I upgraded from Win ME to XP a few years back and dos's response to commands like dir has always been fast. Now after formatting my hard drive and doing a fresh install with Win XP Dos's respose to commands is REALLY slow. Does anyone know how to I can fix this lethargic response?

Windows XP only uses emulated DOS. It does not have the real thing at all. The slowness is in the emulation passing commands to XP, XP processing them and returning the results back to the emulated DOS window.

Yeah, there's no DOS under Windows XP, just some sort of emulation. But such thing is not a general problem with Windows XP. Such commands generate pretty fast (immediate) responses on my computer, also running Windows XP. However, such OS requires a fairly good CPU and RAM. You mentioned you upgraded your computer from WinME. Perhaps the computer is a little bit too slow for Windows XP's demands... My computer is a Pentium III 700MHz with 384MB RAM. Windows XP runs fine here, but if you have a computer below that things could get slow. Try asking on the Windows XP forum. -- Leonardo Pignataro - Secret_Doom -- secret_doom@hotmail.com www.batch.hpg.com.br

By the way, this "DOS emulation" we've mentioned is made by using a command interpreter. The primary command interpreter from Windows XP is CMD.exe. However, COMMAND.COM is also avaliable, I don't know why. You should use CMD.EXE, since Windows XP's COMMAND.COM is indeed slow. -- Leonardo Pignataro - Secret_Doom -- secret_doom@hotmail.com www.batch.hpg.com.br

Thanks for pointing out the memory Leonardo. I notice JavaToad says 128MB which is on the low side. 256MB at least would be better. As to speed I cannot say since mostly I use Windows 98se. My wife has an XP based PC which while fast is not a slick as my 98se on a simerlar spec PC.

this is true. xp is a bit clunky on older systems. but it can run responsively, i even have xp on a tecra 8000 p2 366mhz laptop. and the command prompt is pretty responsive on it. how slow are we talking?? the command prompt on the 366mhz responds within a second.