Peter & all, I removed my autoexec.bat, and Norton would no longer scan at boot up like it previously did (while the PC is still in DOS right before the desktop loads). Windows did not recreate it either. So, I just made a new autoexec in notepad, renamed the extension to .bat and added the Norton line to it, and it's fine now. No more lines of C:>, Norton is scanning again and it speed up the boot process a bit too. I'd like to know just how this happened though. I did notice in the old autoexec file when I opened it a second time in notepad (after I made the new one), I thought I would click the mouse in it and see where the cursor would be. It was indeed about 9 lines down! Evidently (like another at the list mentioned) blank spaces were added. I did not notice them before the first time I looked because when you open the file up in notepad, it looks just like a normal autoexec file, one that would NOT have any empty lines or looking like [enter] had been hit 9 times. I went to the new file I created and opened it in notepad and hit [enter] a few times and indeed the lines of C:> appeared again. (Then just went back and hit [backspace] until they were removed). Thanks guys, -Clint
God Bless Us All Clint Hamilton, Owner http://OrpheusComputing.com http://ComputerHardware-ConsumerElectronics.com ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Peter, Unfortunately, this will NEVER happen since autoexec.bat, like config.sys, is used to load and configure from Dos, long before Windows is ever loaded - if you delete either of these files, either by actually deleting or just by renaming, it will never be known until probably too late. Unfortunately, Windows is not the most efficient with regard to setting up traditional Dos parms that have normally been loaded in config.sys and autoexec.bat - especially with regard to memory management. I used Brian Livingston's books dealing with Win98 Secrets, which shows unbelievable information when dealing with the internals of Win98 as well as Dos, which shows how to make much more efficent use of both config.sys and autoexec.bat for setting up many of the base values for Windows. Another typical use of either is to load device drivers for any number of devices you could have on your system, set parms of where files/directories are located, and other similar operations. As an example on my own system, I load the device driver to create a small ramdrive in my config.sys file - I then, in autoexec.bat, create a directory for the cache operations in Netscape. When I load up Win98, and run Netscape, it points to this directory for its cache operations. Without the sequence I did in my config.sys and autoexec.bat files, the cache directory would never have been created, and I would have gotten an error situation when I attempted to run browser/email operations in Netscape. This is relatively minor BUT other operations much more serious could happen if similar operations were needed in either or both config.sys and autoexec.bat - compressed partitions being one that comes to mind; without the stuff needed to be loaded during Dos bootup, the driver info and related needed to access the drive would never get loaded, and the drive would be impossible to access from either Dos or Windows. Other drivers and init operations could be seen in a similar way. WinNT/2K/XP are different types of animals but even there, I have found that, for example, you can have config.sys and autoexec.bat equivalents - I use Win2K at work and there are several files I found that talk about the Win2K equivilents if needed. These normally are not needed by such an OS such as Win2K but they are used occationally, for whatever reason, for certain Dos and Win9x programs that might be needed to be run under the Win2K environment. I have personally found them to be invaluable to many of the operations I need to setup to perform in either a pure Dos environment or Win98 - deleting either would cause MANY issues and/or problems to occur. Others may not need them at all for their system operations, but others find they are needed for proper system operating. Ralph Peter Kaulback <pkaulbak@idirect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Clint, delete your autoexec.bat file and see if it clears up. If windows requires the file it will rebuild it. Peter Kaulback In the hour of 02:27 AM 3/13/2002 -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Clint Hamilton spoke this: >Hi group. On another PC here just after a format and >otherwise seemingly good install of win98 (and ALL drivers, >updates, patches, etc) I now notice a line of NINE of these >right after "verifying DMI pool data": > >C:\> >C:\> >C:\> >C:\> > >and so on nine times. Actually it's right after Norton does >it's scan, but that's not related, it was doing this before >Norton was installed. I only see this because the splash >screen is disabled (I never enable it just for this >particular reason; if it's enabled, you cannot see what's >going on). All works fine. I checked the Msdos.sys file and >this is not within it. Autoexec.bat is normal, as is the >'boot' and 'boot description' in the system.ini. The boot >process slows way down too right after this. Seems to hang >for 30 sec, then loads the desktop as usual. Anyone know why >this happened and how to get rid of it so it's only the >normal ONE C:\> there instead of these nine entries? >Thanks, >-Clint ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
