[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Command.com is NOT invalid or missing

LC.YRS@forsythe.stanford.edu (Richard Stanton) (12/07/89)

Every so often, my machine comes up with the following message upon
exiting from a program:

Invalid or missing COMMAND.COM

System halting

or words to that effect. The system then hangs, and I have to
reboot. My current machine is an Epson Equity II+. The same thing
used to happen much more frequently on my previous machine, a no
name clone, until I took it back.

My COMMAND.COM is fine. I have a correctly specified SHELL= line in
my CONFIG.SYS file, and a correctly specified SET COMSPEC= line in
my AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

What is happening? My only thought was that it might have something
to do with reloading the high memory portion of COMMAND.COM after
running a memory hogging program, but my brain stopped at this
point.

Have other people had the same experience, and / or does anybody
know the cause of this not too reassuring symptom?

Thanks

Richard Stanton

pstanton@gsb-what.stanford.edu

k33231a@taltta.hut.fi (Timo J. Salin) (12/10/89)

In article <6305@lindy.Stanford.EDU> LC.YRS@forsythe.stanford.edu (Richard Stanton) writes:
>Every so often, my machine comes up with the following message upon
>exiting from a program:
>
>Invalid or missing COMMAND.COM
>
>System halting
...

Sounds like the problem I'm having too. I think it's DOS 3.3(?) releated
'cause 3.20, 3.21 and 4.01 run perfectly on the machines I'm using (read:
playing the role of a stupid operator to earn living).

...
>Have other people had the same experience, and / or does anybody
>know the cause of this not too reassuring symptom?

I'd like to know how to cure this thing - without changing back to 3.2x or
up to 4.01. The former being impossible (using PS/2s) and the latter is for
computer illiterates (was that correctly spelled ?) and using far too much
memory.

>Richard Stanton

--
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bl@infovax.UUCP (Bj|rn Larsson) (12/12/89)

In article <1989Dec9.234750.21922@santra.uucp> k33231a@taltta.hut.fi (Timo J. Salin) writes:
>In article <6305@lindy.Stanford.EDU> LC.YRS@forsythe.stanford.edu (Richard Stanton) writes:
>>Every so often, my machine comes up with the following message upon
>>exiting from a program:
>>
>>Invalid or missing COMMAND.COM
>>
>>System halting
>...
>
>Sounds like the problem I'm having too. I think it's DOS 3.3(?) releated
>'cause 3.20, 3.21 and 4.01 run perfectly on the machines I'm using (read:

I run PCDOS 3.3, and this happens for me too. But very seldom, maybe once
every other month. I suppose it has to do with the non-resident part of
command.com (in high memory) being written over by an application, which
necessitates it to be reloaded from disk. For some reason, DOS seem not
to find it. I haven't looked into this, because it's no big problem for
me. Could it have something to do with redefining SWITCHAR to '-'? I do
that on my machine. Maybe it means DOS cannot find the path given by the
COMSPEC env. variable?
							Bjorn

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