>I have an unusual problem that occured after I did a force quit
>(spinning beachball). I have PB 1.25 and have been running VPC
>7.0.2/Windows 2000Professional. When I rebooted the PB everything on
>the Mac side seemd to be working fine, however on of the guys on my
>crew asked to use my computer to look up some info in the companies
>Access database. He is a Mac user and knows how to start VPC, when he
>started the app a dialoge box came up and he clicked okay, I was out of
>the room at the time. What he was presented with was a DOS page and
>that was that. I was able to navigate out out of the page and
>eventually Windows started up. Everything was going along until it got
>to the part where tha administrators password needs to be entered and
>there was no no response from the keyboard, reminded me of when I first
>upgraded to VPC 7. So I quit VPC and logged out the Mac and when it
>restarted and I entered my password and then relaunched VPC. This time
>I was able to enter my password and Windows 2000 started up. I was
>prompted to do the updates and additions which I did. When the desktop
>finally appeared it looked as it had except that an icon to a ordering
>database I use was missing. Also when I opened up the company Access
>database entries for the past year were gone( this is backed up and can
>be restored). But there is no trace of the missing ordering database.
>So does anyone out there have any idea what happened and is this stuff
>just simply gone? Also is there anyway to bypass the DOS screen that
>comes up when I try to launch VPC. If there is ant additional info
>anyone needs, just ask.
>Thanks

>The DOS screen which came up displayed the following text-
>The AMBIOS (c) 2001 American Megatrends
>BIOS Date: 8/14/03 19:14:02 Version 08.00.02
>
>Press DEL to run Setup
>Checking NVRAM
>
>512MB OK
>Auto Detecting Pri Master..IDE Hard drive
>Auto Detecting Pri Slave..Not Detected
>Auto Detecting Sec Master..CDROM
>Auto Detecting Sec Slave Not Detected
>Pri Master: 1.1 Virtual AD
>Pri Master: Virtual CD
>CMOS Checksum Bad
>CMOS Date/Time Not Set
>Press F1 to Run Setup
>Press F2 to Load Default Values and Continue
>
>The first time after starting after the logout I pressed the fn key and
>the F2 key and got another DOS page, which I don't remember what it
>said but I was able to get to the start up page and then log in. That's
>when I noticed that the desktop was missing some icons. So I shut down
>windows
>and quit VPC. The dialog book which came up at the end of the process
>has 3 options about saving changes or not. I have always had the 3rd
>option selected, which is to carry forward undoable changes. The next
>time I shut down and restarted VPC I got the same DOS screen but this
>time hit the F1 key and Windows started right up without the second DOS
>window. And still the data is missing.
>It strikes me as weird that Access database that I now have is a year
>and half old and that I had most likely trashed it during monthly
>updates over the past 18 months. If the data is gone then it's gone.
>It's a mystery though how the data just seems to have vanished.