Harsha, the PC has now been returned to it's owner, so the job is history.  

In the finish I ran FProt in Safe Mode which did what I wanted - carry out a quick initial check for bugs without having to install an additional AV program.

To answer your question, I booted the machine into DOS mode using two different W98 boot disks.  The first was one I'd constructed by using the native W98 boot disk creator.  I'm looking at the disk's contents now and I note that it contains only command.com, drvspace.bin, io.sys and msdos.sys.

I used another boot disk to provide a DOS CD driver.  It's more complex - it contains 26 files including config.sys and autoexec.bat.  The main function of these two files is to load the ramdrive, himem and the aspi drivers.

Both disks enabled access to the C drive.  But I don't remember which disk I'd used when I got the negative result from FProt.

Incidentally, the computer had no DOS directory.  It's a 4\5 year-old HP Brio - I doubt that DOS would ever have been installed.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

The NOSPIN Group
http://freepctech.com

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: harsha godavari 
  Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] What is a 'Causeway Dos Extender'?


  Hi Ian:
             First of all please note that I am only an end user of a pc and by no means do I qualify as an expert or a geek :-)

  What happens if you boot from a floppy (DOS 6.22 Boot disk) with a minimal Config.sys and autoexec.bat files. I suspect the later must have a path statement (path=c:\dos;c:\temp), otherwise the system may not recognise the "C:".
  At that point you should be able to run F-Prot.

  I hope I am not being pushy.....I am just curious.

  Regards
  Harsha Godavari


  Ian wrote:

  > Thanks for your response to my query.  The PC has a Celeron 466 with 64Mb of ram.
  >
  > Unfortunately, there's no reference to anything along the lines you suggest in the startup files;  in fact only autoexec.bat is active to allow Norton AntiVirus to run on startup.

             Do you want to signoff PCSOFT or just change to
                    Digest mode - visit our web site:
                   http://freepctech.com/pcsoft.shtml