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From: c60b-1eq@web-1e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Need to change name of AUTOEXEC
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.223717.26315@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 91 22:37:17 GMT
References: <9103291744.AA27144@cwns1.INS.CWRU.Edu> <1991Apr1.131809.1@dev8o.mdcbbs.com>
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <1991Apr1.131809.1@dev8o.mdcbbs.com> campbell@dev8o.mdcbbs.com (Tim Campbell) writes:
>In article <9103291744.AA27144@cwns1.INS.CWRU.Edu>, aa581@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Sandra Rozhon) writes:
>> In a message from (chrisb@hubcap.clemson.edu (Chris Behrens))
>>>Is there a program that will allow me to change the name of the file
>>>that COMMAND.COM looks for when booting ??  By default, it looks for and
>>>executes AUTOEXEC, i want to name it something else, maybe place it in a
>>>subdirectory or something. Simply running a different BAT file from
>>>within the AUTOEXEC is not what I want.
>> Go ahead and create the .BAT file you want to use in whatever 
>> subdirectory you wish, then in your AUTOEXEC.BAT have only one line that
>> refers to that batch file.  
>-- 
>Sorry I missed the original - I've done this before.  I beleive that if you
>take a hex-editor (debug will work - I used PC-tools) and load the invisible
>file (IBMDOS.SYS) you'll notice that the name of the file to execute is 
>spelled out (located near the end of the file - AUTOEXEC.BAT) - I simply
>renamed this to a different file - say, AUTOBOOT.BAT.
>I did this because I didn't want people messing with the file, so I created
>it and hid it.

You should _NOT_ modify IBMBIO.COM or IBMDOS.COM.  COMMAND.COM is
the executable which attempts to read the file \AUTOEXEC.BAT.  You can
use a binary file editor to change this to whatever you wish.  It
doesn't even need to be in the root directory.  But the full name of
the new file must not overrun the original name.  If the new name is
smaller, I would recommend padding the other bytes with NULLs.
And, as always, backup the original copy of COMMAND.COM.

+==========================================================================+
| Noam Mendelson   ..!agate!ucbvax!web!c60b-1eq | "I haven't lost my mind, |
| c60b-1eq@web.Berkeley.EDU                     |  it's backed up on tape  |
| University of California at Berkeley          |  somewhere."             |