I have a Compaq Portable II with a bad or missing command interpreter error. I can boot with a DOS 3.3 disk and get access to the hard drive. My question is about the DOS version on the hard drive. The command.com file has a date of 4-22-85 and a size of 22,747. I've looked through several DOS history sites and haven't been able to come up with the correct version. Closest match is DOS 3.1. Can anyone help?

Start computer with the bootdisk. At the command prompt type in

path c:\dos

and press enter. This will tell the computer where to look for the commands you are about to type in. Now type in

dir c:\command.com/s

and then press enter. This will show you all the occurrences of command.com on your harddisk. There's probably two, one is in the root directory and the other is in the dos directory.

If there is two, rename the one in the root directory to command.bad like this

ren c:\command.com c:\command.bad

and then press enter. Then copy the one from your dos directory to the root directory like this

copy c:\dos\command.com c:\

and then press enter. Before doing any of this you should run scandisk using the autofix and surface switches first like this

scandisk c: /autofix /surface

and then press enter.

HTH

Hey! My computer boots! Thanks asdf. I did as you suggested and it boots by itself now. Thanks again.