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Par2: Chain in XP
2003-02-20 -- Ramon Reed

That one about drove me nuts until I found the answer.  Truth is, the 
error message is misleading - memory's not the problem, it's the DOS 
environment space, because CHAIN.COM requires something like 1200 or so 
free bytes in the environment.  This was easy to fix in earlier "DOS 
bassed" versions of windows with the SHELL command in CONFIG.SYS, but I 
haven't found how to increase the environment size in XP.

But, there is another solution:  To see the problem, go the the command 
prompt, and type SET .  Can you believe all the crap XP has put 
in there??!!  So, what I do is start my DOS programs with a batch file 
which _first_ clears out most of those XP environment variables ("SET 
variablename=" will do it), then run my program with CHAIN, and finally 
re-set the stuff after the program closes.  This may not be the most 
elegant solution, but it's easy enough to do and works for me.

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