GAMESHOP.EXE "Error 05" Using SET COMSPEC=COMMAND.COM /E: n (66743)

SUMMARY

GAMESHOP.EXE blanks the screen or gives "Error 5" if you mistakenly use an invalid path for COMMAND.COM in the COMSPEC environment variable in MS-DOS (such as in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file). For example:

   set comspec=c:\dos\command.com /e:256

The /E:256 is an incorrect part of the SET COMSPEC statement, because only the path and COMMAND.COM are accepted arguments. This needs to be changed to a correct path, such as the following:

   set comspec=c:\dos\command.com

This is not considered a problem with Microsoft Game Shop because you should normally use only COMMAND.COM /E:n on your SHELL= command line in your CONFIG.SYS file.

GAMESHOP.EXE also may blank the screen or give "Error 5" if you mistakenly point your COMSPEC environment variable to a COMMAND.COM file different from the COMMAND.COM specified in your SHELL= command in your CONFIG.SYS file. If you get the message "Incorrect DOS version," you need to make sure that COMSPEC and SHELL= point to a COMMAND.COM from the same version of DOS.

This information applies to Microsoft Game Shop (released October 15, 1990) for MS-DOS. (Microsoft Game Shop contains the QuickBasic QBI.EXE interpreter version 1.0, which supports the Basic language defined by Microsoft QuickBasic version 4.5. The QuickBasic Interpreter QBI.EXE 1.0 environment is a subset of the QuickBasic QB.EXE 4.5 environment, which is a separate product.)

MORE INFORMATION

The problem arises after you select a game from the GAMESHOP.EXE menu. After selecting a game to play, the screen blanks and the machine is apparently frozen. You can type CTRL+BREAK to break out of the program and return to the DOS command line, but the screen will remain blank. By using CLS or another screen command, the screen display will return.

On some machines, you will see the following error message:

"ERROR 05 IN MODULE GAMESHOP"
(Error 5 means "Illegal function call".)

Remove the /E:n option from the COMSPEC environment variable within your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and instead, set your environment size in your CONFIG.SYS file. For example, use the following in your CONFIG.SYS file:

   shell=c:\dos\command.com /e:256

The COMSPEC environment variable is used to set the drive, directory path, and filename for COMMAND.COM, which is MS-DOS's command interpreter. COMMAND.COM switches are not allowed in the COMSPEC environment variable and may cause problems. The COMMAND.COM switches should be set in the SHELL command in your CONFIG.SYS file as stated above.

This is a limitation only when you are going through the menu in GAMESHOP.EXE. You can still run QBI.EXE and run any game you want with no problem. Because GAMESHOP.EXE uses a SHELL to run the games, the invalid COMSPEC variable causes problems.