🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I am not a DOS God, but I have witnessed similar things.  A correct
version of the command.com is required on the computer,  The newer
versions of DOS are smart enough to check in the OS directory if it can
not find it in the directory specified by shell=.

Command.com is needed.  I do not like the new feeature, when it locates
command.com.  There are also a couple of ther system files that the
computer needs.  There physicla location in the computer's FAT table
are very important.  If DOS does not find them there, your computer is
toast.

>>> Sylvia Schwartz <sylvias@saturn.caps.maine.edu> 01/11/96
10:18pm >>>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This is not a problem, just a mystery that has been bothering me.

Recently on powering on one of our lab computers, I saw a message
"Bad or missing command interpreter". It's a familiar message in public
computer labs: COMMAND.COM had been erased or corrupted. I was
walking away to grab a back-up disk when I realized that the computer
was continuing to boot up normally. But how???

I checked to make sure that COMMAND.COM was really missing, and
typed
DIR/AH to make sure it hadn't been given the "hidden" attribute. There
was a copy of COMMAND.COM in the DOS directory, but CONFIG.SYS
had a shell command specifying that COMMAND.COM was to be found
in the root directory.

When I restored COMMAND.COM to the root directory by copying it from
\DOS, the computer booted without the error message, but I was able to
reproduce the situation for the benefit of a skeptical colleague by
deleting it again.

The computer is a Gateway 486DX-33 running DOS 6.0. It has a
network connection and Windows, but is set to boot in stand-alone
mode to the C: prompt.

Can anyone tell me how this PC was able to recover from what (in my
previous experience) ought to be a fatal error? Thanks.


Sylvia Schwartz                     sylvias@saturn.caps.maine.edu
Director, Academic Computer Center
Westbrook College
Portland, Maine