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------------------------------------- Master Key -- Disk Management Utility User's Guide To Operation Version 1.5 ------------------------------------- R. P. Gage 1125 6th St. N. #43 Columbus, MS 39701 September 6, 1986 Copyright (c) 1986 by R. P. Gage, all rights reserved. Master Key -- Version 1.5 Copyright (c) 1986 by R. P. Gage, all rights reserved. Unmodified copies of the Master Key program and documenta- tion files may be made for your own use, to give without charge to others, or to distribute within a user group. User groups may charge a fee up to $7.50 (for duplication costs) to distribute Master Key; all other organizations may not charge a fee. Master Key is supported by the users that find it produc- tive. If you have benefited in some way from Master Key or make regular use of it, please license your copy for $20.00. Licensed users will be given a program disk containing a legitimate copy of the Master Key program and documentation and will receive published announcements of future releases of Master Key. The license fee is not an optional matter if Master Key is used in a commercial environment, and must be paid for each copy of Master Key maintained. Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liabilities Both Master Key and this documentation are distributed with- out any express or implied warranties. No warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. You, the user, are advised to experiment and become familiar with Master Key before relying on it. You assume all risk for the use and operation of Master Key, and you shall be responsible for any loss of profits, loss of savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or failure to use Master Key, even if I have been advised of the possibility of such damages. I do not warrant that this documentation is accurate, or that Master Key operates as I have claimed or as I have designed it to operate. By using Master Key, you agree to the above limitations. IBM and PC-DOS are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. TURBO Pascal is a trademark of Borland International, Inc. Table Of Contents Page What is Master Key, and What Can It Do? ................ 1 System Requirements for Master Key ..................... 2 Conventions Used ....................................... 3 Starting Master Key .................................... 4 Selecting a File ....................................... 6 ALTER Modify the attributes of files ............... 7 CHANGE Change the current working drive ............. 8 DISK View and/or edit the current drive ........... 9 ERASE Erase files on the current drive ............. 12 FILE View and/or edit a file on the drive ......... 13 INFO Show information on the current drive ........ 14 LOCATE Look for matching files on the drive ......... 15 RENAME Rename files on the current drive ............ 16 UNERASE Unerase files on the current drive ........... 17 QUIT End Master Key and return to DOS ............. 19 Appendix A Error Messages .......................... 20 Appendix B Program Notes ........................... 24 Appendix C WARNING ! ............................... 25 What is Master Key, and What Can It Do? Master Key is a utility that gives you full access to your MS-DOS disks. It is a collection of features bundled into one easy to use program. It is a disk editor, a file editor, a file manipulator, and more. It gives you the ability to work with individual files or the disk as a whole and lets you perform operations that DOS usually isn't able to provide. Generally, it lets you manipulate everything on your disks easily and with very few restrictions. The current version of Master Key, version 1.5, provides the following functions: -- access any MS-DOS disk available: any size floppy, any size hard disk (up to 32MB), and any sized RAM disk; all with any allowable sector size (128, 256, or 512 bytes). -- edit the disk, on a sector basis, allowing full access in a sequential or random manner to any available sector on the disk. The sector number being edited is displayed at all times. -- edit any file or sub-directory on the disk, on a sector basis, allowing full access in a sequential or random manner to any sector in the file or sub-directory. The relative sector number within the file or sub-directory is displayed at all times. -- change all of the attributes for any file or sub- directory on the disk. This includes R/O, Hidden, System and Archive status as well as the date and time of creation. -- find any file or sub-directory on the disk matching an ambiguous or unambiguous file specification. (ie. *.BAT or WS.COM). -- rename any file or sub-directory on the disk. -- erase any file on the disk. -- unerase any file or sub-directory on the disk that is able to be unerased. -- all file operations allow full access to ANY file or sub-directory in ANY sub-directory. The status of a file or sub-directory is irrelevant. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 1 System Requirements for Master Key To run, Master Key requires an IBM PC/XT/AT or true compatible computer running under MS-DOS version 2.0 or later with at least 128K memory, a monitor using a Monochrome or Color/Graphics display card, and, at a minimum, one floppy disk drive. In addition, Master Key will make use of more memory (if it needs it) and more disk drives (360K or 1.2MB floppy drives, hard disks, or RAM disks). More memory will usually only be required if you are using Master Key with a hard disk that contains many files and sub-directories. Currently, Master Key has successfully run under the TopView and WINDOWS operating environments. In both cases, Master Key runs in a separate window allowing its simultaneous use with other programs. