The Workplace Shell starts automatically when OS/2 is booted. Because all Workplace Shell applications run under the Workplace process, one application with an error can cause the Workplace Shell to trap or to hang. Should the Workplace Shell become inoperative, the system must be rebooted. To avoid frequent reboots, one method that can be used is to start the Workplace Shell from an OS/2 window. Then should a hang occur, the Workplace Shell can be terminated by going to the OS/2 window and entering a Ctrl+Break.
The procedure for manually starting and restarting the Workplace Shell is as follows:
COPY CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.WPS
SET RUNWORKPLACE=C:\OS2\PMSHELL.EXE
where C: is your boot drive. This line sets the name of the interface to be started for OS/2. PMSHELL.EXE is the program for the Workplace Shell. Replace the line with the following:
SET RUNWORKPLACE=C:\OS2\CMD.EXE
This changes the OS/2 interface from the Workplace Shell to an OS/2 session.
SET SHELLEXCEPTIONHANDLER=OFF
With the exception handler disabled, errors will result in the typical OS/2 error pop-up windows. Thus, errors encountered will not be masked by the Workplace Shell's exception handler. However, the ability for the Workplace Shell to recover from errors has been impacted.
PMSHELL
It is important to invoke PMSHELL from the first OS/2 session. There are two reasons for this:
Now that the Workplace Shell has been started from an OS/2 session, should the Workplace Shell trap or hang, it can be stopped by simply going back to that OS/2 session and terminating the session, for example, by selecting the Ctrl+Break keys. The Workplace Shell can then be restarted from the same window by invoking PMSHELL again.
After the Workplace Shell has terminated, the DLLs containing Workplace Shell objects should be unlocked. This allows them to be deleted or replaced before restarting the Workplace Shell.