DosTips.com

My 5 year old PC has a Bios that works as intended, but it cannot boot from a USB device, it would not be able to Flash itself until it has been manually updated. I could be wrong, but I doubt that any computer that really needs to Flash its Bios would be able to do so automatically by booting from ...

command >file.txt 2>&1 GOOD command 2>&1 >file.txt BAD BAD is worse than GOOD, but there is BETTER ! ! I found that sometimes the two streams collided and file.txt missed the data, and instead I got an error. I found it was necessary to redirect one stream to the log file, and the other str...

If you only need to append, then use the "echo" substitute debug< "%scr%" >nul I remember "debug" well. I used it on a Compaq Luggable PC (heavy suitcase) with DOS 3.32. One thing I was never brave enough for was to GO to the magic address to format the hard drive. I h...

How many attempts at this batch are you prepared to attempt ? Do you realise that each failed attempt could be another non-boot-able P.C. ? Will the user be competent to correctly input "machine type or model" ? I have a 5 year old PC. I am sure that my BIOS could benefit from an update, b...

Your image reminds me of old DOS 3.2 etc. Failure to write a file gave options of Quit, Retry, Abort, etc, but otherwise was un-informative as to the cause. Often it would simply represent the options with no way out, even Abort failed and the only way out was a reboot. I suspect that steam.exe is d...

Thanks for both suggestions.

Closing down for the night now, but will complete evaluation and respond further tomorrow.

Regards
Alan

I do not know what you mean by generic failure. On my laptop I get the following :- C:\>taskkill /? 'taskkill' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. The reason is I have XP Home edition, instead of XP Professional. I instead have to use TSKILL. Perhaps...

I want none of the suggested options. I have received 2 spams from different people this month. One posted 2 days after he joined, the other posted 1 day after joining. I suggest that new members be automatically blocked for one month from sending PM. That delay may discourage them and send them to ...

See http://commandwindows.com/taskkill.htm

Availability depends on whether you use XP Home or XP Professional.
If you use a different system you can Google for equivalents, or wait for some-one else to advise.

Just be careful what you kill ! ! !

Alan

Firstly, you can use CALL :FUNCTION1 arg2 arg3 etc That will look for and call the label FUNCTION1 You can have lots of such functions, all with more meaningful names. You quite possible already have this. Unlike 'C' compilers, batch scripts do not support the #include MyFunctions. Almost equivalent...

Windows will not allow you to delete a folder while a process is running within it. First you have to kill the process. Windows Task Manager / Applications will allow you to select and "End Task". You may then need "Processes" Tab in case the exe is still alive, in which case &qu...

If you should want to do more than one DOS command for each file then something like :- @echo off for %%a in (C:\Your_Path\*.*) do ( dir %%a | find "/" attrib %%a ) pause Within the () brackets you can do extra tests upon each %%a item, and do things such as copy all *.exe ...

Thanks, but I needed something very simple. I was not concerned about the "ping" delays. The 1 second per item was the time taken for REG.EXE to report upon and delete the designated key - it seems to take longer looking for a key that is not present than it does to find and delete a key t...

Thanks, but I would like something much shorter and faster. Incidentally, clearing the screen and then re-writing before appending each of item of status, at 1 second intervals for each of 400 items, is not something I would want to watch on my desk ! ! Last week I had "final code". When I...

Is there a Control code or some mechanism that is the opposite to a Line Feed ? I have a script which tests for the existence of several hundred items (files and registry keys), and for each item it displays one line showing its state after processing. This occupies many screens of a DOS window. Mos...