I tried booting my "new" SpinRIte 6.1 Release 4 diskette on my Thinkpad 760XD today. FreeDOS booted, the 6.1 splash screen was shown, then the screen blanked except for the blinking cursor in the top left corner, the floppy was read briefly (I think twice), then it just stopped. I waited for some time before giving up. I then booted my trusty old SpinRite 6.0 diskette, and it started up fine just as it has done many times in the past. So this is not a "big deal", I can just keep running SpinRite 6.0 on this old laptop and use 6.1 on most of my other machines. Is there some way of "tracing" the startup to determine where 6.1 is failing on the Thinkpad 760XD? The 760XD is an old chunky Thinkpad from 1997 with a 166Mhz Pentium MMX CPU, so it is most certainly "legacy only".
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BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
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You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.
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RickE, Welcome to the forums!
The culprit here is the initial Splash screen. On a very few systems (such as yours) the graphic system is simply unable handle the graphics switching required to display the Splash screen and then return to text mode for SpinRite 6.1 to to run..
The fix is trivial. Just perform a simple edit on the CONFIG.SYS file to remove the SPLASH line. Save the modified CONFIG.SYS and reboot. SpinRite 6.1 will now run without further ado!
The initial blue SPLASH screen is merely cosmetic eye candy that adds NO functionality to SpinRite 6.1 whatsoever.
The culprit here is the initial Splash screen. On a very few systems (such as yours) the graphic system is simply unable handle the graphics switching required to display the Splash screen and then return to text mode for SpinRite 6.1 to to run..
The fix is trivial. Just perform a simple edit on the CONFIG.SYS file to remove the SPLASH line. Save the modified CONFIG.SYS and reboot. SpinRite 6.1 will now run without further ado!
The initial blue SPLASH screen is merely cosmetic eye candy that adds NO functionality to SpinRite 6.1 whatsoever.
Yep, REMing out the SRSPLASH.SYS in CONFIG.SYS did the trick. I let the RAM test run for about 8 minutes, then selected level 3 testing, then pressed the ENTER key to begin SpinRite operation, the program hit the floppy disk for several seconds then hung. Color me sad, but not mad, I'll just continue to use SpinRite 6.0 on my really old computers.
Do you have Data Logging turned on? If so, please turn it OFF (The "View or Change Settings" menu, option 2). There is likely inadequate room on a floppy for SRLOGS files.
I didn't turn on Data Logging, it would be silly to do that when I have write-protected my diskette. I'm trusting that no genius-minus decided to turn on Data Logging by default (but if they did, re-educate them on what "safe defaults" means). I started doing an hour-plus operation on my 760XD after my last post, so it will be a while before I can check the Data Logging status.
Yes, I see that Data Logging ON is the default setting, AND I don't see a command line option to force it off. It appears that the code is not checking for non-writeable media when trying to open the log and just hangs (ouch!). That's going to be an issue for the ISO I made and burned to a CD-R, I have to remember to change that setting every time I run SpinRite 6.1. I guess that's not the end of the world, but it sure is inconvenient. Might I suggest that an upcoming release of SpinRite 6.1 include a command line option for forcing Data Logging OFF, then I can modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT on my diskette and make a bootable CD-R using that modified diskette as the data source.
You could disable write-protection, load SpinRite and disable logging, then re-enable write-protection. SpinRite 6.1 saves settings in a .CFG file.
For just a brief time, I thought I had an easy way out of this: The program is supposed to save your settings when you exit, so I write-enabled my diskette, changed settings to what I want, and tried to EXIT. The floppy drive was on for several seconds, then the program hung again! A little more testing showed that the program will exit successfully if I don't make any changes to the default settings, otherwise it will try to write the diskette, fail and hang (regardless of the write protect setting on the diskette). I guess I'll have to try my CD-R on a newer machine and see if it has any better error handling. Obviously this would not be a problem if I was running SpinRite 6.1 from a USB stick. I also made a USB stick, I'll have to try that and see if it will save my configuration choices. I'm starting to feel like an unpaid product tester.
OK, if my USB stick run saves the settings, presumably I could copy the .CFG file to my diskette and get roughly the desired result.You could disable write-protection, load SpinRite and disable logging, then re-enable write-protection. SpinRite 6.1 saves settings in a .CFG file.
Yes. And if your computer is unable to boot from USB, you could manually edit the config file.
I also recommend contacting GRC support. It sounds like your specific hardware is encountering a bug when trying to run SpinRite from a floppy. I haven't run 6.1 from a floppy since the alpha versions, but it worked on several of my computers back then. I doubt Steve will ever update 6.1 again, but he should still know about this issue.
Just for giggles, I ran SpinRite 6.0, changed a setting (level 4 instead of level 2), tried to exit with that diskette write-protected, and it also hung, so this has been a long-standing issue with diskette runs. I never noticed because I was happy with the SpinRite 6.0 default settings.
Things are looking up... I copied SPINRITE.EXE to the Thinkpad hard drive, ran SpinRite 6.1, changed the two settings I wanted: 1 to Level 3, 2 to No, closed the program. It wrote a 12 byte SPINRITE.CFG file, not text readable - I copied that to my diskette, and now SpinRite 6.1 will run with the "defaults" that I desire from the diskette. Now I just need to make a new CD-R with the bootable diskette contents, and I should be a relatively happy camper.
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