im afraid i wasnt perfectly clear in my first message. the "bad commmand or file name" error comes before windows has actually shut down and returned me to dos, and not after the computer has restarted. in fact, i am unable to restart the computer as windows refuses to shut down! any subsequent attempt will shut down normally. this leads me to think there might be an IE installation problem. however, the main problem lies in the non-initialisation of the modem. assuming that the right init strings will correct the problem, how exactly do i put them in? i haven't a clue; do i use an .ini file or the terminal program? and if the latter, how? thanks for your time.