Don’t be afraid to play around with your system, but by all means, ALWAYS make backup copies of your important information, and especially your config.sys and autoexec.bat files before continuing.

The only way to learn is by messing with things. In 99% of all cases you will not hurt anything. Even if you can’t get into your system, you probably haven’t hurt anything, you probably just need to change something. If you have backups, you can always revert back to your old startup files (ie: config.sys autoexec.bat) and be on your way.

“But,” you say, “I can’t get into my system!” Here’s what to do:

Press your reset button (or turn off and on the power if you don’t have a reset button) to reboot.

When it is starting up, and the screen says:
“Starting Windows95”, “OS Load In Progress” or “Starting MS-DOS”
then press the "F8" key, or on older versions of DOS the “F5” key.

Do it quickly... if you miss it, you can always reboot and start again until you get it.

Windows95 users will be given a startup menu. Select “Command Prompt Only.” Other users will get: “MS-DOS will prompt you for each config.sys command.” Type “n” and press <Enter>. Continue to do this until you get to the C:\> prompt.

Once you are there, you can get rid of that lousy config.sys or autoexec.bat file you just created and change back to the version you had prior. You did make a backup didn’t you?

To rename a file type:

rename autoexec.bup autoexec.bat

rename config.bup config.sys

This will rename your backup files (if that’s what you named them... use the names you named them by all means...) and you’re ready to hit that “reset” button and go back to before you started tinkering!

If you have your autoexec.bat file and config.sys file setup for multiple configurations and it comes up to the config.sys menu, at the bottom of the screen it allows you to go to DOS and skip the startup files. You can use that option as well.

Modified: 02/11/99