The company i work for buys laptops that come with XP and DOS...the machine boots into DOS by default and to boot into XP you have to tpye "boot" at the C:\ prompt. Once in XP you have to go into partition magic and select the DOS partition as active then apply changes to reboot into DOS.
However, once the machine has re-booted into DOS, the settings in Tsetup have been reset to the default settings. What is annoying is that the default settings have no parallel port enabled, so every time i go into DOS from XP i have to enable parallel port = LPT1.

Is there any way to avoid this??

I need the parallel port because we run Zip drives from DOS

Thanks in advance

Do you need it to boot into DOS?

Couldn't you just run XP?


Roger

No..it has to boot into DOS....it is software that monitors downhole processes when drilling oil wells....the paperwork we have to fill out is in Excel, hence the need to boot into Windows...it is primarily used as a DOS machine..........lmao...until a few years ago we used to use Win 3.11. DOS is used probably 85 % of the time...the XP is just for paperwork.

Thanks

Maybe you could add the LPT1 command line into autoexec.bat?


Roger

Perhaps....but what i don't get is that if i reboot from DOS bcak into DOS, ie. reset my machine, then the settings remain as before, it is only when i boot into DOS from XP.

Also, what is the DOS command to enable a port? I have 4 choices, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3 or none. None of the other ports appear in the autoexec.bat file or the config.sys file

Thanks

The setting must already be in autoexec.bat . Maybe XP doesn't run that file when it goes into DOS from XP?


Roger