There is very little that can go wrong during a Windows installation of A-Shell, and it is likely that if something does go wrong, the problem is related to something unexpected done by the installer. Unless there were some problems during the installation process itself, and the files A-Shell requires in order to run were not actually installed on the PC, there are basically two places to look for problems.

Config File

First, make sure you understand the A-Shell Configuration File and how it works. If A-Shell does not start up properly, it is likely that some file specification in miame.ini is pointing at a wrong or non-existent location, or a required command in the ini file is mis-formatted or misspelledd.

Start Command

Secondly, check the Windows start command (shortcut) that is invoking A-Shell. The command line should have two parts, as shown below. Note that if the path in which A-Shell was installed includes spaces (like "Program Files"), then the file specs on the target line will (and must) have quotes around them.

•   The first part of the command line specifies the file specification of the program to run—i.e., A-Shell. The program and file name is ashw32.exe and it should be at the end of a file specification that begins with "c:\...." If A-Shell was installed in the c:\vm\miame folder, for example, the first part of the target command should look like this:

C:\vm\miame\bin\ASHW32.exe

•   The second part of the target line, which begins after the first part and a space, should begin with "-i" and be followed by a space and the full file specification for the A-Shell initialization file (normally "miame.ini"). If A-Shell were installed as above, then the second part of the target line would look like this:

-i C:\vm\miame\miame.ini

If A-Shell were installed in the C:\Program Files\MicroSabio\Ashell folder, the full command line should look like this:

"C:\Program Files\MicroSabio\Ashell\bin\ASHW32.exe"  -i "c:\program files\microsabio\ashell\miame.ini"

The "Start In" specification of the A-Shell shortcut should be blank.

If you need more tips to get A-Shell running, see the following sections that discuss specific errors you may encounter.