Did you see the FreeDOS name come up on the screen when you booted the
USB fob drive? The SHELLHIGH line in FDCONFIG.SYS points to a
different COMMAND.COM execution line:

SHELLHIGH=\FDSetup\BIN\COMMAND.COM \FDSetup\BIN /E:2048 /P=\AUTOEXEC.BAT


But I'll suggest this:

Try entering A:\COMMAND.COM for the COMMAND.COM location. There's a
COMMAND.COM at the root of the USB image, so that should work.

If that doesn't work, try a few other drive letters in case the USB
fob drive somehow got mounted as C: or D: or E:


Jim


On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 10:45 AM Karl Brown via Freedos-user
<freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> Hi -
>
> I have a Dell Dimension 9100, circa 2005, that I'd like to give away or sell, 
> but first I wanted to wipe the disk. In order to do so, I used DBAN, which I 
> was told would not touch the HPA (Host Protected Area). DBAN ran 
> successfully, but now I can't get into the Dell System restore partition in 
> order to re-install the OS. (using Control-F11 at boot, which did work 
> *before* the DBAN).
>
> I've found a tool called DRSFIX (detail here: 
> https://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/) that can be used to possibly fix this 
> issue.
>
> However, in order to use DSRFIX, I need to boot into DOS, hence I'm trying to 
> get a FreeDOS bootable USB working.
>
> I don't have another PC handy, but I formatted a USB key to FAT with MBR 
> using OSX, and installed the 1.2 version of FreeDOS to this USB drive using 
> this command:
>
> > sudo dd if=~/Downloads/FD12LITE/FD12LITE.img of=/dev/disk2
>
> I was then able to boot into FreeDOS on my Dell, by selecting the "Boot from 
> USB" option from the Dell boot menu.
>
> However, after booting, it comes up with the error:
> Bad or missing Command Interpreter: command.com /P /E:256
> Enter the full shell command line:
>
> It gives a few other warnings about partitions when booting up, that I can 
> copy down when I get back to the computer later...
>
> One thing to note is that in the BIOS, I have disabled regular floppy disks, 
> I've only set it to accept USB floppy (whatever that means). I saw in some 
> other messages that this "missing Command Interpreter" error may have 
> something to do with floppy disks, so I'm wondering if I have to attach a 
> floppy disk or tweak bios settings or something here? I'm also wondering 
> whether DBAN having blown away the c: drive could be causing the issues with 
> FreeDOS not wanting to fully boot.
>
> Does anyone have any hints of next steps I can try to debug this?
>
> Thanks!
> Karl
> karl_tra...@yahoo.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


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