Corrupted files on Asus site

Just for kicks, I've tracked down the nature of the corruption
in the recent files on Asus site that don't unzip properly.
I chose for this exercise, the 3C940 LAN driver.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/lan/3.../044_3c940.zip (bad)
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/asuscom/TRE...om_940_v44.zip (good)

The files stretch from 0 to CE6AC0 hexidecimal (they are both 13527745
bytes total). The bad file has corruption starting at the following
hex addresses - 19F000, 3C5000, 552000, 6AA000, 862000, 933000, A71000,
B99000. The corruption is always on a 4K boundary and the corrupted
data stretches for 4K bytes. For example, the data from 19F000 to 19FFFF
is corrupted and the byte values are the same as the byte values from
19E000 to 19EFFF. So, 4096 bytes of data are duplicated and overwrite
the next block of data.

So, the theory that Asus "doesn't know how to compress a file" isn't
quite correct. It would seem that some storage device or operating system
on one of their machines is duplicating 4K blocks of data.

There is no transformation you can do to the files to fix them, as these
are not single byte errors.

HTH,
Paul

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:43:35 -0400, Paul wrote:

Just for kicks, I've tracked down the nature of the corruption
in the recent files on Asus site that don't unzip properly.
I chose for this exercise, the 3C940 LAN driver.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/lan/3.../044_3c940.zip (bad)
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/asuscom/TRE...om_940_v44.zip (good)

The files stretch from 0 to CE6AC0 hexidecimal (they are both 13527745
bytes total). The bad file has corruption starting at the following
hex addresses - 19F000, 3C5000, 552000, 6AA000, 862000, 933000, A71000,
B99000. The corruption is always on a 4K boundary and the corrupted
data stretches for 4K bytes. For example, the data from 19F000 to 19FFFF
is corrupted and the byte values are the same as the byte values from
19E000 to 19EFFF. So, 4096 bytes of data are duplicated and overwrite
the next block of data.

So, the theory that Asus "doesn't know how to compress a file" isn't
quite correct. It would seem that some storage device or operating system
on one of their machines is duplicating 4K blocks of data.

There is no transformation you can do to the files to fix them, as these
are not single byte errors.

HTH,
Paul

This problem seems to be widespread, i've also encountered corruption with BIOS
updates, sound drivers, lan drivers.

They will also be similarily corrupted across multiple servers.

Anyone know if ASUS is even aware of this problem??, strange that their
server admins don't check any of the archives they host to see if they are
actually good (wish they would also list a checksum for their driver updates)

In article , nick
wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:43:35 -0400, Paul wrote:

Just for kicks, I've tracked down the nature of the corruption
in the recent files on Asus site that don't unzip properly.
I chose for this exercise, the 3C940 LAN driver.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/lan/3.../044_3c940.zip (bad)
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/asuscom/TRE...om_940_v44.zip (good)

The files stretch from 0 to CE6AC0 hexidecimal (they are both 13527745
bytes total). The bad file has corruption starting at the following
hex addresses - 19F000, 3C5000, 552000, 6AA000, 862000, 933000, A71000,
B99000. The corruption is always on a 4K boundary and the corrupted
data stretches for 4K bytes. For example, the data from 19F000 to 19FFFF
is corrupted and the byte values are the same as the byte values from
19E000 to 19EFFF. So, 4096 bytes of data are duplicated and overwrite
the next block of data.

So, the theory that Asus "doesn't know how to compress a file" isn't
quite correct. It would seem that some storage device or operating system
on one of their machines is duplicating 4K blocks of data.

There is no transformation you can do to the files to fix them, as these
are not single byte errors.

HTH,
Paul

This problem seems to be widespread, i've also encountered corruption
with BIOS
updates, sound drivers, lan drivers.

They will also be similarily corrupted across multiple servers.

Anyone know if ASUS is even aware of this problem??, strange that their
server admins don't check any of the archives they host to see if they are
actually good (wish they would also list a checksum for their driver updates)

I just sent them an email with the details. I'll post back if I get any
reply from them. The last time, they replied in about four days.

Paul

HMMM your one of thOSE people.


On Mon, 7 Jul 2003 15:45:17 -0700, jaeger wrote:

In article ,
says...

Like we care smart boy.

Yes, we do care.

And smart people at least avoid asking stupid questions in broken
English like:

"My disc wont boot from the raid ide controlers why not ??"

You know their are people were English is not their first language you
prat.


Why do you still read this N.G. then ? Please be happy that SOME people
DO care about these things, and spent their valuable time (=money) on
finding out what the problem is. If you post here, you want to get an
anwser to your problem, or am I mistaking here ? And if the anser is to
techie for you, try looking in to the problem , do some research !!

Just stop announcing you level of stupidity in this N.G.