Hallo Raymond
RB> This is one of the problem when someone try to jump-in a conversation 
RB> without having followed ALL the threads...
I detect a faintly adversary tone again in your answer to someone trying to 
help. If you look at your message base, you will find that I jumped in quite 
early with some advice, however ill-suited to your problems, and I have tried 
to follow your endeavours. Maybe the difficulty lies in how you define those 
problems here... In my last message I had some solid advice, and I detect no 
hint that you even tried to implement any of that.
For your information: I have just renamed AUTOEXEC.BAT to *.SAV, and 
rebooted. I arrived with no sign of any hassle at my usual (4)DOS prompt, 
verified that no AUTOEXEC.BAT was present. All this under MS-DOS 7.10. I 
could then proceed to start W95. 
So perhaps you should try to follow the advice outlined in my last message. 
Maybe the difference in our experience is due to some MSDOS.SYS entry. I 
think I posted mine a few days ago in some message. But an entry like 
BOOTGUI=0 is a likely candidate.
RB> Again, being late in the conversation you would have learnt that MS-DOS 
RB> v7.0 and 4DOS (under v7.0 of MS I/O) will call only AUTOEXEC.BAT and 
RB> nothing else as indicated in the 4DOS on-line help.
If the above still does not solve your problem (and I guess another MS-DOS 
version may behave differently), you might have another look at the 4DOS HELP 
system: I find something which is a little different from what you say:
As outlined in "The Windows 95 Boot Sequence"
>> If you use the default command processor, COMMAND.COM, it will be loaded
>> automatically at the end of CONFIG.SYS if needed to process AUTOEXEC.BAT,
>> then the GUI is loaded as described above.  If you use a SHELL command in
>> CONFIG.SYS to load a different command processor (such as 4DOS), it will 
e
>> loaded just as under previous versions of MS-DOS, and can then invoke the
>> Windows GUI if desired (see below for details). However the SHELL command 
is
>> ignored if AUTOEXEC.BAT is not present.
I would interprete this in just the reverse way: Without AUTOEXEC.BAT 4DOS 
never gets loaded as shell. Note that this contradicts my personal experience 
as outlined above. Perhaps written for V. 7.00? 
You could still circumvent this by renaming 4DOS.COM to COMMAND.COM, a not 
very elegant solution imho. However, in another place, 4DOS HELP states:
>> Whenever it is started as a primary shell, 4DOS runs AUTOEXEC.BAT
>> immediately after 4START.
This statement suggests to me that 4START.BTM is processed before 
autoexec.bat (something I have not tested, but believe to be correct). This 
opens the possibility to 
   
   have an autoexec.bat to get DOS to recognize SHELL=4DOS...
   have 4DOS start and process 4START.BTM
   move away autoexec.bat to another place in 4START.BTM
   test if 4DOS now acts according to it's autoexec related ini settings 
   move autoexec.bat back 4EXIT.BTM
RB> I do know that it is the command processor that will call and load 
RB> BAT/BTM files, but in the case of MS-DOS v7.0, the first file loaded 
RB> after CONFIG.SYS must be called AUTOEXEC.BAT - otherwise, MS-DOS v7.0 
RB> will create its own.
Probably it's presence is sufficient, which includes the possibility of a 
do-nothing empty file. Not true in my experience, but you know that by now.
Again, I suggest a carefully planned approach to the problem as outlined in 
my earlier messages. You may want to try some things before dismissing them 
out of hand.
Grsse aus Ostrhauderfehn, 
*Klaus Meinhard*
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