Knowledge Base

Activating /W Switch to Prevent Restarting in WinNT

Article ID: 147012

Article Last Modified on 10/31/2006

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q147012

SYMPTOMS

The /W switch no longer works with Winnt.exe in Windows NT 4.0.

CAUSE

In previous versions of Windows NT, Winnt.exe used the /W switch to prevent restarting because this caused problems with the Intel i386 running under Windows 3.x. The switch was excluded as unnecessary in Windows NT 4.0, because the Intel i386 processor is not supported on that platform.

MORE INFORMATION

In certain situations, it might be desirable to prevent Winnt.exe from restarting after you copy files, so that you can do some postprocessing, especially when you start Winnt.exe from a batch file.

In previous versions of Windows NT, this could be done by using the /W switch with Winnt.exe. This switch does not work with Windows NT 4.0.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Additional query words: 4.00 prodnt

Keywords: kbbug kbfix kbsetup KB147012