re: That won't work
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 at 12:43 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Silas
(1 messages posted)
I think you're all only partially on-track or partially mistaken, as the case may
be. Sekirt's response appears to be the most accurate, though virus or prank may
have nothing to do with James' original question. I may or may not shed any light
on the subject, but it appears that James was only trying to format the c: drive.
Why, I don't know, nor do I know the pointer location at the time he was attempting
to do so. Regardless, format c: will perform its designated task through to completion,
regardless of command line switches issued with the command, such as format c: /s
(that would be my choice), provided that the format.com file, as indicated by sekirt,
exists at the current cursor location or in the existing path.
But in answer to the original question, the "bad command or file name" response from
DOS when the format c: command was issued does, in fact, have nothing to do with
DOS or Windows protection, but is DOS's way of telling you that file does not exist
in the current cursor location or in the existing path.
Anyway, with format.com located in the root of c: and the prompt at c:\ when I issued
the command format c:, the result after the annoying "proceed with format (y/n)"
prompt, was a reformatted drive, and control returning to command.com (still located
in memory). Similar results were obtained with format.com located in the c:\dos (could
just as easily be c:\windows\command) and the command format c: /s issued from c:\dos.
This way, however, I could reboot the system and get a c:> prompt upon completion
of the task. The point is that the EXTERNAL DOS command format.com must be in the
path, or the prompt location must be in the directory (folder) location where format.com
exists in order to perform the command. All these conditions met, the command will
in fact perform its intended function through to completion. I just hope James knows
what to do with his blank c: drive when the command is finished and prompts him for
a volume label. This will be all that exists on the newly formatted c: drive. BTW,
whenever you do get a "bad command or file name" response from issuing a DOS command,
that does mean the file needed to execute that command does NOT exist in the current
cursor location, or in the existing path. But it may still exist in a folder on the
hard drive that is not in the current path. So in order to execute that command,
you must change your cursor location to the folder containing the command or make
that folder part of the existing path.
On Sunday, March 16, 2003 at 1:34 pm, Paul D wrote:
>retired is pretty much on the money. I think format.com
>has some built-in safeguards which a smart virus writer may be able to bypass.I
>think you're right about deltree, though. I admit I have no hard evidence, just
>lots of hearsay, and like you I have no intention of finding out. I do know for
sure
>that you can run format from within Windows 98 on any logical drive but the one
Windows
>is installed on, but I'm guessing Windows stops that, not format.com per se.
>
Paul D
>
>
>
- Written in response to:
- re: That won't work (Paul D: Sunday, March 16, 2003 at 1:34 pm)
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