O.K., Neil, IIRC, your problem was that Arachne did not return to the DOS prompt after you accessed it thru the Autoexec.bat file. The problem lies in the line that just says: arachne This command will start Arachne just as if you typed the command at the command line, but when you finish Arachne, you will be in limbo. Change the line to: Call arachne When you use the DOS command, "Call" in a batch file, you will return to the batch program after the program is finished. The way you have Autoexec.bat, you never return to it to complete the BATch program, therefore, you never will get to the DOS prompt. Other comments about your Autoexec.bat file: REM[space] is an instruction to treat the remainder of the line as a comment (REMark), and not to execute it. It is often used as a debugging tool for a BATch file. Instead of erasing lines, you "REM" them out so that DOS will not execute them. You asked about: nwcache 7670 1024 /lend=on /delay=off NWCACHE is a caching program that reads ahead on disk reads and writes ahead to disk on disk writes. The complete syntax is rather long, i.e., many options, but what you have is: 7670 is the maxsize of the cache. "By default, NWCACHE uses all available expanded or extended memory up to 7670 KB (the maximum size of the cache). 1024 in the minsize of the cache. "The default is based on the amount of available memory, as described in the section, 'Setting the Cache Size' on page 11-15." /LEND=ON "Enables sharing of cache memory with other programs which require XMS or EMS memory. When lending is enabled, NWCACHE monitors allocation requests for XMS and EMS memory, and automatically reduces the cache size to fulfil (sic.) the request. When the requesting program releases the borrowed memory, it is returned to the cache." DELAY=OFF "Disables write delay, and sets all drives to write-through mode." I have all of my BATch files in a directory, \BAT which is in my PATH. This way, I can start all of my commonly used programs from anywhere I may be in the system. For example, I type, "WP" at the command line and this starts my WordPerfect program making all the changes in drives, directories, etc., that are necessary. Similarly, "CAD" will start AutoCad, "DB" will start the database program, Foxpro, 123 will start the spreadsheet, As-Easy-As, and "ARA" will start Arachne. Actually, my PATH statement is rather short: PATH=C:\;C:\DOS;C:\BAT;H:\UTIL;C:\WINDOWS; (and I rarely use the last item in the PATH statement.) With the PATH statement, DOS will look at the path in the order that they are listed. If you have a long path statement, put the frequently used directories near the front and the least used towards the end. Hope this helps. Roger Turk Tucson, Arizona USA Neil T. wrote: . > greetings all . > Dosstart is a desktop that I found on the internet. I still haven't . > learned all its functions, but it looks pretty neat. I changed the . > autoexec.bat to open right to Arachne instead of Dosstart. . > This is my autoexec.bat I use on the laptop... . > @echo off . > path c:\drdos;c:\windows;c:\windows\command;c:\dos;c:\winlink\bin;c:\ . > rem<<<<<<I don't think I need these reminders . > rem ditto . > rem dotto . > verify off . > prompt [dr-dos] $p$g . > set drdoscfg=c:\drdos . > lh mouse\mouse . > nwcache 7670 1024 /lend=on /delay=off <<<<not sure what this does . > c: . > cd \arachne . > arachne . > cheers . > neil t
