I am using DOS on some old legacy TEST stands, and there has been some "heated" arguments as to WHETHER there is a "proper shutdown" methodology. I say that you should exit out of the running program to the "DOS Prompt" and then shutdown the system. Others say it makes no difference in DOS and just shutdown.

I am wrong? Doesn't exiting out of the program ensure that the HD is not in some unknown state that could cause a crash at power off? Or am I worrying about nothing?

Thanks ahead of time for any assistance.You are right. Sounds like you have thought this through. As you realised, exiting the running program ensures that any temp files are closed and that no disk writing is going to be taking PLACE at the moment of powering off.

Thanks for the response. Have ever read, or do you have any MS references regarding this? I am not having much luck finding "official" comments on this issue.My DOS 6.2 manual i just checked has nothing listed for shutdown...
But common sense says i agree with Dias on this.
I always use this method...There never was any documentation on this, as I recall. Not in the OS documentation anyway. The app was the king. The OS just allowed you to run APPLICATIONS, which notoriously individually managed things like printers, temp files, whatever. Powering off while an app was running was a big no-no, and you tended to see warnings about that in the manuals of apps like WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3.

APM and the ability to "power down" a PC from within an OS are comparatively recent things, although in fact, to be exact, when you shut down a PC from Windows you are just putting it into a QUIESCENT state, as long as the PSU is plugged into AC power. In the old 'real' MS-DOS days, the power control was a switch which actually did cut the AC power. If you were back at the OS prompt, and you could see (that's one reason why drives have activity lights) and hear that HDD and/or floppy activity had ceased, you knew it was safe to power off. Some people used to remove the floppy that they had been using first.