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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mr.mark who wrote (5396)	8/26/1999 12:03:00 PM
From: RJL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110653

Interesting suggestions.... Windows95 comes with Plug-&-Play, as well as drivers for most of your hardware. This means, quite simply, that you can throw away most of the contents of your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files (despite what the folks at Apple tell you). The problem with the driver's you've got already loaded in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, is that they're most likely real mode, 16-bit drivers for DOS. The drivers that come with Windows95 offer easier installation, better compatibility, plug-&-play, and better performance. Follow these guidelines for removing the old drivers from your start-up files (experienced users only)" Agreed. "Ideally, you should delete CONFIG.SYS altogether, and should have nothing but your PATH in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Generally, your CONFIG.SYS includes drivers for your disk cache, CD-ROM, sound card, syquest drive, scanner, as well as a myriad of parameters like Files=50, Buffers=20, and so on. Windows95 replaces most of these. Make sure you back up both files before doing anything. Otherwise, you'll be sorry. Start off by putting the word "rem" in front of every entry in CONFIG.SYS, and restart your computer. (this turns the lines into "remarks")" Yes and no. Deleting the CONFIG.SYS outright is plain foolish. The suggestion to REM out individual lines and test the effects is a good idea. A little time consuming yes, but if you do want to clean up the file, you can go ahead and do so. A couple of caveats: 1) The article is dated 2/27/96. A wee bit on the old side, but it still applies to many Windows 95 systems, and a few Windows 98 boxes. You will rarely see any lines like STACKS, BUFFERS, FCBS, or the like anymore. 2) Remming out the CD-ROM driver from the CONFIG.SYS if you are using a legacy drive with a real mode driver can potentially cause nasty problems with file mode compatibility with the IDE hard drive controllers. It's not too much of a problem these days with so many protected mode drivers out there, but in the 'old' Windows 95 days, this was a really annoying problem. 3) Removing CD-ROM support from DOS mode. By removing the CD-ROM driver from the CONFIG.SYS, if you restart the computer in MS-DOS mode, the article mentions that CD-ROM support is no longer there. As many games back then and still some apps where designed to run in DOS-mode but still utilized the CD, this was unacceptable. All in all, the suggestions make sense to me, and the key things to remember is 1) Caution...don't rush it. 2) Have backups just in case. 3) Make sure you have the time to fix problems if something goes batty. 4) Try not to change something if you don't know what it is. All this is my opinion only based on my experiences with building, troubleshooting, and using DOS and Windows based systems for 6 years now. Take with a grain of salt. Rich