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 2 Conventions Used The conventions used in this document refer mainly to the description of function keys. Each function key, wherever possible, is described by the word or lettering that appears on the key. Where this is not possible, the key is described by its function and is surrounded in brackets. The names I use for these keys and their descriptions are: End the End key (key 1) on the numeric keyboard Enter the enter or return key Esc the escape key (wherever it is located) F1 function key one F2 function key two F3 function key three F4 function key four F5 function key five F6 function key six F7 function key seven F8 function key eight F9 function key nine F10 function key ten Home the Home key (key 7) on the numeric keyboard Ins the Ins (key 0) on the numeric keyboard PgDn the PgDn key (key 3) on the numeric keyboard PgUp the PgUp key (key 9) on the numeric keyboard Tab the tab key <DOWN> the down arrow key on the numeric keyboard <LEFT> the left arrow key on the numeric keyboard <RIGHT> the right arrow key on the numeric keyboard <UP> the up arrow key on the numeric keyboard Additionally, the program itself uses brackets around a key name whenever it tells you to press a key. An example of this exists in the main menu where, in part, a line states, "... then pressing <ENTER>." This wording, where used, means to press the enter key and not the letters <, E, N, T, E, R, and >. The Esc key and Ins key are also referred to in the program in this way (ie., as <ESC> and <INS>). Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 3 Starting Master Key Before running Master Key for the first time, make a working copy of the distribution disk. To do this, copy the contents of the program disk to another floppy or to a sub-directory on your hard disk. When this is done, put the program disk in a secure place or copy it again to share with others. Master Key is started by typing "MK" from the MS-DOS prompt. Doing so loads and runs Master Key without problem, but the com- plete invocation for Master Key from the prompt is: MK [ /DC] [ /DM] [ /DS] [ /DF] [d:] Each of the options, briefly described below, exist to force Master Key to ignore what it has found out about your computer and accept what you really want. All of the functions must have a space in front of the "/", but the case and order of the options is not important. /DC Display Color. Makes Master Key display in a variety of colors, even if it has found a monochrome adapter installed. /DM Display Monochrome. Causes Master Key to display in two "colors". Use this option when using a graphics adapter with a monochrome monitor. /DS Display Slow. Forces Master Key to use DOS to display on the screen. If Master Key is used in a windowing operating environment, this option may be necessary for Master Key to run in a window alongside other programs. /DF Display Fast. Forces Master Key to use direct memory writes to display on the screen. This is a lot faster than using DOS. d: Sets the current working drive to d:. If d: is not a valid drive letter, Master Key sets the currently logged drive to the current working drive. Once started, the main menu is shown. The information in the main menu includes the name of the program (Master Key) and version number (1.5), my copyright, MS-DOS version number, amount of memory available to DOS, number of drives, logical drive letters, current working drive, my name and address, and finally the functions available. If any of this information is missing or seems altered, please inform me of that fact and immediately stop using that copy of of Master Key. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 4 Currently, there are ten functions available from the main menu. They are: ALTER .... Modify the attributes of files. CHANGE ... Change the current working drive. DISK ..... View and/or edit the current drive. ERASE .... Erase files on the current drive. FILE ..... View and/or edit a file on the drive. INFO ..... Show information on the current drive. LOCATE ... Look for matching files on the drive RENAME ... Rename files on the current drive. UNERASE .. Unerase files on the current drive. QUIT ..... End Master Key and return to DOS. These functions are selected by moving the highlighted bar with <UP> and <DOWN> and pressing Enter when the bar highlights the function you want to execute. An alternative, easier method of selecting a function is to type the first letter of the function name (A, C, D, E, F, I, L, R, U, or Q) and then press Enter. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 5 Selecting a File Since a file must be selected for five of the ten functions, choosing what file to work with is vital to using Master Key well. Luckily, choosing a file is very easy and almost doesn't need any description. Before beginning, however, there needs to be some clarifica- tion on what the word "file" means. A file, as viewed by Master Key, is the name and its associated data, just as you expect it to be. However, a sub-directory is also a file, both to DOS and to Master Key and because of that, whenever the word "file" appears within this document, it also refers to a sub-directory. The reverse is not true however; the word "sub-directory" does not also refer to a file. Files and sub-directories are treated as equals in functions that use files. All file functions can be used with sub-directories (with a few exceptions, discussed