If you have a hard disk and you installed MS-DOS according to the instructions in your MS-DOS Installation Guide, MS-DOS automatically sets a path to the directory that contains the MS-DOS commands and the MS-DOS command prompt displays the current drive and directory.

Creating an AUTOEXEC.BAT File

Here is an example of an AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

PATH C:\;C:\DOS;C:\WP

PROMPT $P$G

The first line tells MS-DOS to look for programs or batch files in the root directory, the DOS directory, and your word processing directory. This way you can run programs in those directories without having to specify pathnames in the commands. The second line changes the MS-DOS command prompt so that it displays your current directory.

To create an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, you can use any command or program that lets you create a text-only file. If you have a word processing program that can save a file as a text-only file (sometimes called an ASCII text file), you can use that program to create your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Name the file AUTOEXEC.BAT and store it in the root directory of the hard disk or diskette from which you load MS-DOS.

Using MS-DOS with Your Equity 386SX 4-41