Message-ID: <002b01c2bae4$9e1373e0$0100a8c0@acp42g> From: "Andrew Cottrell" To: References: <10301121803 DOT AA21102 AT clio DOT rice DOT edu> Subject: Re: Quirk with command.com shell on XP Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 20:17:07 +1100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com > > > I use CMD.EXE exclusively (whenever I've had to use command.com I've found > > > some problem that needed to be fixed anyway) - and I've never seen any > > > problems. Given the enhanced capabilities of CMD.EXE, why not recommend > > > using it instead? > > > > Doesn't Windows 2000/XP invoke command.com when a DOS program is > > launched, even if your default shell is cmd.exe? > > Now, if you execute command.com, what happens is you get a second > command.com started in the VDM (similar to what happens if you > execute command.com under DOS - when it's already loaded). What I found was that comspec was set to use cmd.exe by default and if I started a command.com sheell then I had problems when shelling out and running other programs. It may be easier to recommend cmd.exe and then we only need to put some notes in there about not mixing command.com and cmd.exe shells and setting comspec correctly. Andrew