Re: CD-ROM Trouble: mscdex.exe gives "Packed File is Corrupt" Error

[Juan Paolo Carballo <jplcarballo@mydestiny.net>]

Hello Casey,

Casey Bralla wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to load my cd-rom under dosemu 1.0.2.0, running under SuSE 8.0.   I
> have loaded the cdrom.sys driver in config.sys, but when I try to run the
> mscdex.exe program, I get the error "packed File is Corrupt", and my cd-rom
> driver does not load.
> 
Some of the old DOS proggies were "packed" in the manner of zip files to 
save space. These were then unpacked "on the fly" in memory just before
they were executed.
With this in mind, the possible solutions are:
1. Get a fresh copy. Your mscdex.exe may be infected or corrupted by a
virus. 
The built-in unpacker would detect this and report that error.
2. Get a copy from a newer version of DOS. One bug of these old
executable
packers/unpackers was their inability to do their work if there was not
enough free memory in the lower 64K. I think this was solved in later
DOS
versions.
3. You may want to load more programs into higher memory, therefore
leaving
more free memory for the unpacker to use.
4. Find an unpacker on the net and unpack the program. The resulting
program
would be bigger but would not need as much CPU or memory upon startup to 
run.
5. Use the free CDROM utilities from the FreeDOS project.
http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software/lsm2html.cgi?file=base/fdcdex.lsm
or
http://www.shsu.edu/~csc_jhm/shsucd14.zip


-- 

Juan Paolo Carballo
There is a 3% difference in genetic material between us and apes, 
 enough to give us Mozart, Einstein ... and Jack The Ripper.