hey there, hope you can help. i had windows 95 and ran an really old dos game that always worked. for some weird reason this time it didnt, pc restarted in dos mode and didnt enter windows anymore, instead trying to start the game at each reset. i checked out autoexec and found the entry and deleted it. still no windows start up but a message if i want to go back to "standard" mode, everytime i write yes the pc reboots again and i get the same message over and over. installed windows 98!!! over it and still the same problem. always the same message. edited autoexec and config a few times, but always the same message. please help, thanks. sp.

Hi sp. Have you tried to run SCANDISK while in DOS mode?

It does sound like a config.sys or autoexec.bat problem. Try renaming them so they aren't loaded during the boot.

At the dos prompt in the root directory type more"<"msdos.sys (without the quotes--that the only way I could get it to show the whole message). Although it's a hidden file I think the more command will still read it. Anyway look at the first few lines. It tells what directory to boot from, whether to open with a graphics interface, etc. Post back the first few lines. Since windows doesn't even start properly I'm thinking maybe that file got edited somehow. How an old dos game program could do that I don't know but it's worth a shot.

I'm not sure but I seem to remember there is a setting in the PIF settings. If you right click on the .exe file of the DOS game and click "Properties" in the list, I seem to remember seeing a settings page of how the dos prog should work in conjunction with Windows. I still use DOS a lot (dosshell has helped me fix a lot of people's problems) and also a couple of ancient DOS games (not quite gorilla.bas level..) and never had a problem with any version of Windows. Dane

I seem to remember that I once had a program (can't remember exactly what it was) that would reboot with it's own Config.sys & Autoexec.bat, renaming the original ones to Config.old & Autoexec.old (or .bak). When exiting the program, it would replace the new files with the original ones. The problem was that if the program didn't load properly, (as your game didn't) it wouldn't replace the files upon exiting. Look around in DOS & see if you have the .old files or .bak files. If so, try renaming all four of the files (two existing files & two .old files) & see if you can boot to Windows. You also should be able to get to Windows by booting with a bootdisk & switching to a C:\Windows prompt, then typing: win.com (ENTER) You might find it easier to look around within Windows rather than from DOS. Hope this helps. Post back with results. Dave

Now that you mention it I remember some software doing that too. It seems like a lifetime ago, in computer years that is.