This is in relation to my previous message. Again, I'm running Win3.1. I don't have a bootup disk. When I boot the computer it hangs and won't load windows. Is there a way that I can force it to load into DOS before it hangs?

You probably have a problem in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. You can interrupt it with a CTRL Break or Ctrl C. Then edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT and change the first line from @ECHO OFF TO REM @ECHO OFF. Then boot and each line of the BAT will be displayed as it is executed and it will stop on the problem command. Depending on what it was trying to do at that time, you can determine why it fails. email me if you have more questions

I did not see your post about the CDROM drivers to forget the AUTOEXEC.BAT post.

per your email, I got the XMS driver problem worked out, but still the computer hangs at the message: "ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM device driver version 4.14, Jan 1999." I wonder if the problem has something to do with when I installed the CD-ROM drivers, I was looking at the custom installation of the drivers, and perhaps messed something up. Don't know what though.

Hi Shun-Luoi, if you press F5 as soon as the "Starting MS-DOS..." text appears, config.sys and autoexec.bat should be bypassed an your machine should thus into pure DOS. This works with DOS6.2 at least. I do not know which version you have, but give it a try. Good luck Ingo

F5 will do what you said you need to do, but F8 is better for troubleshooting as it has you confirm each entry so you see which line in the foot files hung the computer.

It never even gets to the screen where it says "Starting MS-DOS..." I downloaded the bootdisk from http://www.mirrors.org/archived_software/www.bootdisk.com/original.htm and the computer tries to read the drive A when I restart it. But it doesn't do anyting with the bootdisk otherwise, and then hangs as usual. I'm stumped. :-(