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From: legg@ucs.adelaide.edu.au (Christian Legg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: DOS 4.01, COMSPEC and Novell
Message-ID: <2359@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 7 Feb 91 03:24:24 GMT
Sender: legg@ucs.adelaide.edu.au
Organization: Information Technology Division, The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA
Lines: 36


  Hello Novellers,

  I'm having a problem with some DOS 4.01 workstations that are accessing
a NW386 server and I am wondering if anyone else has had this problem
before.

  The CONFIG.SYS of the boot floppy disks contains

  shell = command.com a: /e:1024 /p

  to ensure that sufficient environment space is allocated.

  When the workstation logs into the fileserver, the COMSPEC environment
variable is set to Y:\COMMAND.COM, where Y: is \PUBLIC\%MACHINE... etc.

  Despite this, the workstation will persist in asking that a disk with
COMMAND.COM be inserted into drive A: when COMMAND.COM is to be reloaded
at the end of an application.

  I have read in the DOS 4.01 manual that using the shell command in
CONFIG.SYS overrides the COMSPEC variable. Can I take that to mean that
if the shell command is used in CONFIG.SYS then COMSPEC will be ignored
full stop?

  If so, what can be done to get around this problem, if anything? I have
thought about modifying COMMAND.COM so that it starts off with > 160 bytes
of environment space so that I would not need to reload it in CONFIG.SYS.
Has anyone else done this, and if so, how did you do it?

  This problem does not occur with our DOS 3.3 floppy disk boot machines.

  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  christian legg
  legg@ucs.adelaide.edu.au