Interactive Boot Displays AUTOEXEC.BAT Messages Twice

This article was previously published under Q103546

You can use the /Y parameter with MS-DOS 6.2 COMMAND.COM to interactively process any batch file. (The /Y parameter is ON by default for AUTOEXEC.BAT when performing an interactive boot). The following list includes some of the behaviors that using the /Y parameter produces:

• If you have ECHO ON, each line is displayed twice. To avoid this, add ECHO OFF as the first line of your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and press Y when you are prompted to process that line.
• When a batch file line is displayed for prompting, replaceable parameters (%1, %2, and so forth) and environment variables are already replaced with their values. This can be useful for debugging batch files.
• You can easily prompt for user input without using the CHOICE command. For example, if a batch file includes "command /y /c scandisk /all," you are prompted with "scandisk /all (Y/N)?"