I have found softice to be useful on occasion, but many programs on my computer object to it being installed. Is there some way i can choose whether or not softice is to be loaded each time i boot ?

thx

What's your platform?

if Win9x, you can make a multi-boot config by changing the config.sys/autoexec.bat

if WinNT/2K, you can select "manual start" mode.

Hello 2_a_day !

I've written a small (25 bytes) program which checks if scroll-lock is activated at boot time. It clears it and exits with 1 if it was set, else with 0. So you can write the following code in your AUTOEXEC.BAT
I've choosen this key because I don't know any program which uses it any way.

[LOADSI.COM]
B8, 40, 00, 8E, D8, F6, 06, 17, 00, 10, B0, 00, 74, 02, B0, 01, 80, 26, 17, 00, EF, B4, 4C, CD, 21

Assuming Wind*ws 9x , the DOS Multiconfig method
may be overkill , another simpler method here :

in your Autoexec.bat file , after any necessary
stuff ( you may have none yet ; then create an
\Autoexec.bat file on your startup disk and start
from scratch ) , just add smthng along :

----------- autoexec.bat ---------------------------------
@echo OFF
rem ark : you must have set a path including
rem : your 'command' directory , else add
rem PATH %path%;%windir%\command

CHOICE /T:N,10 Launch WinICE
IF NOT errorlevel 2 GOTO Ice
win
echo - autoexec.bat : back from Wind*ws -
GOTO End

:Ice
cd c:\progra~1\softice
winice
echo - autoexec.bat : back from the ICE ! -

:End
----------------------------------------------------------------

You should also have edited your text file : \MSDOS.SYS
( remove its RHS attribs ! ) so it has a line reads :

BOOTGUI=0

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Here you are ! Customize at will !
Even simpler , instead of the CHOICE command , you
could have used a good old PAUSE line and breaking
with Ctrl-C as necessary ... Enjoy

--
Czerno

Here's another alternative that I believe I got from one of the newbie sites, maybe "cracking for newbies", on how to set up and run softice. It also had a sample configuration file, for example did you know you can change your screen colors of the softice windows?. (I don't much care for a black background.) Anyway it pauses the boot process and puts up a simple menu and you enter your choice by pressing "1" or "2" or "3". On my menu list "1" starts softice and then Win, "2" starts Win without softice, and "3" boots to dos. Hitting "enter" starts the "default" choice.

You will see a line from the config.sys file portion that allows you to define which choice is the default (MENUDEFAULT) which determines which choice is made if you do nothing or hit "enter". You can choose whichever you want as the default The number that is directly after the "MENUDEFAULT" entry is the countdown time before the default is selected. Mine is "15", which simply means that I've 15 seconds to make a choice before the "default" is selected for me. To bypass the timer I either simply hit "enter" (which chooses the "default", "1","2" or "3".

Place the following lines in your Autoexe.bat file:

:SICE
C:\PROGRA~1\NUMEGA\SOFTIC~1\WINICE.EXE (or whatever is the path to your softice directory)
goto common

:NORM
goto common

OS

:common

Then add the following to your config.sys file:

[MENU]
MENUITEM SICE,Windows 9x with SoftICE
MENUITEM NORM,Windows 9x
MENUITEM DOS,MS-DOS-Modus
MENUDEFAULT SICE,15

[NORM]

[SICE]

[common]

You can also change the order of the choices. For example you could list "NORM, Windows 9x" first and then it would be the choice of the "1" key and if you also used "MENUDEFAULT NORM, 15", you could also press "enter" to skip the timer (it's just a bigger target on most keyboards than a number key) and it would boot to win without softice.

Hope this helps.