FreeCOM may choose to bypass the batch file specified in /P in MS-DOS 7.10 (Win98)

[lss4]

I just ran into this problem with a system that has Win98 installed.

The system also have FreeDOS files installed in C:\FREEDOS, and I'm using GRUB4DOS to boot the FreeDOS kernel if needed. Normally the system boots to Win98 (MS-DOS 7.10) by default.

I've set up a multi config menu in CONFIG.SYS and I'm using FreeCOM's /P to hopefully redirect different startup configs to their own batch files to avoid making the actual AUTOEXEC.BAT too complex. An example (e.g. going to C:\NEWAUTO.BAT) would be:

SHELL=C:\FREEDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FREEDOS\BIN /E:1024 /P=C:\NEWAUTO.BAT

In MSDOS.SYS I've set both BootGUI and DoubleBuffer to 0, as well as setting DOS=NOAUTO in respective boot entries, to ensure IO.SYS won't try adding anything extra in the boot process.

Yet it doesn't work for some reasons. After processing CONFIG.SYS, FreeCOM somehow decided to bypass the BAT file I specified via /P argument, with "Bypassing 'C:\NEWAUTO.BAT'" appearing in the output, and continued to process AUTOEXEC.BAT which is not what I wanted.

Further investigation via step-by-step confirmation (SHIFT-F8) revealed that, after processing CONFIG.SYS, I would be asked if I want to process AUTOEXEC.BAT. If I answered N, the batch file I specified would be processed, and if I answered Y (which is the default on normal boot), the batch file would be bypassed and it will continue to process AUTOEXEC.BAT instead.

I'm not sure why FreeCOM is behaving like this with Windows 98's DOS... perhaps I'm missing some necessary configuration parameters in MSDOS.SYS but I couldn't find anything really related to it after searching for its documentations online...

So either I still have to put everything in AUTOEXEC.BAT making it complex in the process, or I can try working around it by letting AUTOEXEC manually CALL the batch file I intend to use for the specified boot option.