Is there a way I can get DOS 5.0 to boot to the DOS prompt instead of always going straight into the shell?

Put a rem statement or ; in front of the dosslell.exe line in the autoexec.bat file that you open from dos with edit.com or from Windows wit write.exe or any text editor.You will read the lines in autoexec.bat like this: edit C:\autoexec.bat (press enter) Make the change to the dosshell line(probably the last line). rem C:\dos\dosshell.exe or ;c:\dos\dosshell.exe Press ALT,choose Exit and say Yes to save the file. You can start dosshell.exe from the C dos prompt when you need it later. Good luck.

It took me a while to understand what you said but got it after a few min. anyway I added the ; before the C:\dos\dosshell and saved it and it still started in dosshell instead of C prompt.

Try the REM instead fo ;

The REM worked like a charm, thanks P.J. and x86.

Hi yellow belt; Just to add to this a bit, the semi-colon (;) is used to remark lines in config.sys. Double-colons (::), followed by a space, are used to remark autoexec.bat entries. I have no idea why MS did it this way, but it is actually preferable to use the double-colons rather than REM. :: c:\dos\doshell.exe Also, keep in mind, if your sure you never want to start in the shell, just delete that line. You can always start "doshell.exe" manually at any time. Dex

Of course, if you want to get fancy, add this in place of your c:\dos\doshell.exe: cls echo. echo. choice /N /T:n,4 " Run DosShell? (Y/N)" cls if errorlevel 2 goto Noshell c:\dos\dosshell.exe :Noshell You can change the "4" to however long, (or short), you want the "timeout" to be. Enjoy, Dex