my friend is using a twenty year old machine running dos 3.1 to operate a piece of lab equipment. the current boot sequence runs from a 1.44" diskette (drive a). that sequence starts an application after the os boots. he needs that application to not run at start-up. it seems (my assumption is anyway) that there are two ways to fix this. first is to change the sequence so that it does not include the initiation of the application. the second would be prompting the machine to boot from a different drive. he has a 5.25 floppy drive (drive b) and a floppy with the correct boot sequence on it. the machine sees that there is something there (calling it drive b) but nothing else. either of these options would seemingly fix the problem but both considerably test my computer skills. i do not know which would be easiest for me to relay to him, someone with limited computer knowledge. i am fairly command line savvy in windows but have no dos experience. so i look to those far more informed. thank you so much for your time

You can simply REM out the line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT that starts the app on the A: drive. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Indeed, even on a DOS that primitive, autoexec.bat is how programs are automatically executed (and the reason for the funny name) It is a user editable file - that's kind of the point "the second would be prompting the machine to boot from a different drive" I doubt very much if that BIOS option would be present on a 386(?) - there is an old utility that does that (bboot) but the simplest thing would be to edit autoexec.bat to suit I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

What jboy is trying to tell you is this: Older machines cannot change the bootup sequence. Older machines such as you seem to have, booted the FIRST device was always the A: drive, which was normally on the end of the cable, next, B:, which was the floppy in the middle of the cable The CDROM, if present, probably can't boot Last of course, would be the hard drive, and for the record you aren't "booting" Windows 3.xx, you are booting some form of DOS From your post it seems(?) that you are purposly starting from a floppy? If you need to change what starts up, find and edit the "autoexec.bat." You can do so by booting up a more modern Whenhozed machine, and reading the floppy from the Windows machine. Edit the autoexec.bat file with plain 'ol notepad, and as said above, find the line in autoexec.bat that starts the program, and simply put a REM in front of it. It would be a good idea to save a copy of the file somewhere else until you get this all ironed out. One way to do that is to save a copy of the file as "autoexec.old" on the very same floppy.

You can boot a cdrom from even older machines. I have booted cdroms from floppies using things like bcdl, smartbootmgr, grub. it's handy to have more than one of these in your kit, since not all work on all machines. None the less, i booted a 1994 vintage 486, with no bios support for cdroms, using bcdl. The dream you dream alone is only a dream, The dream we dream together is reality.

"(and the reason for the funny name)" ROTFLMAO ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

OS2fan2, being able to access a machine's CDROM WHEN BOOTED FROM A FLOPPY IS NOT "booting a cdrom"