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- OS/2 PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
- ------------------------------------------------------
-
- Procedures that should be used on a regular basis to help prevent system
- errors while using OS/2.
-
- SHUTDOWN
- A proper shut down should always be done before powering down the PC.
- By proper shut down, we mean that the window list should be pulled up to
- verify that all applications and windows have been closed, if they are not
- they can be closed by going to the minimized window viewer and closing
- them from there if they were minimized, or closing the window on the
- desktop if they were not.. Once this is done, the desktop menu can be
- brought up by clicking on the right mouse button when the mouse pointer is
- on an empty part of the desktop. From that menu, one would select the
- shutdown option.
-
- CHKDSK.
- A check disk should be run as a preventive or corrective measure once a
- week or even more often on systems that are used extensively. The correct
- way to run a check disk is to first do a proper shutdown then booting off
- the installation diskette and inserting disk one when asked, then escaping
- from the installation procedure at the first welcome screen of disk one by
- hitting the escape key. At that point disk one should be removed and
- replaced by disk two. At the A prompt on disk two the following command
- should be typed,
- chkdsk /f x: Where X is the drive letter where OS/2 has been installed in a
- FAT partition.
- chkdsk /f:3 x: This should be used if OS/2 has been installed on an HPFS
- partition. This procedure is usually the first line of defense against minor
- mishaps under OS/2.
- Check disk might not correct the files with cross linked attributes, to solve that problem
- the procedure to follow is boot from dos, create a temporary directory on the hard drive, copy the cross linked
- file to that directory, delete the original file and copy the file back to the original directory. This should
- be done for all the files with cross linked attributes that check disk did not fix. If most of the files are in
- a specific directory, it will be faster to copy all it's contents to the temporary directory, then deleting all
- the files in the original directory and replace them with the ones in the temporay one.
-
- CTRL SHIFT F1
- If the system had to be rebooted without doing a proper shutdown due to
- an application locking up the system, to prevent that application from
- coming up at the next reboot, the user can use the CTRL SHIFT F1
- combination, holding those key down from the time the machine beeps at
- reboot to when the desktop comes up. If this does not work, it would then
- be necessary to boot off the installation diskette and escaping from the
- installation at disk one and then going to the drive where OS/2 has been
- installed and adding the following line to the config.sys file. SET
- RESTARTOBJECTS=NO and then rebooting the system. Once the desktop
- comes up properly, it would be good to edit the config.sys file again to
- delete that statement .
-
- ALT F1
- The ALT F1 procedure is used to rebuild the desktop when it has been
- corrupted, by corrupted we mean that some of the system icons are missing
- or have been deleted by mistake, or if the icons on the desktop are
- duplicated or behave strangely. The way to use this procedure is very
- similar to the CTRL SHIFT F1 procedure, a correct shutdown should first be
- done, then after rebooting the ALT and F1 keys should be held down after
- the first beep until the user sees a message on the screen saying that the
- config files were recreated. Let us emphasize at this point that if the
- desktop had been modified, most of the modifications will be lost, the
- desktop that will come up is the one that appeared after the installation.
-
- RE-INSTALL
- This procedure should only be used as a last resort after all other measures
- have been tried. Re-installing OS/2 2.0 is a lengthy process that requires
- special attention. It is best to reformat the partition that OS/2 has been
- installed on before re-installing. This is because of the hidden extended
- attribute files on the disk. One can always try to remove all the OS/2 files
- on the system by using a utility that will allows the deletion of system files,
- then re-installing. Before this is done it recomended that the user contact
- IBM technical support line to get advice on the procedure.
-