text: why does my computer says "bad command or file name" at the beginning of my computer??? the screen is black and i think it wants me to type something where it says c:/ do you mean half way through windows loading before it goes to your desktop or literally as the system tray icons and all of that is loading whilst you see your desktop ?  if its between windows loading ie you see the scrollbar for a little bit and then it goes blank with the c;&#92; prompt you probably have something in your command.bat or one of those config files that points to somewhere or some file that does not exist anymore or it has a command in it that isnt a real command hence the bad command error.  if its when your desktop loads with the system tray icons then its probably a file that is in your startup folder or a startup registry key that does not exist anymore.  if thats the case use msconfig by going to start --> run and type msconfig and click ok or press enter, otherwise go to www.mlin.net and get startup control panel.  if it still does it then it will be one of your config files like autoexec.bat or something like that so might be worth while opening each of your config files with notepad and doing some research to try and establish what is meant to be in them.  if that fails you could always either do a restore to a point before it started doing this or use the expand command to expand the original configuration files over the ones you have now.  if it is your boot.ini file then you could go into the recovery console if you have windows xp or 2000 and use this command :  http://www.computerhope.com/bootcfg.htm  to allow you to rebuild your boot.ini file.