System Utilities D-3
ASTDK is actually two programs but use the same execution file name,
ASTDK.EXE:
• Running ASTDK from the DOS prompt (in real mode and not from a
Windows 95 DOS window) launches the DOS program.
• Running ASTDK from Windows 95 by clicking on the icon or from the
command line in Windows 95 (DOS window) always launches the
ASTDK GUI (graphical user interface).
With the auto-load property, only one instance of ASTDK is allowed to
run in the Windows environment. You may, however, want to work in
real mode from the command line — temporarily change your MS-
DOS prompt properties sheet to not launch the Windows program, and
instead launch the DOS program.
In whatever environment, ASTDK locates free contiguous disk spaces and
allocates them for storing BASE MEMORY, EXTENDED MEMORY, VIDEO
MEMORY, and SM RAM. The disk spaces found are reserved for system
use and are no longer accessible to the user. If the program cannot find the
required disk spaces, a warning message "Not enough disk space for
allocation" will be shown. The disk may have enough free spaces but these
free spaces exist as small fragments. In this case, you can use tools such
as SpeedDisk (Norton Utilities) or Defrag (DOS 6.0 and above) to compact
your free disk spaces. Then you can run this program again.
When a suspend event occurs, the BIOS saves all system data to an
ASTDK file for the resume operation. Reserved disk space information is
saved in CMOS, and, for self-error correction, the file header for the
reserved disk space is provided to verify the consistency of the CMOS data
and the reserved disk space. With advanced power management (APM),
ASTDK automatically detects and adjusts the ASTDK file to meet the
requirement to backup data for the suspend and resume operation.
Once executed and the ASTDK file created, the system will have the
'Suspend-to-Disk' feature and you do not need to run ASTDK.EXE again
except when data in CMOS is lost or corrupted. (For example, system
configuration changed by adding on-board memory, etc.)