Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!fox!portal!cup.portal.com!Devin_E_Ben-Hur
From: Devin_E_Ben-Hur@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Command.com ISN'T invalid
Message-ID: <25189@cup.portal.com>
Date: 19 Dec 89 20:03:40 GMT
References: <89121614031714@masnet.uucp> <320@infovax.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 18

The problem with "INVALID COMMAND.COM -- SYSTEM HALTED" does have to do
with attempting to reload the transient portion of COMMAND.COM from disk.

The problem is that the resident portion of COMMAND.COM *ignores* the COMSPEC
environment variable.  If your shell is loaded from other than the root
directory of the boot drive, the transient reload will fail unless you
specify the correct re-load path as a parameter to COMMAND.COM in the initial
SHELL= line of CONFIG.SYS.  So, if your COMMAND.COM is located in a
directory named DOS on drive C, your CONFIG.SYS should have a line like:
 
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /P <other switches>
                         ^^^^^^ -- this tells it where to reload from.
Note that, when the reload path is specified in the shell= line, there
is no need to set comspec in your autoexec.bat, command.com will automatically
make "COMSPEC=<load-path>\COMMAND.COM" the first line of your environment.

Devin_Ben-Hur@Cup.Portal.Com
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