Trying to resurrect my old 486DX2-66 PC, the CD Rom drive did not appear as has happened on previous occasions. I fiddled with the config.sys file to fix it as I had at previous times and on rebooting the machine did not boot up fully. I used all of my four (4)reboot disks but none were able to reboot fully. The reboot does not go far enough to allow usage of DOS, no cursor appears. Only the messages: EMM386.exe faulty or missing and Config.sys fault in line 3.

Try this site. Goto the bottom of the page. http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/v-emm386-sys.html

When "Starting DOS" comes on the screen press F5 or F8 and find out where the problem is in the config.sys. F5 skipps the config.sys and autoexec.bat files and F8 asks you to confirm each line in the files as you boot. Presumably you will find that the DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.exe has been altered in some way that hangs the computer. If all else fails, REM it out. There is little need for it because HIMEM.SYS manages most of the memory you use.

Thank you loey but the URL you have given me must be incorrect, I can not get into it. Thank you also fred 6008. With all the playing around my symptoms have changed. Now I get on the screen CMOS memory mismatch - RUN SETUP UTILITY - press F1 to resume. I've tried to adjust the CMOS several times but so far no luck. Thank you all Frank