DOS Tips

WIN.COM Switches

Do you know that you can configure how the way Windows should boot from DOS? WIN.COM includes a /D switch and a few options to help you achieve this for troubleshooting when Windows does not start correctly. This is the syntax:

C:\>WIN /D:[F][M][S][V][X]

These are the brief explanation of the options available:

:F	Turns off 32-bit disk access.
	Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: 32BitDiskAccess=FALSE.
:M	Enables Safe mode.
	This is automatically enabled during Safe start (function key F5).
:N	Enables Safe mode with networking.
	This is automatically enabled during Safe start (function key F6).
:S	Specifies that Windows should not use ROM address space between
	F000:0000 and 1 MB for a break point.
	Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: SystemROMBreakPoint=FALSE.
:V	Specifies that the ROM routine will handle interrupts from the hard
	disk controller.
	Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: VirtualHDIRQ=FALSE.
:X	Excludes all of the adapter area from the range of memory that
	Windows scans to find unused space.
	Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: EMMExclude=A000-FFFF.

These options are only meant for troubleshooting purposes only. This is useful when you meet with some error upon loading Windows and back to the command prompt.

In any case you want to stick to the certain way of bootup as stated above, change the line under MSDOS.SYS :

BootGUI=0

Then use add a

WIN /D :{option}

line to your Autoexec.bat. For more information on editing MSDOS.SYS, go here.

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