CompuServe Messages

windows/mscdex conflict

    20-Mar-93 08:37:51
Sb: windows/mscdex conflict
Fm: Kevin E Davis 70651,3655
To: Jack L. Chalker 72205,613
Jack, I have the weirdest problem with my new CD-ROM and Windows. It started just after I installed my CD-ROM and it happened for the first time after I loaded MS Bookshelf and rebooted. The computer would go through all of config.sys and autoexec.bat, show the Windows startup screen, and then show a distorted version of it and go immediately to a cold boot. I thought it was related to the Word 2.0c/Bookshelf cd because it would hang only when that cd was in the drive. Then it started happening with other cd's. Today it happened with no cd in the drive. I thought of something Jerry Pournelle wrote in March Byte, and added an /e after mscdex. Sure enough, it now works fine. Take the /e out and it hangs. Put it back in and all's well. The strangest thing is this: I have no expanded memory. At bootup when it gets to mscdex in autoexec it says "expanded memory unavailable, mscdex version 2.21." Even so it does the trick. – Kevin