On 27 Jul 99, at 18:56, Ed Estigoy wrote:

> This is quite long. I have with me a  an "old" laptop, old by todays'
> standards.

...

> I cannot boot up from it. It hangs/freezes after the system configuration
> table is shown. I have to make use of a booting diskette in order to access
> its c drive.
>...
> I have reformatted its hard disk, but all proceedings will come back to
> square one.

  This is more-or-less the classic symptom of a drive that has be formatted
and partitioned, but then the primary partition has not be set "active" and
so is not bootable.  [You should be able to set it active from the FDISK
menu.]
  [On older desktops, this scenario would usually lead to the message "NO
ROM BASIC. SYSTEM HALTED.", but I know of no laptops that have ever *had*
ROM BASIC or the socket to add it.]

> My second problem is the out of memory message which I get if I run a
> program, like for example a virus scanner.

  Unfortunately, few modern virus scanners are designed to run on a machine
as old and limited as yours.  And if you *could* get hold of something old
enough to run, odds are against you finding updates to it to recognize the
latest threats.  You may be out of luck.

> ACT 386  model :NB386SX-16
>
> Stingray Rev 4+ VGA BIOS Version3.02
> 386 BIOS (C) 1987 AMI for Notebook Computer V2.0S
> Cirrus Logic
>
> BIOS PORTION               Cyln   Head   Wpcom   Lzone   Sec  Size
> Hard Disk C type    : 19   1024    7      512    1023     17  60Mb
> Scratch  RAM option : 1
> Main Bios shadow    : Enabled
>
> I've tried fiddling with the BIOS but I can't change/modify the settings
>
> System Configuration
> Main processor    : 80386       Base  Memory   : 640Kb
> Numeric processor : none        Ext Mem Size   : 1024 K
> Floppy drive A    : 1.44Mb      Hard disk type : 19
> Floppy drive B    : none        Serial Ports   : 3F8, 2F8
> Display  type     : VGA or EGA  Parallel Ports : 378
> ROM BIOS date     : 06/13/90
>
>
> I have also tried  modifying the autoexec.bat and  Config.sys files
> but still  the problem persists, it maybe that the settings are jumbled.
>
> Config.sys :                          Autoexec.bat
> device=c:\dos\setver.exe              path c:\;c:\dos
> device=c:\dos\himem.sys               prompt $t$_$p$g
> device=c:\dos\emm 386.exe ram         set temp = c:\temp
> buffers=20                            smartdrv
> files=40
> break=on
> dos=high,umb

  If your version of DOS comes with a MEMMAKER.EXE program, it may be able
to shuffle things a little to give you more space in main RAM for programs.

> What important dos files should be always  in the root directory ?

  IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT must be there.  It's
convenient to put COMMAND.COM there too, although you can use the SHELL=
setting to refer to it from some other directory.  Nothing else *needs* to be
there. although things will get inconvenient if they're not is some directory
listed in the PATH.


David G

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