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Help fixing MS-Dos mode autoexec/config? Trouble finding right directory

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First post, by jfarms

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Hi,

I installed Audician 32 windows drivers, which I believe made changes to my autoexec.bat for exit to dos mode. I then followed the Phil ms-dos mode guide, and pasted his config.sys and autoexec.bat into the advanced properties of 'exit to dos mode', overwriting for the first, and adding to the bottom for the autoexec.bat. I have copied/pasted the current config.sys and autoexec.bat from 'exit to dos mode'.

The issue is that I only got it to work after creating a directory c:\dos and putting into it emm86.exe, himem.sys, and mscdex.exe. Without doing that, the cd drives wouldn't be assigned drive letters, and it would say it couldn't find either himem or emm86 files. Now it seems to work fine, but it still does say Syntax Error after saying the mouse is loaded.

I'm not sure which lines in my autoexec.bat (I think the issue is here?) are creating the conflict in terms of directory, and what I would need to do to fix it other than what I've done, which feels like a duct tape fix of just duplicating windows files in a new c:\dos folder.

Thanks in advance

Config.sys

[COMMON]
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
BUFFERS=30
LASTDRIVE=H

[menu]
menuitem=EMC, Expanded memory + Mouse + CD-ROM
menuitem=XMC, Extended memory + Mouse + CD-ROM
menuitem=CMC, Conventional Memory only + Mouse + CD-ROM
menuitem=EM, Expanded memory + Mouse
menuitem=XM, Extended memory + Mouse
menuitem=CM, Conventional memory only + Mouse

menudefault=EMC,10

[EMC]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\VIDECDD.SYS /D:OPTICAL

[XMC]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\VIDECDD.SYS /D:OPTICAL

[CMC]
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\VIDECDD.SYS /D:OPTICAL

[EM]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM

[XM]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF

[CM]

Autoexec.bat

SET CONFIG=EMC
SET TMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET winbootdir=C:\WINDOWS
SET PROMPT=$P$G
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\DOS
SET xxxxxxxxxxx
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
LH C:\DRIVERS\CTMOUSE.EXE /R2
GoTo EMC
:EMC
:XMC
:CMC
LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:OPTICAL
:EM
:XM
:CM

Reply 1 of 3, by Agent of the BSoD

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HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE, and MSCDEX.EXE are located in C:\WINDOWS, so you can just replace the C:\DOS bits with that and delete that DOS directory you made since it's redundant.
They should look like this: DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF

Not sure what's causing the Syntax Error to show up, hard to tell with the way these files are structured, and I don't see anything immediately obvious.

No idea what SET xxxxxxxxxxx is supposed to mean, probably nothing? I assume you can delete that line altogether.

I don't think the Audician 32 drivers were added to this. I believe they call a program called setupsa.exe or something like that to initialize the card in DOS. It's been a long time since I've used that card. I would run the setup program from DOS and let it modify your autoexec.bat from there, that should get it set up correctly, if you haven't tried that already.

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Reply 3 of 3, by doshea

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Agent of the BSoD wrote on 2023-05-13, 20:08:

Not sure what's causing the Syntax Error to show up, hard to tell with the way these files are structured, and I don't see anything immediately obvious.

No idea what SET xxxxxxxxxxx is supposed to mean, probably nothing? I assume you can delete that line altogether.

I assume "SET xxxxxxxxxxx" was probably someone's (Phil's?) example of "if you need to set any more variables, set them here" or something, but as it stands, that line will cause the "Syntax Error" because there's no "=" in it.

Also jfarms, your AUTOEXEC.BAT is messed up with respect to the menu in CONFIG.SYS. The CONFIG variable should automatically be set by DOS to reflect which option in the menu was selected, e.g. "EMC", "XMC", etc., but:
1. The first line "SET CONFIG=EMC" will throw that away and act like you always picked "Expanded memory + Mouse + CD-ROM"
2. "GoTo EMC" ignores the CONFIG variable, I imagine this was meant to be "GOTO %CONFIG%", but also there should have been more GOTO statements in there after each case like ":EMC" to go to the end of the file and not keep processing the other options.
If you really want the menu to work you should probably go back to the example you originally started with, or I or someone can try to find you a working one online if you need it.

As it is you could just remove all of these lines and it'd have the same effect (I'm excluding some lines between them which do actually have an effect):

SET CONFIG=EMC
GoTo EMC
:EMC
:XMC
:CMC
:EM
:XM
:CM

Also these are redundant because they're overwritten later:

SET PROMPT=$P$G
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\DOS

This does seem like the kind of breakage that an installer would make when your AUTOEXEC.BAT uses the setting from the CONFIG.SYS menu, because it's very hard for any program to infer what you really wanted your AUTOEXEC.BAT to do, so they do dumb things like put all their settings at the start or the end, or update only one of the menu options.

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