later). Once you have selected a function that works with a file (ALTER, ERASE, FILE, RENAME, or UNERASE), Master Key checks to see if the current working drive's directory has been read into memory yet. If it hasn't been read into memory, Master Key does so, displaying the following message in the center of the screen: Reading Directory Information... Master Key is potentially a memory hog. When a file has to be accessed for any of these functions, Master Key first reads the drive's ENTIRE directory, keeping ALL files and ALL sub- directory names in memory. Should Master Key run out of memory while reading the drive's directory, it will abort. Plain and simple. Normally, this won't be a problem to most people, but refer to appendix A for help if you run out of memory space. Reading a drive's directory could be very quick or a little slow depending on how many files and sub-directories are on the drive and how quickly the drive operates. In any case, be patient and after a moment, Master Key will be done. When the entire directory is in memory, use the <UP>, <DOWN>, PgUp, PgDn, Home, and End keys to move the highlighted cursor to select the sub-directory you want to use to get files from. <UP> and <DOWN> move the highlighted bar to the previous and next sub-directory, respectively; while PgUp and PgDn move the bar up and down to the previous and next screen of sub- directories. Finally, Home and End move the bar to the first and last sub-directory. Press Enter to accept the highlighted sub-directory or press Esc to abort and go back to the main menu. If you don't have any sub-directories, selecting a sub-directory will be skipped. Then, select the file to work with in a similar manner. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 6 ALTER Modify the attributes of files Pressing Enter when the ALTER function is highlighted gives you the ability to change the attributes, date, and time for any file on the current working drive. After within the ALTER function, select the initial file to work with. Once a file has been selected, you have the chance to change its attributes. To change one of the attributes (Read Only, Hidden, System, or Archive), move the highlighted bar with <UP> and <DOWN> and press Enter to toggle the highlighted attribute on or off. When an attribute is on, it is set or in an active state. Changing the time or date is a little different, but not enough to make it difficult. Once the highlighted bar is over the date or time field, press any key to tell Master Key you want to change the contents of that field. Upon pressing any key when the date or time field is high- lighted, you should notice the presence of a cursor within the highlighted bar. You can now type in the new date or time (only valid numbers are accepted), and move the cursor to a different place using <LEFT> and <RIGHT>. Pressing <UP>, <DOWN>, or Enter ends your changes to the date or time. When you are not actually editing the date or time fields, pressing <LEFT> or <RIGHT> changes the file you are working with to the previous or next file in the directory, respectively. IF the file is changed in this manner (using <LEFT> or <RIGHT>), any changes you made to the previous file ARE NOT SAVED. To save changes made to a file's attributes, date, and time, press the Ins key. An easy way to tell if you have saved a file's attributes is to compare the "Present Attributes" column with the "New Attributes" column. After pressing Ins, they are identical. When you have had enough of changing attributes, pressing Esc will let you leave the ALTER function. After doing this, you are presented the ever familiar main menu and can continue from there as usual. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 7 CHANGE Change the current working drive Pressing Enter with the CHANGE function selected opens up a window on the screen showing something similar to: Enter a letter from A to E to change the current drive. Press <ESC> to abort To change the current working drive, do as it says and type a letter in the range shown. In this example, you could type any of the letters A, B, C, D, or E. Pressing anything else will not be accepted. Once you press one of the valid letters, all stored informa- tion on the current working drive will be cleared, forcing Master Key to start from scratch on the next disk read. If you selected CHANGE by mistake, you can abort the func- tion by pressing Esc. Doing so will keep Master Key from clear- ing all stored information on the current drive. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 8 DISK View and/or edit the current drive For those who have a need or want to see and change what is actually stored on their disks, at a byte level, the DISK function provides that capability. When DISK is highlighted, press Enter and Master Key will go to the first sector on the disk in the current working drive and display it in both hexadecimal and ASCII coded formats. If you select DISK after previously editing the disk, (ie, selecting DISK a second time on the same disk) Master Key will return you to the previous sector you were editing, instead of the first sector on the disk. Once you begin editing the disk, a variety of function keys, arrow keys, movement keys, and others become effective. These keys are all described below. F1 Help. Hitting F1 any time while editing the disk will display a screen summarizing the functions of specific keys. Getting help will not cause any changes previously made to the sector in memory to be lost, so you can ask for help at any time freely. F2 Go to a sector. F2 gives you the ability to go