[Lost Again]

When I ask for Dos Prompt, the machine shuts down. A friend was given a Dell "Dimension E520" running XP Pro, desktop computer by his boss. Their business was replacing some older machines and giving the old machines to some of the employees. My friend has a very old CAD program called Anvil. It is a Dos program. It fits on a floppy disc. He has been using Anvil for many years an would be lost without it. He asked me to look at the machine to see if I could figure out why his Anvil program will not work. When he tries to run the executable, the machine shuts down. I thought perhaps the executable was corrupt. After a few hours of trying to make it work, I thought maybe if I started with a Dos prompt, I could get the executable to run properly. That's when I discovered that the machine will not provide a Dos prompt. The request causes the machine to shut down. I am at a loss. Can someone offer some help with this? In the "safe mode" the dos program works fine.

Thanks for looking,

Roger

 

[spunk.funk]

How are you starting a DOS prompt?
Go to Start/Run and type CMD and press enter. What happens?
You can also browse to C:\Windows\System32\Command.exe and click that.
If that still causes a problem, go to Start/Run and type SFC /scannow and press enter. Put the XP CD in and it will replace any missing or corrupted system files. You can also copy Command.com or cmd.com from a working computer in the above directory and paste it into the troubled computers directory overwriting the previous one.
You should try to convince your friend to get an updated version of Anvil MCS: ANVIL-EXPRESS - 3D CAD/CAM/CAE Software