DOS330.BUG

          IBM PC-DOS 3.30 seems to have a significant bug the prevents
          safe use at least on PC compatibles and the Toshiba T3100 even
          though all previous versions of PC-DOS now work flawlessly on
          those machines. I suspect the same problems will exist with
          IBM's own XT's and AT's but haven't had the time to prove it.

          The problem is that one or all of DOS 3.3's FORMAT, COMMAND or
          SYSTEM files doesn't handle bad sectors properly on hard
          disks. If you try to format a hard disk with DOS 3.3 it will
          stop and crash at the first bad sector. You can format with
          DOS 3.2, reboot in 3.3 off the A: drive, and then SYS the disk
          with 3.3 but then you have other problems if you ever want to
          run the Advanced Norton Utilities vs. 4.0 or the Mace
          Utilities to condense or restructure the files on your hard
          disk. Here again the programs will crash when they find the
          first bad sector, and you will probably lose files.

          Be VERY careful if you play with this. Backup everything. I
          lost many files.

          If anyone has a fix for this flaw I would like to hear about
          it.

          Dick Bodman
          1336 30th Street, N.W.
          Washington, D.C. 20007
          202/337-4484