My autoexec.bat doesn't seem to fire in Win2k!

[Muse]

I want to set things up so that my Inbox in me email client (Forte Agent) is regularly and automatically backed up (it disappeared into thin air the other day!). In DOS or Windows 3.x, it would work but it doesn't seem to be working in my Windows 2000 SP2.

I edited my formerly empty C:\autoexec.bat file. I put in this line and saved it:

copy e:\agent\data\00005a43.* e:\agent\data\backup

However, when I look in e:\agent\data\backup after rebooting Windows, I don't see the files. My C: partition is NTFS and the E: partition is FAT32. If I go to a command prompt from Windows 2000 and enter at the command line:

C:\>autoexec

the copy proceeds. What could be wrong?

TIA

 

[AndyHui]

AUTOEXEC.BAT is ignored in WinNT/2K/XP.

Place the commands in AUTOEXEC.NT instead.

 

[Muse]

<< AUTOEXEC.BAT is ignored in WinNT/2K/XP.

Place the commands in AUTOEXEC.NT instead. >>

LOLOLOL!

Well, why do they provide an autoexec.bat then?? There are 4 autoexec.* files in my C: root:

autoexec.bat
autoexec.NS0
autoexec.NS1
autoexec.VIA

There were all empty.

 

[Muse]

<< AUTOEXEC.BAT is ignored in WinNT/2K/XP.

Place the commands in AUTOEXEC.NT instead. >>

I changed the name of autoexec.bat to autoexec.nt, restarted the machine but the batch file still did not run... What's up??

 

[Saltin]

Windows 2k does parse the autoexec.bat file at startup by default.

The behaviour is controlled via the following reg keyRun REGEDT32.EXE.


Modify the following value within HKEY_CURRENT_USER:

Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ParseAutoexec

1 = autoexec.bat is parsed
0 = autoexec.bat is not parsed


This has no effect on the parsing of AUTOEXEC.NT or CONFIG.NT by the MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows environments (VDMs).

 

[Muse]

<< Windows 2k does parse the autoexec.bat file at startup by default.

The behaviour is controlled via the following reg keyRun REGEDT32.EXE.


Modify the following value within HKEY_CURRENT_USER:

Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ParseAutoexec

1 = autoexec.bat is parsed
0 = autoexec.bat is not parsed


This has no effect on the parsing of AUTOEXEC.NT or CONFIG.NT by the MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows environments (VDMs). >>

So by default, autoexec.bat is parsed, so why didn't it fire. By parsed, you mean that it's run, right? I changed the default from 1 to 0 to test to see if it's the other way around, but either way, the command doesn't execute. I guess I still don't understand. There's a bunch of technical stuff in the Win2k help and I guess I can immerse myself in that and hope to comprehend what's going on. My thinking at present is to make a separate backup for each day of the week so I don't inadvertently blow away my last good backup. I plan on doing this with a call to a DOS database application written in FoxPro for DOS, that will determine the day of the week and name the backup files monday.*, tuesday.*, depending on the day of the week.