What sets the value of COMSPEC in Windows 98? \ VOGONS

What sets the value of COMSPEC in Windows 98?

Topic actions

First post, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-08-09, 20:18

Kahenraz Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 4482
Joined: 2004-01-22, 04:57

I can see in a command prompt via SET that it is "COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM". Where is this value being set?

Last edited by Kahenraz on 2024-09-22, 18:53. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by mr.cat

Posted on 2024-09-22, 18:44

mr.cat Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 399
Joined: 2020-12-13, 11:56
Location: Finland

Did you ever figure it out?
I could be mistaken but it sure looks like the initial value is hard coded into IO.SYS, at offset 0xa75c.
But I suppose it may be altered in some later stage (via registry perhaps?)

Reply 2 of 3, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2024-09-22, 19:02

Kahenraz Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 4482
Joined: 2004-01-22, 04:57

It probably haa to be set somewhere during the boot process before COMMAND.COM gets loaded, so that's a good guess. I think that my IO.SYS was actually compressed and I'm guessing that I dropped this file into a hex editor years ago and had this question when I couldn't find it in the data.

Reply 3 of 3, by Grzyb

Posted on 2024-09-22, 19:37

Grzyb Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2377
Joined: 2019-05-08, 13:47
Location: CET-1CEST-2

It can be altered by SHELL statement in CONFIG.SYS

Kiełbasa smakuje najlepiej, gdy przysmażysz ją laserem!

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to Milliways