[notawizard]

I am not a computer wizard, so please bear with me. Many years ago I used a program called interlink.exe and interlink.svr in which to transfer files from one computer to the other. This did work and each of my computers showed the drives of the other.

My problem right now is that I just purchased a standalone cd drive that I wish to add to my oldest laptop which is running Windows 3.1.

The directions say that the standalone drive will be drive d and it cannot be changed, however, my laptop already thinks that is has a drive d which was actually a drive on the second computer.

So, I imagine that I need to have my oldes laptop NOT think that it can access my other computers drives, but I do not know how to do this.

My old laptop lists drives c, d, e, f, and g.

c is the hardrive, g is the floppy, drives d, e and f came from drives read on my other computer.

Can someone please tell me step by step how to fix my problem?

Thanks

[Lurker1]

Hi notawizard

First did your new cdrom come with Dos drivers? If not you may have trouble getting it to run with windows 3.1.

You should be able to open the CONFIG.SYS file on your laptop using notepad and remove the line for interlink. It should say something like Device =D:\Dos\interlink.exe Then save the file that you made changes to in notepad.

If you see intersvr.exe in config.sys remove that line also.

Or you can remove both programs from (Usually) the C:\dos directory but that will probably cause errors in the config.sys file to be displayed during a boot up.

BOL

[notawizard]

Hi Lurker1

First let me tell you that the Grinch is my all time favorite hero.

Moving on.

The cd drive that I purchased was brand new, but was specifically designed for Windows 3.1. The driver is on a 3 1/2 disk, and I can access that disk from my stand alone floppy drive that is connected to my laptop via a flat card about the size of a credit card.

This laptop is an IBM model 2489-600. It is running Windows 3.1 and is in grayscale. It is not the newest thing but it does work and that is what counts.

I did go to the config.sys file and took off all lines referencing interlnk.exe and intersvr.exe. Then I shut my laptop down completely, turned it back on, went to file manager and I still get all of these drives listed:

c, d, e, f, g

c is my hard drive on the laptop
g is my floppy drive attached to my laptop (normally this would be the a drive)

Drives d, e, and f were drives that interlnk gave to my laptop when I had this computer connected to a second computer.

Right now clicking on drived d, e and f do nothing.

The manual for my new cd drive says that it MUST be drive D, however, because of running interlnk.exe one upon a time, my laptop automatically thinks that is already had a drive, so that is my main problem.

I want my laptop to only recognize drives a and c when I go to the file manager, not c, d, e, f, and g.

I am open to more suggestions here.

I can find lots of stuff on the web on how to install and run interlnk.exe but I cannot find anything that will put my laptop back to what is was before I ran interlnk.exe.

I should also add that right now my computers are NOT connected to each other, but still my laptop thinks this is so.

"Why for 53 years I've put up with this now, I must stop Christmas from coming, but how?"

[notawizard]

Hi again Lurker1

Do you think possibly that I need to modify the files interlnk.exe and intersvr.exe.

Just a guess as I do not know if perhaps the program modifies itself when it is run

[notawizard]

Lurker1,

Updating my info since I last emailed this board.

Right now I do have access to my floppy drive, my hard drive and my cdrom drive.

Apparently instead of turning my computer on, waiting a bit and then turning it back on, I actually needed to press control alt delete to get the computer to recognize the changes.

I have one final question, hopefully you or someone else can help me with this.

I am used to a floppy drive being the A drive, the hard drive being the C drive, and the CDROM drive being the E drive.

The CDROM manual said that the CDROM had to be the D drive, but this is what is on my system now and all are working.

Floppy drive is D drive
Hard drive is C drive
CDROM drive is E drive

How do I get my floppy drive to be A instead of D?

[Lurker1]

Hello again notawizard

So it seems like you got your interlink problem worked out.

I believe that you are stuck with the floppy drive listed as D:. A: and B: are usually reserved in the computers bios for internal floppy drives on a system. Since the floppy drive is an external drive it just got assigned the first available drive letter. Cdrom letters vary also. There should be no problem with it working as E: instead of D:

[notawizard]

Lurker1,

Right before I got my cdrom to be recognized, and after I got the interlink program NOT to run, my floppy drive WAS recognized as the A drive.

It somehow changed to the D drive when I got the cdrom drive recognized.

All does work fine, I was only basically concerned about uploading future programs.

Also, I THINK that a boot disk or start disk has to be in drive A?

If I am wrong about the above two comments, if both future programs and a boot disk or start disk will work fine from drive D, then I will not worry about this.

[Lurker1]

It probably doesn't matter where the floppy drive is. You could try using a floppy bootdisk as a test to see if you can boot from the external floppy.