If you ever get the message “Type the name of the Command Interpreter” while booting to Windows you know you’re in trouble. But it actually may not be so bad, if you know what to do.
The BIOS is looking for the files needed that start to load Windows; in this case, it is the file Command.com. BIOS requires the files Command.com, Ios.sys, and Msdos.sys to get Windows started. The file Command.com is really the language Interpreter at a DOS level. This is the program that creates the MSDOS windows. It performs the functions you request when you type in a command in the MSDOS window. If you type in “Copy A:Command.com C:Command.com”, Command.com will copy the file for you. However, if you are using the C:Command.com file to do this you will get an error because the file is in use and cannot be overwritten.
Command.com allows you to boot to DOS or a drive and have a prompt from which to work in, such as the A:>
Now that you are armed with this basic information, let’s see how we can fix the problem. We know that the computer found a bootable drive, and if we are booting to Windows and not a floppy, then it found a bootable hard drive. Bootable means that the drive has been marked as active and it has a boot sector marked. Since a bootable drive was found, we know that the drive is working and connected to the motherboard. If this was not the case you would get a message something like “Insert bootable media.”
Since the BIOS has requested the file Command.com and not NTDLR, we now know that the boot sector is probably intact. The computer (BIOS) knows from the boot sector that the operating system is a DOS based operating system such as the Windows 95 platform, or earlier version of DOS, and not a Windows NT Platform. So you’re doing ok so far.
Since we have a bootable hard drive, and we believe that the boot sector is intact, we now have basically only two other possibilities for getting the message “Type the name of the Command Interpreter” : a damaged FAT (File Allocation Table) or a deleted or corrupt file.
So let’s insert a Windows startup diskette into the A drive. If you do not have an A drive you will need to have a bootable CD with the required files.
Then type the path to Command.com: A:Command.com and press Enter.
You now have MSDOS running, and hopefully you have Scandisk.exe on your startup diskette. Next, type the word Scandisk.exe and press Enter again. Have Scandisk check and repair your C drive for errors. If Scandisk is not on your floppy, you can find it in the WindowsCommand folder
The next thing we are going to do is to copy Command.com from our startup floppy to the C drive:
Type: Copy A:Command.com C:Command.com and then press Enter.
You probably should also copy the Ios.sys file on your floppy to the C drive, just to ensure that it’s there. DO NOT copy the MSDOS.sys file. By the way, the file Ios.sys is probably going to be a hidden file so you will need to remove the Attributes. They should be Hidden, System, and Read Only. So you will need to type at the A prompt “Attrib -H -S -R Ios.sys” and then press Enter before copying the file.
Now reboot, hopefully you will not get the error message again. If you do get the message again, you may need to have Fdisk fix the Master Boot Record: from your WindowsCommand prompt, type : Fdisk /mbr and then press Enter. This only takes less than a second and no message will be displayed.
First appeared at Easy Desk Software
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