WOW. I used to be good at 3.1, but it has been so long I too don't even 
remember what it looks like. Of course that could be related to my aging 
as well as an aged OS.

If you can boot into DOS, go into the Windows "directory" (pre 
"folders") and look for the system.ini and win.ini files. Look at the 
modification date on each and find the one (maybe both) with the date on 
which you changed the settings. For that file(s) look for the system.xxx 
(X=any letter or number) and/or win.xxx with the modification date 
closest to the date of  your changes. If there are such files, they 
serve as backups and you can rename system.ini to system.old and/or 
rename win.ini to win.old. Then rename the system.xxx to system.ini 
and/or the win.xxx to win.ini.

If you have a shell such as "dosshell" (pre Windows Explorer), you can 
type in dosshell at the command prompt and the foregoing will be easier.

As a refresher:

To change directory from C/: to C/:Windows, the DOS command at the 
command prompt is cd windows. Foggy memory => If there is a "system" 
sub-directory, the files may be in there and from C/:Windows the command 
is cd system. To go back one directory level the command is .. (two 
periods). To go back to the root directory the command is cd / . The 
spaces between the cd and the following characters is intentional.

To rename a file, the command from the directory in which the file is 
located is ren system.ini system.old. There is a space between ren and 
system.ini and between system.ini and system.old . This is an example - 
use the old and new file names as appropriate.

To view the sub-directories and files within a directory, one page at a 
time, the command is dir /p . There is a space between dir and /p. To 
advance from page to page, you can press almost any key (easiest to use 
the space key). Or - foggy memory again - you can use dir *.ini to list 
only the files with ini as an extension or I think you can use dir 
system.* to list all the system files and likewise for dir win.* .

BE CAREFUL not to change system.exe or system.bat or system.com and do 
not change win.exe or win.bat or win.com. The system files I believe had 
.com extensions but - foggy memory - might use .bat or .exe extensions.

After making the changes, try rebooting the computer into 3.1. If it 
does not work, you should go back and undo the changes and find someone 
with a better memory.

Tom

KATHY SCHRIEBER wrote:
> Hi, I am still working on this old IBM 500 think pad with win 3.1  It took a few days just to figure out the desktop since i haven't seen that 3.1 in  awhile.  I found the place to change from monochrome to 256 color (it seems to have VGA color so I figured I could) it loaded the drivers and then told me to reboot to effect the changes.  But it won't load past the starting windows 3.1 page-it goes blank and not the blue screen but sort of grey.  I can't change it back because i can't get to the desktop, can I do anything from DOS?  Any help at all is appreciated.
>
>                        
>   

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