NewDeal Hot Tip 1512

[Hot Tips for...] General Use

Identifying Boot Sector or Diskette Problems

You can start NewDeal with the /log switch by typing
loader /log
at the DOS prompt. You must type "/log" in lower case. The /log parameter causes NewDeal to write out a file named GEOS.LOG in the \privdata folder. GEOS.LOG is a general log file that shows the loading of various hardware drivers and modules of the system.

A side effect of using the /log parameter is that it can help identify boot sector problems or floppy disk errors.

In the case of floppy disks, it'll say things like

Couldn't read boot sector from drive A 03
03 is the error code returned from BIOS
Invalid boot sector on drive A
Missing jump instruction 9A 07 00
9A 07 00 are the three bytes from the start of the boot sector

To make use of this, run NewDeal with the /log switch, stick the disk in the drive, click on the drive icon, let NewDeal complain about the disk, exit NewDeal, then look at the file \PRIVDATA\GEOS.LOG to see what it says.


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Last Modified 2 Mar 1999