Q: Hi,

My mouse remains frozen when I enter 3DS. I'm using Windows '95...How do I load my mouse driver in DOS mode so that 3DS recognizes my mouse? What's the command line I use?

A: Win95 removes the mouse and mscdex drivers from your autoexec.bat when installing. These are executed by Win95 only when exiting to DOS mode. You can do one of the following:

1) If you start 3DS under the Win95 GUI, you will have to add the mouse driver manually to your autoexec.bat

2) If you start 3DS after exiting the Win95 GUI, your mouse should work ok (if it was present in your DOS configuration before installing Win95)

3) If you have an icon on your desktop for turning the Win95 GUI down and starting in DOS mode with 3DS, you can specify your own config.sys and autoexec.bat files or entries to be used. Add the mouse driver there. This is the common case with 3DSr2, or on systems where the pharlap.386 driver is not added to the Windows configuration.

4) If you start in "Command prompt only" mode on start up (F8), you can either add the mouse driver to the autoexec.bat, or you can write a batch file for the 3DS start like this: 


COPY CON 3D.BAT

C:

CD\3DS4

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MOUSE.COM

3DSHELL

^Z
Place this file into a directory included in your PATH statement (like DOS). When you want to start 3DS, just type 3D anywhere under DOS and the mouse will be loaded prior initializing 3D Studio. NOTE: You should use the actual path and file name of your mouse driver!

Btw, here in the German-speaking countries, I also add a "keyboard us" command to switch to american keyboard layout under 3DS, and a "keyboard gr" command after the "3dshell" line to return to German keyboard after exiting 3DS.