randomly to any allowable sector on the disk. After you press F2, a window will be shown on the screen. Then, you can enter a number in the range shown, or press Esc to abort that function and remain at the sector you are currently at, keeping all changes to the sector stored in memory. F3 Go to start of disk. Anytime that F3 is pressed, Master Key will immediately go to the first sector of the disk, without question. F4 Go to end of disk. Like F3, when F4 is pressed, Master Key will go to the last available sector on the disk. F5 Edit hex display. Pressing F5 will cause the blinking cursor to jump over to the hex side of the display. The cursor will stay at the same point in the sector that it was at previously, it will just go over to the hex side. F6 Edit ASCII display. F6 will, similarly, cause the cursor to jump over to the ASCII side of the display, remaining at the same point within the sector being edited. F7 not used. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 9 F8 not used. F9 Show disk info. Pressing F9 will make Master Key display a screen showing assorted technical information on the current drive. This includes sector and cluster sizes, a few locations of key areas on the drive, and file information if available. Getting information will not cause any changes previously made to the sector in memory to be lost, so you can ask for disk information to be displayed at any time. F10 Press F10, and Master Key will bring you back to the main menu, leaving DISK. <UP> Move up. Pressing <UP>, the up arrow, will move the cursor up one line within the sector. If you are at the first line, the cursor will wrap around to the last line in the sector. <DOWN> Move down. <DOWN>, the down arrow, will move the cursor down one line within the sector. When the cursor is at the last line, <DOWN> will cause the cursor to wrap around to the first line. <RIGHT> Move right. Yes, <RIGHT>, the right arrow key, will make the cursor move to the right. When you are at the last character (or byte) in a line, <RIGHT> will move the cursor to the the first character (or byte) in the next line. <LEFT> Move left. <LEFT>, the left arrow, will move the cursor to the left. When the cursor is at the first character and <LEFT> is pressed, the cursor will wrap around to the last character in the line above the current line. PgUp Go forwards. Hitting PgUp will make Master Key advance and display the next sector available on the disk, making it the current sector being edited. If you are already at the last sector, PgUp will wrap around to the first sector on the disk. PgDn Go backwards. PgDn causes Master Key to go backwards one sector, making the previous sector on the disk the current sector being edited. When the current sector is the first sector, PgDn will wrap around to the last sector on the disk. Home Reread sector. Pressing Home will cause Master Key to reread the current sector into the sector in memory. There are two reasons why you might want to do this. The first is to try to reread a sector when an error happened on the first try. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 10 The other reason is to get a fresh copy of the sector into memory to edit, when you have made too many unwanted changes to the sector in memory. When Home is pressed, Master Key will clear whatever changes you made and display a new working copy of the current sector. End Write sector. End is the ONLY (repeat, ONLY) way any changes made to the sector in memory will get saved. If you move to another sector and forget to write it first, all changes made to the previous sector will be lost. Master Key doesn't remind (harass) you about writing any changes. If you forget to write a sector, it won't be changed, simply put. At all times while editing, the actual sector number being edited is displayed at the bottom of the screen. The first sector number for a disk is always 1, while the last sector number depends on the format and capacity of the disk you are working with. Making a change to any sector is relatively easy. First, locate or go to the sector you want to edit. Move the cursor to the place you want to change something, then type in the changes. Changes are discriminated from what was previously in the sector by being highlighted. Any character, all 256 of them, can be entered while the cursor is in the ASCII part of the display, but only valid hexa- decimal characters can be entered while the cursor is on the hex side of the display. This causes an interesting problem for those of you who are used to making corrections with the back- space key. That method of correcting errors (the backspace key) doesn't work with Master Key, it is just accepted as another character and processed as normal. To make a correction, you have to move the cursor with <LEFT> and type in the correction. Although any character can be entered on the ASCII part of the display, only standard ASCII characters are displayed there. Any other character besides standard ASCII characters are displayed as a period ("."). Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 11 ERASE Erase files on the current drive This function is used to erase any file on the current working drive. Since Master Key doesn't use the DOS erase function to erase files, you can erase any file, even if it is supposed to be read only or hidden. The particular status of any file doesn't make any difference, however, this version of Master Key doesn't allow sub-directories to be erased. After you have selected ERASE, choose the sub-directory to get files from then the initial file to erase. Press Esc if you want to abort and go back to the main menu. When a file is selected, the screen clears and you will see something similar to what is shown below. The file, "OLD-FILE.NAM" will be deleted. Press 'Y' to delete the file. Press 'S' to skip deleting this file. Press <ESC> to abort and exit. If you now press 'Y', the file OLD-FILE.NAM will be erased from the disk. Pressing 'S' (or 'N') will not erase the file. Hitting Esc will put you back at the main menu. Upon pressing 'Y' or 'S', Master Key does its work and then returns you to the file selection screen for the chance to select another file to erase. It will repeat doing this until there are no files left in the directory or you eventually press Esc. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 12 FILE View and/or edit a file on the drive The FILE function is almost identical to the DISK function. The main difference is that FILE gives you the ability to see and edit only what is in a file and not the entire disk. Press Enter when FILE is highlighted, select the directory to get files from and then get the initial file to edit. Press Esc to return to the main menu. After a file is selected, you will be looking at the first sector in the file, ready to edit it. All function keys, arrow keys, movement keys, and other keys act the same way as they did in the DISK functions, with a few minor differences, described briefly below. Except for what is described below, you should read and follow what is said in the description for DISK. F2 Go to a sector. Pressing the F2 key will still let you go randomly to any sector, but only to sectors within the file. You cannot edit any sector outside of the current file. F3 Go to start of file. F3 will go to the start (first sector) of the file instead of the first sector on the disk. F4 Go to end of file. Similar to F3, F4 goes to the end of the file (its last sector) instead of the end of the disk. PgUp Go forwards. Pressing PgUp will advance the relative sector to the next sector in the file. It won't wrap around to the first sector if you are at the last sector in the file, but will remain at the last sector. PgDn Go backwards. PgDn will go backwards in the file to the previous sector in it. If you are already at the first sector in the file, hitting PgDn will not wrap around to the last sector, but will leave you at the first sector. At all times while editing, the relative sector number being edited will be displayed, not the actual sector number. The first relative sector number for a file is always 1, no matter where the start of the file physically is. Like in DISK, pressing F10 will return you to the main menu. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 13 INFO Show information on the current drive DOS hides most information that it has on available on the current working drive. Pressing Enter while INFO is highlighted will display much of this information along with some other information that is both useful and good to know. When INFO is selected, the left part of the screen will clear and the following information will be displayed. The numbers will differ depending on the format and size of the disk being used. This example is on a standard 360K floppy. Current drive A: 360 Kilobytes disk capacity (possible) 512 bytes in each sector 720 total sectors on the disk 2 sectors in each cluster 354 total clusters on the disk 1 Reserved sector(s) 2 FAT copies; each using 2 sectors 112 files allowed in the root directory Volume [no label] 2 total directories on the disk 19 total files on the disk Start of Reserved sector(s): sector 0 Start of all FAT copies: sector 1 Start of the root directory: sector 5 Start of all data sectors: sector 12 The information on volume name, directories, and files will be displayed only after the drive's directory has been read into memory. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 14 LOCATE Look for matching files on the drive All to often, users of hard disks have several copies of a file in different places, don't know where a file is located, or just want to look at all files on the disk. The LOCATE function helps out those users by finding and displaying all files on the current drive that match any given specification. When LOCATE is chosen, the screen clears, displays a few lines of help, and gives you the prompt: Filename: * .* Now, enter the file(s) you want to look for. The wildcards ? and * can be used as they would be with DOS, anywhere within the name to match any character and all characters from that point on, respectively. <LEFT> and <RIGHT> can be used to move the cursor to a specific place in the name, and changes made at that place. Additionally, pressing Tab will make the cursor go from the filename part to the extension part of the name and vice versa. When the file to look for has been entered, press Enter. Hitting Esc returns you to the main menu. After Enter has been pressed, Master Key displays all files matching what was typed (reading the directory if necessary), pausing at the end of every screenfull of files. Note that I said ALL files matching what was typed. Master Key will display a file even if it has a hidden or system status. