob stars" (no Guide CD-ROM present)
>
> In never saw the "Guide needs the CD" message with Guide 7.
>
> Since the PC just rebooted, is it possible that the caches still contain
> pertinent informations ?
>
> I have no experience of "blob stars" with Guide 8 because it is installed on a
> faster computer which has no Zip drive. But just for testing purposes, I have
> connected an USB Zip 250 drive. The letter assigned to the Zip (F:) comes
> after the one assigned to the CD drive (E:). So whether it is connected or
> not, there shoud be no problem for Guide.
>
> Whatever the content of the line 18 in startup.mar, if it does not point to a
> valid place where Guide can find his data, the "Guide needs the CD" message is
> displayed.
>
> About the caches not updated, it makes me think about the option "Auto insert
> notification": I ran Guide with the CD in the drive, closed Guide, inserted
> another CD and ran Guide again. The content of the CD was read and Guide
> recognized it was not "his" CD that was in the drive.
>
> So I was unable to reproduce the display of "blob stars" with Guide 8, even
> with the initial version of the CD-ROM and I don't know what I could do to
> reproduce them again with Guide 8.
>
> Cordialement
>
> Laurent Zimmermann
> http://users.skynet.be/zmn/cab
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bill J Gray <pluto@...>
> To: <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 2:36 AM
> Subject: [guide-user] Star blobs/PA/2000 YE44
>
> > Hi Stuart, Laurent,
> >
> > As Laurent suggested, this does sound like a sort of behavior Guide
> > used to have when started without a CD in the drive, and when nothing
> > had been installed to the hard drive. I say "used to have", because I
> > fixed this a while back in Guide 7. You mention use of the current
> > version, so you shouldn't see this problem; if you run Guide without
> > the CD and without anything installed to the hard drive, you should get
> > a "Guide needs the CD" message.
> >
> > But there is one possible "gotcha" here, something I'd not considered
> > until both of you mentioned use of Zip drives. Guide starts up and looks
> > for two files, one from CD 1 and one from CD 2. My guess is that Guide
> > _is_ finding at least the test file from CD 1, perhaps because it's still
> > in the Zip drive's cache. (This used to be a real headache with some
> > CD drives. You could swap CDs, do a "directory" command, and see
> > files from the previous CD. Only when the cache ran out would the
> > device be bright enough to reload the file tables.)
> >
> > Does this sound as if it might cover the misbehavior you're seeing?
> >
>
>
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--
"May You Go Among The Imperishable Stars"

Joe Mize
http://sfo.sciastro.net
mailto:jmize@...
Current Moon Phase
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