The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Booting with Bat!
Stephen Davey

Many of us may have had the frustration of wanting to run two different applications that require different instructions in our computer system's two startup files, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Conflicts can often arise when the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files load several device drivers and memory-resident utilities each of which take up a small amount of memory, and collectively leave too little memory to load a specialised, memory-hungry application (i.e. Ventura Publisher or Xerox Presents).

Review What Happens When We Switch On

Switching on a computer at the power switch is referred to as 'Booting-up'.

(I'm not sure if this somewhat aggressive term resulted from actual practice in early computing days or perhaps from something less destructive - nevertheless, booting-up it is!) (Ed: It originates from the concept of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, because a computer is a useless assortment of electronics until it switches on the disk drive, tests the computer and loads the operating system. Doing this simple job requires a tiny 'bootstrap' program stored on a chip.)

Re-setting the system without turning the power off then on again is called 'Warm booting'. Enough of computer footwear!

After a PC has been booted-up, and after rumbling away with a few internal hardware checking and then DOS loading tasks not obvious to the user, the system hunts for the CONFIG.SYS file.

If this file is found, then the system configures itself to the instructions set in this file.

As an example, my normal CONFIG.SYS file looks like this -

 DEVICE = C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS 
DEVICE = C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.SYS 
DEVICE = C:\DOC\VDISK.SYS> 
COUNTRY = 061
The first two lines load device drivers for ANSI screen characters and the mouse. The next line sets up a useful virtual disk and then the last line sets the country code to Australia.

Having dealt with the CONFIG.SYS file, the system then hunts for the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Mine looks like this -

 PATH C:\;C:\DOS;C:\MOUSE;C:\WORD
PROMPT $P $G 
DOS-EDIT 
SAVER 
CACHE 
NPAD 
HOTCODE 
MENU

The first two lines set the DOS path and prompt. The next five lines load all these memory resident utilities (called TSR - terminate & stay resident - programs). The last line then starts my menu program.

Unfortunately, while most of my applications will still run happily with these TSR programs loaded, some applications (e.g. Ventura, Presents) require more memory than is left available.

One solution to this problem (short of adding buckets of expensive memory cards etc.) is to use another utility that removes the TSR programs before running your memory hungry application. This however will not alter your basic configuration (as set by the CONFIG.SYS file).

A More Effective Way

The easiest way to get around this problem is to write a separate CONFIG and AUTOEXEC file for each special application.

Let's assume we want to use our system in three basic configurations at different times, e.g.
  • Normal operation with several TSRs and several low memory applications (e.g. word processing, communications, spreadsheet etc.) that can all use the same CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file (e.g. the examples already shown).
  • Desktop publishing (Ventura) and other GEM environment applications, and thirdly, Presentation graphics (Xerox Presents).
N ow, as well as our original CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, we would make three sets of files named, for example -

1) CONFIG.NOR and AUTOEXEC.NOR
2) CONFIG.VEN and AUTOEXEC.VEN
3) CONFIGYRE and AUTOEXEC.PRE

Each of these sets would contain the relevant instructions only for that particular set of applications.

For example, the set of files for Ventura contains -

 CONFIG.VEN

DEVICE = C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.SYS 
BUFFERS=20 
FILES=20 
COUNTRY=061

AUTOEXEC.VEN

C: 
CD \VENTURA 
DRVRMRGR VP %1 /S=SD_WY700.VGA/M=03 
MENU

while my Xerox Presents files look like this -

 CONFIG.PRE

DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS 
DEVICE = C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.SYS 
DEVICE = C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.SYS 320 
BUFFERS = 20 
FILES = 20

AUTOEXEC.PRE

C: 
CD:\XP 
XP

Now to Start Things Up
To operate this system most easily, you will need a small utility called WARM.COM (Ed: Possibly similar to one on MELB 526 - check first. I use one called REBOOT COM from the APC magazine set which enables me to do a cold boot or a warm one.) or some similar utility that does a warm boot to the system.

(If you don't have this utility there are other ways - see later.)

Now all we need to do is make a batch file for each group of applications that will copy the relevant set of files and then restart the system with a warm boot.

All the batch files could be combined into one file. However for clarity, they are shown here as separate files.

For example my batch file to set up my normal, small, applications

 NORM.BAT

C: 
CD\ 
COPY AUTOEXEC.NOR AUTOEXEC.BAT 
COPY CONFIG.NOR CONFIG.SYS 
WARM

The batch file to start Ventura is -

 VEN.BAT

C: 
CD\ 
COPY AUTOEXEC.VEN AUTOEXEC.BAT 
COPY CONFIG.VEN CONFIG.SYS 
WARM

And the Xerox Presents file is -

 PRE.BAT

CD\
COPY AUTOEXEC.PRE AUTOEXEC.BAT 
COPY CONFIG.PRE CONFIG.SYS 
WARM

In each case, the CONFIG AND AUTOEXEC file for each application, are copied to become the actual CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Having done this the system is then restarted with 'WARM'.

Once the system restarts the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files now contain the correct information for each group of applications.

If you don't have WARM (or similar)

While you are waiting to get a copy of this useful utility just replace the WARM line with the following lines -

 ECHO *** NOW REBOOT SYSTEM ******* 
ECHO EITHER PRESS CTRL/ALT/DEL 
ECHO OR SWITCH OFF, THEN ON AGAIN

(As you can see, not as tidy as WARM!)

Reprinted from the September 1989 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

[About Melbourne PC User Group]