A 32 bit checksum program

A few Palmtops that have been upgraded to double speed and 8 or 32 Mbytes of memory experience rare glitches. Occasionally a program will have selected bits that get switched off or on in the wrong places. This can make a program inoperable and even cause the Palmtop to crash or lock up. About the only recourse is to restore the errant file from a good backup. Since the DOS CHKDSK command can't catch such an error there has been no way to tell if a file has gone bad until now.

Andreas Garzotto wrote the FCHECK program to let him detect whether a file had become corrupted before any other disaster might strike. The FCHECK program assumes that all of the files on the C: drive are intact when it's first run. It computes a log of all the files along with a checksum value. When the program is run again, the new checksum is compared with the original checksum. The results of any discrepancies are displayed on the screen and also placed in a log file where they may be examined later.

If you're experiencing problems with programs or suffering from an unusual number of corrupt databases or spreadsheets, FCHECK may help you determine if your machine is suffering from this rare glitch. Hopefully you'll never have to use this program, but it's good to know it's available as a software detection tool.

FCHECK by Andreas Garzotto, 73064,1657