GRDUW for Windows 95. Version 1.5 User Manual. The following is a brief description of the program functionality. GRDUW was specifically written for Windows 95 and doesn't work on Windows NT ! When you run the shareware version of the program the About dialog box will appear showing you the program version and my address to allow you to register as soon as possible. Pressing the return key or clicking the OK button you enter into the program. The program is a property sheet dialog box with the following pages: - DupDisk - Format - Repair - Boot - Info In every page you have into the upper right corner the combo box that allow you to select the logical drive you want to work with. Changing the pages this drive is keep aligned except when you go into the DupDisk page in which only the removable drives are allowed (only the diskette drives). Follows a description for each page: DupDisk Page. In this page you have a source group and an image group. Also at the bottom right corner you will find two buttons. The first time you enter this page only the button Read Source disk into the source group and the button Load disk image into the image group are enabled. This means that you must read a disk or a disk image from your hard drive into the program memory before you can do anithing else. Pressing the Read Source disk button start the diskette read. If you haven't put the source diskette the program ask it and warning you if the source diskette isn't write protect. While reading a progress dialog will appear showing you the percent of diskette already read. As an alternative if you have previously saved a diskette image into your hard drive you can quickly load it by pressing the Load disk image button. When one of these operations is done the other tree button will become active. You can now compare another diskette with the in memory disk image to see if it is equal or not. You can write the memory disk image into another media of the same type as many times you want: only insert a new diskette and press the Write Destination Disk button. Also you can save the diskette image into another drive (typically an hard disk) to create the diskette copy later. When you have read a diskette the source group show you the volume label and the serial number in order to allow you to identify the diskette image present into the program memory. Format Page. This page allow you to select a diskette media type with the auto option to don't care about it and leave the program to establish it. There are the standard 720Kb and 1.44Mb format and two additional non standard formats. The 1.72Mb format is a special format recognized by windows 95 when you use the explorer or any other windows shell. Win 95 is able to read and write to this kind of disk media but isn't able to format it. The other format is the non-standard format used by Microsoft to distribute its software packages. This format is idetified as 1.68Mb or MSDMF media type. The number of sectors of the MSDMF type is equal to the 1.72Mb type; the difference is that that the MSDMF format only allow 16 files/directories on the disk root, while the 1.72Mb adding two more tracks to the disk surface allow a root directory similar to that of a 1.44Mb diskette. You can also select the format mode: - standard: the classic MS-DOS format mode (interleave 1 and skew 0 ). - optimized: to have the best interleave and skew factor in order to speed up the read/write operations on the diskette. The option "Standard" become "Low level" when you select a logical drive that is a fixed disk. In this case also all the media options became disabled except the auto option. You can also select if you want a full format or a quick format. The full format perform the low level recreation of the disk tracks re-generating the sectors sync and others low level signals. The quick format only rewrite the system area in order to free up all the disk space. The advantage of this option is the speed, while the full format is safer. You also have the option to verify that the format procedure was succesfully completed. To enable this check set the "Verify format" check box. When the program has completely formatted the disk it start a verify procedure. During the disk verify, the program is able to mark as BAD the tracks that cannot be read back leaving you a safe usable diskette. This additional operation take a little time and is recommended to avoid problems when you copy the data on the disk. To finish you can assign a volume label to the disk by writing a string into the Volume label edit box. Repair Page. This page allow you to try a disk repair procedure when you find disk errors. The page is divided into 3 groups. Selecting the stop option on all the 3 groups allow you to chek only the disk and be advised if any error is found. On boot sector error. In this group you can select to regenerate the boot sector or to stop if an error is found. With the first option a new standard boot sector is written to the disk if the actual boot sector is in error. This option can be very usefull when you have a disk virus into the boot sector. On sys area error. In this group you have 3 options. The first option allow you to try to reformat the track in error. This is the only valid option you have to try to recover a disk damaged into the system area. The second option demand to the scandisk program the difficult work of repair this kind of error. The last option simply inform you of the error and stop the procedure. On data area error. In this group you have 4 options. This area has the greater probability of repair success. With the first option: "try to format", the program read in the track in error (doing the best to read all the sectors in error) and then proceed trying to format many times the track. If the format succeed the program write back the data it has been able to read, otherwise it terminate. The second option "Mark track BAD" allow you to read in the clusters (as may clusters that fit into a track) in error and move them into a safe disk data area and the mark these clusters as BAD so that the file system never use them. The third option: "Mark cylinder BAD" is very similar to the previous one with the difference that instead of a disk track it take a cylinder. The cylinder is a track for all the heads i.e. is a data area greater then the previous one. This option can be usefull on hard disk when a complete disk area is damaged and then it is safer don't use the whole area and not pieces of it. The last option as before will warn you and stop the procedure. When you have selected the desired behaviour of the program you can press the start button to begin the repair procedure. Boot This page allow you to check if the boot sector is damaged or infected by a virus. pressing the button "Check" you start the boot sector read and check. The check results are collected into the "Results:" list box showing you all the not compliances the procedure will find. If you want you can recreate the boot sector rewriting it with a safe copy generated by the program by pressing the "Regenerate" button. Info This page allow you to collect many usefull disk informations. By pressing the Get Info button the program fill the Drive Media Informations list box. Epilog. I know that this manual is very short. I have keep it so small because the program is very simple to use so that you don't need this manual anymore. However if you have any question don't esitate to mail me a letter with you questions. Please remember to indicate your registration number ! Only registered user will receive an answer ! My address is: Roberto Grassi Casella Postale (P.O.BOX) 48 10196 Leuman (TO) ITALY.