A hard drive was supposedly going bad in a computer running XP. The replacement drive was cloned from the old and everything seems to still work except for DOS applications. I suspect it is a ntvdm problem but the DOS prompt box and system commands still work. However, attempting to run a DOS app does nothing i.e no errors etc just returns the prompt.

I found nothing that looks out of wack but since I do not have direct access to this computer troubleshooting is difficult. Of course reinstalling would cure the problem but it would be nice not to have to start from scratch.

Have you tried using DosBos? Or does it have to be straight-out working?

Or even FreeDOS in a virtual machine?

I have no idea what the problem could be. Maybe cmd.exe doesn't understand the hardware?

A virtual machine is an option but since it worked prior to the hard drive change I should not have to install one. I have even stumped my MS IS expert.