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Anneimosity
10 Posts
0
963
August 14th, 2001 11:00
Phantom B drive! Please HELP!
My pc has been used for nefarious deeds by other people -- and though I scrubbed the drive (not using the lame fdisk but a real low-level format) and installed a new OS, I still have this funky problem and some funky files....
The problem is there is a B: drive somewhere on my computer. It doesn't show in Bios, but if you drop to MS-DOS (and this worked w/ the former OS as well) and type
C:\ cd B:
You get a blue MS-DOS screen that says "insert disk into B:\and hit enter
If you hit enter, my actual floppy A drive starts running -- but won't read anything that's placed in there.
The files that stayed are "mostly" files in folders for "playing games" (no actual games exist) and "play music." Opened in wordpad, these files are huge regedit files.
They are all placed on creation date unknown, as well.
Do I have to drain the C-MOS? What can I do to make my computer user friendly just to me and not "mr-write-to-cmos"?
Thanks
Message Edited on 08/14/01 07:53AM by Anneimosity
The problem is there is a B: drive somewhere on my computer. It doesn't show in Bios, but if you drop to MS-DOS (and this worked w/ the former OS as well) and type
C:\ cd B:
You get a blue MS-DOS screen that says "insert disk into B:\and hit enter
If you hit enter, my actual floppy A drive starts running -- but won't read anything that's placed in there.
The files that stayed are "mostly" files in folders for "playing games" (no actual games exist) and "play music." Opened in wordpad, these files are huge regedit files.
They are all placed on creation date unknown, as well.
Do I have to drain the C-MOS? What can I do to make my computer user friendly just to me and not "mr-write-to-cmos"?
Thanks
Message Edited on 08/14/01 07:53AM by Anneimosity
kamikaasje
196 Posts
230
0
Posted August 14th, 2001 17:00
Yes, in fact, this ONLY works this way if you have only a single drive. If you have 2 floppy drives, they are assigned A: and B: like you would normally expect. But on a single floppy drive system, dos EMULATES (fakes) a B: drive, making at appear as if there were actually two. DOS will constantly keep track of the active drive letter assignment to the floppy drive, and when it needs to change between the two (A: to B: or B: to A:) you'll get the message "Insert diskette in drive A: (or B:) and hit Enter when ready...". This is the way you can copy files for diskette to diskette directly on a PC with only a single floppy drive.
kamikaasje
196 Posts
230
0
Posted August 14th, 2001 17:00
The "problem" you describe with the A: and B: drive letters assignments is normal standard DOS behaviour for a PC with a single floppy drive. On a PC equipped with just one drive, DOS emulates a second one. This allows you to copy files from one diskette to another using just a single drive. It is in fact a handy feature of DOS - altough obsolete by now - and certainly nothing to worry about.
Anneimosity
10 Posts
230
0
Posted August 14th, 2001 17:00