Does any of you gyus know a way to check if a medie (HD - MO - Floppy) is write protected? Have tryed... - ECHO "bla-bla" > Media\test.tst - DIR media\*.* > media\test.tst and then try to trap an errorlevel on that, but no change i errorlevel. I know that OS gives a nice warning, but I have to have it in errorlevel or variabel. Hope one of you BRAINS can help Thanks

The following script was extracted from Laurence Soucy's Batchfiles FAQ and slightly addapted. It will check if a certain drive is valid AND writeable: :: Check if drive %1 is valid and writable :: %1 is the drive letter without colon @echo off ctty nul %comspec%/f/cDIR/ADH/W/-P %1: |FIND ":\"> nul if errorlevel=1 goto no_drive echo writeable> %temp%.\t1.tmp %comspec%/f/cCOPY /Y %temp%.\t1.tmp %1:\~¥1.tmp del %temp%.\t1.tmp ctty con if exist %1:\~¥1.tmp goto write_ok echo drive %1 not writeable goto end :write_ok del %1:\~¥1.tmp echo drive %1 writeable goto end :no_drive ctty con echo drive %1 invalid :end Note 1: I've tested that script on Win98SE and it works as intended. So, it is very likely to work on WinME, though that's not for sure. Note 2: the /F switch for command.com is undocumented, and will automatically answer Fail to the questions "Retry Abort or Fail?". Note 3: the switches on the DIR command (third code line) are to reduce the number of lines to be processed by FIND.exe. The script might look a little bit more complex than you expected, but it's not that simple handling those error messages that could occur if the drive is not valid or writeable (bypassing such messages and supressing them). -- Leonardo Pignataro - Secret_Doom -- secret_doom@hotmail.com www.batch.hpg.com.br _________________________________________________________

Or, you just use the following command to check that: DREADY A: /W IF ERRORLEVEL 1 IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 2 ECHO Disk A is write-protected!

It is obviously easier to perform the task using a external 3rd party application. The batch script I posted is so much more complex then Wengier's because it does not require any 3rd party apps, which means it should work on any regular Win9x environment (and probably on WinMEs environments as well). -- Leonardo Pigntaro - Secret_Doom -- secret_doom@hotmail.com www.batch.hpg.com.br

As -- Leonardo Pigntaro - Secret_Doom -- stated, I will try to avoid 3rd party appl. Foremost because I have to document each little file with a GAMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) SMS (Software Module Specification)document which includes Functional & Design Specifications and a FAT (Factory Acceptance Testing) Protocol - Testplan and testpapers. (Are you out of breath?). My problem with Leonardo´s proposal, is that I only have one drive to write to (the one being checked. All other drives is NTFS. I will load NTFSDOS (not NTFSPRO) so I am able to read the drives, but not write to them. That means that when trying to make temp. file tmp1.tmp, the computer latches up, and has to be rebooted. I am still cheewing on whether I can work around this problem. Any suggestions? And thanks to both of you.

Well. Im done testing Leonardo Pigntaro - Secret_Doom´s suggestion on Win98SE and WinMe With %temp% writable (C:\Windows\temp). Win98SE: Works as intended. WinMe... - Check for valid drive: OK - Drive %1 not write protected: OK - Drive %1 write protected: computer latches up. Reboot nessesary, must be one of the used command.com switches. I have still the problem of only having %1 to write to. Dont know were to go from here.