north@manta.NOSC.MIL (Mark H. North) (11/17/90)
I'm having a problem with ibmdos 3.2 and format. There's probably a better group to ask but here it is. I boot off c: then try to format a:/s and get the following msg -- Insert DOS disk in a: and strike any key when ready. Now, I've done this thousands of times and it just goes ahead and formats. All of a sudden I get this message. Format is acting like it doesn't know where to look for the system files which are on c: of course and where I have booted from. Another symptom: I then booted from a pristine dos floppy in a: and did c: \dos\format a:/s and got the same msg. Is this weird or am I losing it? Mark
berggren@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Eric Berggren) (11/20/90)
north@manta.NOSC.MIL (Mark H. North) writes: >I'm having a problem with ibmdos 3.2 and format. There's probably a better >group to ask but here it is. I boot off c: then try to format a:/s and get >the following msg -- Insert DOS disk in a: and strike any key when ready. >Now, I've done this thousands of times and it just goes ahead and formats. >All of a sudden I get this message. Format is acting like it doesn't know >where to look for the system files which are on c: of course and where I >have booted from. Another symptom: I then booted from a pristine dos floppy >in a: and did >c: >\dos\format a:/s >and got the same msg. >Is this weird or am I losing it? This is either caused by the fact that MS-DOS cannot locate the main system files, which is nothing new for it. Check the COMSPEC environment variable by typing "set". It should read "COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND". If not, somebody redefined it in either a SHELL= line in the CONFIG.SYS file or a SET COMSPEC= line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. OR, this problem is caused by differing DOS versions. Someone may have upgraded the system without upgrading the utilities. Try recopying the FORMAT.COM from the release DOS 3.2 diskettes. Feel free to send E-MAIL if that still doesn't work. ============================================================================== "Round and round the while() loop goes; Whether it stops," Turing says, "nobody knows."
north@manta.NOSC.MIL (Mark H. North) (11/24/90)
First, I want to thank all that responded with helpful comments. As you recall my problem was one of booting off hard disk and subsequently not being able to format a floppy without putting a DOS disk in drive a:. I have resolved the problem with the help of Bob Weissman (thanks Bob). Turns out that FORMAT looks for COMMAND.COM in the root dir of the hard disk no matter what COMSPEC=. I keep all my DOS files in their own directory. I was cleaning up the disk and so decided to take COMMAND.COM out of the root directory and put it in \DOS and then, in the autoexec, set COMSPEC=c:\dos\command.com. Apparently FORMAT is too stupid for this. As far as I can tell from my manuals this is not documented. What I did learn from the documentation may be of interest though since some of the responses were contradictory. The SHELL command of config.sys does not change the environment, it is only used once to load an initial command processor. After that it is what is in the environment that is used to reload the command processor (from COMSPEC= or default) except for FORMAT which doesn't look at the environment. Mark