Out of Environment Space

Running or installing DOS or Windows tools can sometimes result in the message "Out of Environment Space." This page describes two ways to usually solve the problem.

Method 1: Changing the DOS Session Properties

This method will work if you don't need too much extra space and you are running the tools from a DOS Session.

• Start the DOS session and make sure that it is a window rather than full-screen. If it is full-screen, then press Alt-Enter to change it to a window.
• Click on the MS-DOS icon in the top left corner of the window.
• Select Properties from the pop-up menu.
• Select the Memory tab from the command box.
• Click the arrow on the Initial Environment box. Move down in the box as far as possible (by clicking the downward arrow). Click on the biggest number that you see in this box.
• Click OK in the command box.
• Click OK in the MS-DOS Prompt information box.
• Stop the DOS Session by clicking the X in the top-right or by typing the command "exit".
• Restart a new DOS session and try running your commands again.

Method 2: Changing the config.sys file

This method works for Windows 95. I'm not certain whether it also works for later versions of Windows.

• From a DOS prompt, use the edit command to open the file C:\config.sys.
• Find a line that begins: shell=...
• Within this line, find a parameter that starts /e:... and increase the size of the number after the /e:. For example, I increased mine to /e:4096.
• If there was no /e:... on your line, then you can add /e:4096 at the end of the line. If there was no shell= line, then you can add this one:

  
      shell=C:\command.com /e:4096 /p