Did a DOS game break my Windows?

Question

Topic: Hard to start WINDOWS desktop normally:

Date: December 5, 2002

Recently my son was playing a DOS based game. The computer froze up and he had to restart. However, when he did this, rather than going to the normal WINDOWS desktop screen, it went right back into the head page of the game. This kept happening. I don't know whether this is a coincidence, but I noticed that two lines referring to the location of this game appeared in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. I deleted these lines. Now, when I start the computer, the Windows 98 Start-Up menu appears. When I press "1" [Normal], I then get a black screen, followed by either a "COMPAQ" logo screen or Windows 98 logo screen, then a black screen, and it returns me back to the Start-Up menu again.

I am, however, able to get into the normal WINDOWS desktop screen by pressing "4" [Step-by-Step configuration set-up] and pressing "Y" or "enter" for all the entries except for the two referring to the CONFIG.SYS file and the AUTOEXEC.BAT file where I press "N" or "escape". How do I get my computer to start normally without all this. I am operating a COMPAQ 5477 computer with pre-installed WINDOWS 98 Second Edition. Can you help? Thanks, Harry.

Answer

This question was answered on December 5, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

In Windows 98, there is hardly ever a reason to have anything at all in the autoexec.bat or config.sys files. However, I KNOW Compaq insists on getting their logo in there constantly, and sometimes it uses the autoexec.bat to do it. Therefore, I would delete everything in the autoexec.bat file, except the file itself. Same goes for the config.sys.

Should this hobble any other programs, reinstall them, but I have never seen this happen.

Having said that, I would not hesitate to restore the entire system, either. With Compaq machines, it seems to be a way of life.

Another thing to check:

Be sure the game isn't in the startup folder. Especially the installation files. Go to Start > Programs > Startup.

I ran across a machine with a game in the startup folder, and the game reinstalled itself every time the machine was booted. This will really slow down a startup sequence!

Author

Posted by Robert of Mesa Community College on December 5, 2002