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 15 RENAME Rename files on the current drive The RENAME function is used to rename any file on the current working drive. Because Master Key goes around the DOS rename function to rename files, you can rename any file, even if it has a hidden or system status. The status of any file isn't important to Master Key. The difference between the RENAME function and the DOS rename is that RENAME can only rename one file at a time and cannot be used with wildcards. Once RENAME is active, select the directory to get files from and then a file to rename. Press Esc if you decide at some point that you don't want to rename files and you'll be returned to the main menu. After you selected a file, the screen will clear and you will be asked for the new name for the file. If you were trying to rename "OLD-FILE.NAM," the screen would show, (in part): Filename: OLD-FILE.NAM Now, enter the new name for the file, typing over the old name. <LEFT> and <RIGHT> can be used to move the cursor to any point in the old name to make changes. Tab will move the cursor from the name part to the extension part of the name and vice versa. When you have changed the name to what you desire, press Enter and you will see: The file, "OLD-FILE.NAM" will be renamed to "NEW-FILE.NAM" Press 'Y' to rename the file. Press 'R' to re-enter the new file name. Press 'S' to skip renaming this file. Press <ESC> to abort and exit. Pressing 'Y' at this point will rename the file to the new name you typed in. If you pressed 'S' (or 'N'), the file won't be erased and you will be allowed to select another file to rename. 'R' will show you the "Filename:" prompt shown above, letting you change the name again and try again. Hitting Esc, as usual, will bring you back to the main menu. Before going off, confident about RENAME, there are a few notes to it. First, the new name must be typed in exactly as you want to see it appear in the directory. You may have to type over previous characters with spaces if necessary. Also, if you leave leading or embedded spaces in the filename or extension part of the name, DOS will have a difficult time accessing the file from that point on. It can still be used in a few instances from DOS (and always from Master Key), but a little trickery is involved. Doing this (leaving embedded spaces in the name) is permitted in Master Key because you might want to make a file harder to access. Embedding spaces in a name is definitely one way to make a file harder to access. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 16 UNERASE Unerase files on the current drive Well, you've gone off and erased a file by mistake, and it's an important file. Before using Master Key, you would have to try to re-create the file if possible. Now, you can recover the file with a minimum of effort and continue as normal. After you have selected UNERASE, choose the sub-directory to get erased files from then the initial file to unerase. Press Esc if you want to abort and go back to the main menu. When a file is selected, the screen clears and you will see something similar to what is shown below. Enter the first letter for "?LD-FILE.NAM" to begin unerasing it. When a file is erased, one of the parts of it that gets changed is its first character. To unerase it, you have to supply the first character in the name. Once the first letter in the file name is entered, the following messages will display: The file, "OLD-FILE.NAM" will be unerased. Press 'Y' to unerase the file. Press 'S' to skip unerasing this file. Press <ESC> to abort and exit. If you now press 'Y', Master Key will attempt to unerase the file OLD-FILE.NAM. Pressing 'S' (or 'N') will not unerase the file. Hitting Esc will put you back at the main menu. Successfully unerasing a file depends on a lot of factors and is not guaranteed to be always successful. Two of these factors, described below, can be a big help or big hindrance when Master Key tries to unerase a file. Time. Generally, the sooner you attempt to unerase a file the better. If nothing has been written to the disk since the erased file has been erased, there is a good chance that it can be unerased. However, if some time has passed and you have saved a few files to the disk in the mean time, it may be unlikely that an erased file can be fully recovered. Fragmentation. Chances for successful unerasure are also increased if the file wasn't in a fragmented state before it was erased. A file is fragmented if its clusters aren't stored consecutively on the disk. Fragmentation usually only happens in large files that get updated often (like databases). I recommend that a preventative precaution be taken: unfragment your entire disk (especially hard Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 17 disks!) on a regular basis with either of the many commercial or public domain programs that claim to unfragment disks. If Master Key is successful in unerasing a file, all still may not be well -- the data it has saved may not be what was originally in your file. Please check over your file (possibly by using the FILE function) to make sure that it contains the right data. Be especially careful if the unerased file is a .COM or .EXE file. Master Key, unlike several other programs that unerase files, can unerase sub-directories. It does have a limitation however. Because sub-directories do not have a size stored as part of its information, Master Key has no way of knowing how many clusters it used to contain. Whenever a sub-directory is unerased, only its first cluster is unerased and any subsequent clusters, if they existed, are forever lost. Going back to the program, after pressing 'Y' or 'S', Master Key does its work and then returns you to the file selection screen for the chance to select another file to unerase. It will repeat doing this until there are no erased files left in the sub-directory or you eventually press Esc. