PC Access for Windows Reference Guide

for PC Access for Windows 4.30.158

Know Your DOS Utilities

The MSD program is extremely useful. Most PC Access users have the MSD program, since it comes with DOS 6+ and Windows 3.1 (Windows 95 users must install it manually). MSD checks the user's DOS environment settings, displays information about the user's hardware and system software, and can save or print a comprehensive report. At MFM we've been having users save an MSD report to a file and e-mail or upload it to us. This is vastly more efficient than telling the user to type many separate commands and read back the information over the phone.

· Occasionally MSD exposes glaring problems on a user's computer. Some users have SET TEMP statements in their AUTOEXEC.BAT which point to non-existent directories. Other users have lockups running MSD! If the user can't run MSD, that usually indicates a serious hardware or system software problem which their vendor should fix. For example, we've seen this when users were running the pesky POWER.EXE program.

Other DOS utilities are useful as well (for example SCANDISK and MEMMAKER). Since end-users are likely to have no third-party utilities, you should become familiar with the DOS utilities.

This topic has changed for PC Access 4.30.

Last modification date: Friday, January 17, 2003 00:58:55