VOGONS


Cmd.exe

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First post, by Guest

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I don't know much about DOS, which is why I'm glad Glidos is so user-friendly, but I had a problem when I first installed it. Right after I clicked on the Glidos install file (yes I am a registered user and downloaded it from the official web page) a window opened called Cmd.exe, and my computer froze and the screen went black. I waited hoping it was doing something, but nothing happened for about 5 minutes, so I pressed the windows key, and after a minute windows came back. Glidos appeared to have installed, and I clicked on the Cmd.exe window which had minimized, and again the black screen came up and nothing happened and I pressed the windows key, and it minimized. I tried to close the window and there was an error message that said, "This process cannot be interrupted" or something like that, and every time I tried to close it, it wouldn't close. I figured it was doing something, so I left it alone for a while, but it never finished what it was doing. I tried to restart my computer, and it froze up, control-alt-delete wouldn't work, and so I unplugged it and then turned it back on. It seemed to boot up slower than usual, and before windows came up there was a black screen with a blinking white cursor, which I haven't noticed happening before. After my computer was back into windows, Glidos seemed to work fine and I haven't had any problems, but that whole ordeal has bothered me, I keep wondering if it messed something up, or caused some sort of damage to my computer I don't know about since I don't know anything about DOS. Can anyone tell me why this might have happened and if it could have damaged my computer somehow? Has anyone else had this problem during installation?

Reply 1 of 1, by Guest

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There's always a small chance of some damage to the integrity of the information on the hard disc when you have to pull the power rather than shutting down cleanly. But Windows will almost always repair this itself, and the fact that your machine still boots means its fine. Most people have to cut the power from time to time, although less often with XP and 2000 than 98 and ME. I don't think I as yet have caused one of my machines not to be bootable from doing so, but I've heard of it happening.

As for the black screen, I've had that happen before on odd occasions. Nothing to worry about. Sometimes its TR having trouble with audio support. In that case, pressing ESC a few times can help. It can be video drivers getting confused when handling both DOS and Windows programs simultaneously, although ATI and nVidia have gotten much better at doing so than when XP first came out.

cmd.exe is just XP's program for interpreting DOS commands. Running a game under Glidos, will always cause an invocation of cmd.exe, although usually you wont see it.

The main thing is that Glidos doesn't install anything that runs on Windows start up or hooks into the OS, so when you aren't using it, it isn't doing anything. There's not really any way it can cause damage.