Microsoft KB Archive/71522

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Windows: AUTOEXEC.BAT Is Not Run During Boot

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Q71522

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Windows versions 3.0, 3.0a, 3.1, 3.11

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SUMMARY
The AUTOEXEC.BAT file is not run when you boot your computer if the &quot;SHELL=COMMAND.COM&quot; statement in the CONFIG.SYS file is missing the &quot;/P&quot; parameter.

MORE INFORMATION
The &quot;SHELL=&quot; statement tells the system what command processor to load during boot up. Most often this is used to load the MS-DOS COMMAND.COM to increase the environment space. The correct syntax for this is:

SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM /E:512 /P In the example above, the &quot;/E:&quot; parameter is increasing the MS-DOS environment to 512 bytes (the default is 160 bytes).

The &quot;/P&quot; parameter tells COMMAND.COM that this instance of itself is permanent. Without this parameter, COMMAND.COM would load itself into memory, then terminate that instance of itself. In doing so, the process of running the AUTOEXEC.BAT file is skipped.