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From: bmarsh@cod.UUCP (William C. Marsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: getting COMMAND.COM to load from C: in DOS2.1?
Message-ID: <427@cod.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Dec-86 12:21:30 EST
Article-I.D.: cod.427
Posted: Fri Dec 12 12:21:30 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Dec-86 22:44:23 EST
References: <817@aluxz.UUCP> <821@aluxz.UUCP>
Reply-To: bmarsh@cod.UUCP (William C. Marsh)
Distribution: na
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 40

In article <821@aluxz.UUCP> revatt@aluxz.UUCP (EVATT) writes:
>> 
>> Can anyone tell me a workaround to get the transient portion of 
>> COMMAND.COM to reload from something beside the A: drive?
>> I have tried COMMAND C:\ /P, but this just gets A: spinning and I have
>> to reboot.
>> 
>> Other info:
>> I have a PCjr with 640K, two floppies, Impulse sidecar, and SPC 20M disk.
>> 
>
>After a little checking [that I should I done earlier] I have determined
>that the problem is with the memory/clock add-on that I have.  I think
>it has some routines in ROM that load the clock calendar automatically when
>the machine is booted.  I know there is a bug somewhere that 
>hangs the machine when a secondary command processor is loaded.  There
>are programs floating around BBS's to patch things to allow a secondary
>COMMAND.COM to be loaded.
>

I don't know about any problems loading a second copy of command.com can
have on memory resident programs, but I suppose it could cause many problems.
If you didn't load the memory resident programs until after the second copy
of command.com is loaded should clear up those problems.

But why bother loading a second copy of command.com when you can tell DOS
where to load the first (and subsequent transient copies).  Put the following
line in your config.sys file

shell = c:\command.com c:\ /P

This tells dos to load command.com from drive C:, and tells command.com to
load the transient portions from c:\ whenever it needs to.  Note that
COMSPEC is set correctly by command.com for this.  I have used this for
years (since 2.0) just so I could keep command.com out of my root directory.
My line looks like this:

shell = c:\bin\command.com c:\bin /p

Hope this helps.