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 18 QUIT End Master Key and return to DOS Selecting QUIT from the main menu stops the execution of Master Key and return you to DOS (or other operating environment, if applicable). It returns to the same drive and directory that you started in, unless of course you changed the disk that you started from. QUIT has a synonym that can be used if you like. Pressing Esc while in the main menu also quits the program after confirma- tion. This is no shorter than pressing "Q <ENTER>", but it is included to be consistent with the exit command of other fun- ctions. When you press Esc, you'll see the message: Do you really want to exit Master Key? (Y/N) If you enter anything other than 'Y', Master Key continues to run as if nothing happened, waiting patiently for your next command. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 19 Appendix A Error Messages This appendix contains a list of the error messages you might encounter while running Master Key and brief descriptions of what they mean. The types of error messages are broken down into three categories: program errors, disk errors, and your errors. Program errors deal with something going wrong within Master Key, or something happening that it couldn't deal with. All program errors result in the screen being cleared and a message displayed at the top of the screen stating that something went wrong. The most common (and hopefully only) program error concerns running out of memory. If Master Key isn't able to read a disk's entire directory into memory, it displays the following error message at the top of the screen: Master Key, version 1.5 is out of memory. There are several solutions to this error. First, if you don't have a full 640K of memory installed in your computer, the easiest remedy is to purchase and install more memory. If more memory is not a solution for you (you already have 640K, you don't have enough $, etc.), removing a few memory resident pro- grams, rebooting, and trying again is an alternative. Finally, if you are running in a multi-tasking environment, allocating more minimum memory to Master Key in its .PIF file or equivalent should help out. In all reality, most users will never run out of memory. Never. Those few who have thousands of files on a hard disk are the ones that may encounter a problem. The next and only other program error message is a catch all for anything unexpected going wrong. When Master Key stumbles somewhere, it shows the following error message: Oops, an unexpected error ... This is only the beginning of the error message. What follows is the error number, the location in the program where the problem happened, and if possible a general description of the error. If you ever get this error, please write down every- thing that Master Key prints out and inform me of it. In doing so, please try to include as much information on what you were doing when the error happened. It will help me to rid the pro- gram of the error. Program errors take the easy out -- they abort. Disk errors, on the other hand will cause Master Key to open a window Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 20 on the screen and if possible, continue where it can. If a disk error occurs while Master Key is reading a directory, Master Key exits whatever function you were trying to execute and returns to the main menu. Disk errors that occur elsewhere leave you where you were in the appropriate function when the error happened, possibly not reading or writing to the disk as you wanted to. All disk errors dealing with the disk itself start with the following message appearing as the first line in a window opened in the middle of the screen. > Disk Error! < Following that line is one of the following error messages describing what went wrong: A general disk error happened. Error during a disk read. Error during a disk write. Bad sector -- not found on disk. Unknown disk format. Error during disk seek. CRC error -- bad parity check. Disk not ready (door open, etc). Invalid drive number. The disk is write protected. Bad Request. To avoid going into a lengthy description on what each error message means, I'll describe a few more common types of errors. Hard disks and many "copy protected" floppy disks commonly have a few "bad" sectors. If you run across one of these bad sectors while using the DISK function, Master Key tells you so, but it is no cause for concern. If you come across an error when editing a file using FILE, there is a lot of reason for concern. It would be much to your advantage to try to make a copy of that file as soon as possible, even though it may be too late to save the entire file. The next most common problem is running Master Key on non- DOS disks. Remember that Master Key is intended for use with ONLY DOS DISKS. Yes, this means that you won't be able to look at what's on disks from other operating systems nor a lot of game disks that have to be booted in drive A: to work. As with everything however, there is an exception to this. I briefly tried one disk emulation program that worked well enough on a non-DOS disk to allow me to use several of Master Key's functions on it without a problem. I suggest only using the functions DISK and FILE if you do this though. I am not sure that the other functions would operate as intended. Also, remember that Master Key can't access a disk that doesn't exist. Users with two floppy disk drives and no RAM Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 21 disks won't be able to access drives C, D, and E no matter how much they try. Master Key reports a variety of errors if you try to access a non-existent drive. The next type of disk error shows up a lot when accessing damaged and non-DOS