Reference number: CH000325

Out of environment space.

Issue:

Out of environment space.

Cause:

By default the environment space MS-DOS allows is only 256 bytes. With this low default size this issue can be caused by any of the below possibilities.

1. Path statement is long.
2. Long prompt statement.
3. To many variables after command.

Solution:

This issue can generally be resolved by increasing the amount of environment space by adding the below line into the config.sys file.

SHELL=X:\PATH\COMMAND.COM /P /E:NNNN 

X:\PATH\ is the path to where the command.com is located on the computer.
/E:NNNN can be any number from 512 to 1024. It is recommended that you only utilize 512; this is because the more environment space used, the less amount of conventional memory will be available.

Alternatively, as mentioned above, you can do any of the below recommendations to increase the amount of environment space.

• Decrease the path statement.
• If special prompt is defined, remove or slim down the prompt statement.
• Remove any lines from the autoexec.bat / config.sys that may not be needed. This includes switches after commands that may not be needed.

Additional information about the autoexec.bat and the config.sys can be found here.