Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!nosc!manta!north
From: north@manta.NOSC.MIL (Mark H. North)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: msdos format
Keywords: command.com config.sys root
Message-ID: <1457@manta.NOSC.MIL>
Date: 23 Nov 90 23:18:45 GMT
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 21


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