disks. If Master Key finds that the FAT id byte isn't one of the several valid ones when trying to read a directory, it shows the following message in a window: The disk ID byte appears to be damaged or wrong. If you know the disk was damaged, what the id byte should be, and the correct location to put it, you can try to edit the disk using the DISK function and make an attempt to reread the directory. Following the errors dealing with Master Key itself and your disks are the errors due to your actions or due to a conflict or impossibility somewhere. These messages are more informative than anything else, and no changes will be written to the current disk when you see one of these messages. The following error message can happen in the ALTER, ERASE, and RENAME functions. Before Master Key changes a directory entry for a file, it checks to make sure that the file is in the place it expects it to be. If you see the error message, Master Key couldn't find the file in the place it thought it was in. This basically means, as the message states, that you probably changed disks somewhere along the line and forgot to CHANGE the current drive letting Master Key know you did this. File "OLD-FILE.NAM" was not found You might have switched disks. Note that the word OLD-FILE.NAM refers to a file on your disk, while the words NEW-FILE.NAM and NEW-FIL?.* refer to new file name that you typed in in response to a prompt. In the ERASE function, you might see the following message if you try to erase a sub-directory. In this version of Master Key, erasing a sub-directory is not allowed. Master Key isn't able to erase sub-directories at this time. The next two error messages appear exclusively when you are in the RENAME function. The first, below, is shown when you try to rename a file to one that already exists in the current directory. In this example, the old file, OLD-FILE.NAM has been attempted to be renamed to the new file NEW-FILE.NAM when NEW- FILE.NAM is already a file in the directory. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 22 File "OLD-FILE.NAM" cannot be renamed to "NEW-FILE.NAM"; the new file name already exists. The error message below shows up when you try to rename a file to something ambiguous. The characters '?' and '*' are allowed from DOS, but unfortunately not from within Master Key. File "OLD-FILE.NAM" cannot be renamed to "NEW-FIL?.* "; '*' and '?' aren't allowed. The last two messages are seen only while using the UNERASE function. They appear only when a file cannot be unerased for one reason or another. The first message, below, appears when the first part of a file's data has been overwritten. In this case, it is almost impossible to easily recover all of the remaining data, so it won't be attempted. File "OLD-FILE.NAM" cannot be unerased. It's first cluster is being used by another file. The next, and last message appears after unerasing a file was attempted. The message indicates that there weren't enough free clusters on the disk to restore the file to its original size. When this happens, Master Key will not save any of the restored clusters. File "'OLD-FILE.NAM" cannot be unerased. It's allocation chain cannot be restored. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 23 Appendix B Program Notes Since Master Key was conceived less than a year ago, it has gone through an almost complete circle of evolution. It has been rewritten almost entirely several times to bring it to this point, starting as a simple routine to draw a box on the screen and mushrooming into what you can see and run now. The box drawing routine is no longer present in the code, but it was the reason why the program got started. As the model for Master Key, I used various commercial and public domain utilities of the same type. I picked out the best or most useful features from all of the programs I used and improved upon them wherever I saw possible. I hope that my decisions on what is needed are similar to yours. Master Key was written entirely in TURBO pascal, aided with a few inline sections of code. The source code for Master Key is available for $50, for anyone who wants to see or modify it. The source code, unlike the Master Key program, is not freely distributed. Prior to version 1.5, Master Key was called Disk Tool. The name change was done to avoid possible conflict with the name of a similar, commercial product. Your comments, suggestions, friendly criticisms, bug reports, and improvement ideas are welcome. Please contact me ONLY at the address listed below. R. P. Gage 1125 6th St. N. #43 Columbus, MS 39701 Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 24 Appendix C WARNING ! BEFORE doing any work with Master Key, I ask that you are conscious of the power you posses when running it and are very careful. Master Key is able, purposefully or accidentally, to be used to wipe out some very important parts of your disks and files. If you are not well acquainted with the technical details of different disk formats and the structure of your files, please do not select the DISK or FILE functions without extreme care. The areas on the disk that should be avoided unless absolutely necessary are the boot record (the first sector), the FAT (the next few sectors), and any directory, including the root directory Making blind changes in any of these areas has a good possibility of rendering your disks useless. If you find a pertinent need to change one of these areas, it would be a good idea to make a backup copy (with DISKCOPY or something similar) or your disk before you begin. Master Key -- Disk Management Utility, version 1.5 Page 25