DOSkey Installed....message on boot

[431Cruiser]

I believe my kiddos have crashed one of the pc's! When I tried to boot it today, the black screen said 'DOSkey Installed.' A few lines below it said:

'WARNING: The LOCK command enables direct access.....blah, blah, blah.

Are you sure? y/n'

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It doesn't matter what you do from here, you get the same thing. I tried Scanreg/restore from the C prompt, but still got the above on the boot. Looking back, I guess I only restored Windows and this is a DOS problem?

You can get to Windows from Safe Mode, but can't from C:\WINDOWS\WIN.

Thanks for any help that you can give me.

[GaryRouth]

Here's some entertaining reading for you:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper..._20854722.html

Don't bother trying all the first twenty or so wild stabs that the experts suggested to solve the problem, but go straight to the very last one in that thread [the "accepted solution"] and view the article at the Microsoft site. I think it has a good chance you are stuck in the same MSDOS mode boot loop, and will need to remove the DOS=SINGLE line from your config.sys file.

Let us know if that doesn't work [I hope it does!]
. . . Gary

[. . . P.S. . . . just noticed that this is your first post here: Welcome to the PC Mechanic forums! . . . ]

[glc]

Easiest way to get it into Windows is this:

At the DOS prompt it winds up at, type the following, each followed by Enter:

c:
cd\
ren config.sys config.bak
ren autoexec.bat autoexec.bak

Three finger it and it should boot right up into Windows, then you can worry about recreating the files, if it's even necessary.

[431Cruiser]

Thanks, guys, for the help and for welcoming me to the forums.

glc, that fix was easiest for me. Will the backup files convert to sys and bat on the reboot? Is that what you meant by 'recreating the files'?

Thanks, again.

[glc]

If everything works, no need to worry about it - those files are only for compatibility with DOS programs and are not needed to run Windows.