Windows ME Why no DOS!?

[Guest]

I was recently interested in upgrading to Windows ME. Luckily a friend of mine got in before me and purchased it.
On setting it up on his computer we were shocked to find that Microsoft has seen fit to do away with DOS!? (You cannot boot into or shut down to DOS with ME). I cannot understand this as ME is based on win98’s kernel and file system (the ME startup disk is just a DOS disk). The only reason I can come up with for Microsoft doing this is an attemp to stop computer illiterate people from fiddling with DOS and stuffing up their system. This seems silly as most computer illiterate people wouldn't know what DOS was let alone use it. I have a lot of old programs and games that run in DOS only (They will not work if attempted to be run from DOS prompt within windows) therefore win ME is not an option for me. I am still curious however as to why Microsoft has done this could somebody give me some answers?

 

[manish]

Well, Microsoft Programmers were themselves very comfortable with the old Win98SE-style source code and they'd have had no problems just upgrading it and selling it to you as WinME.

But interacting with 16-bit core modules was one of the main reasons cited (by Microsoft and ALL others) for Windows 98's unstability,etc. etc.

Now, with "native" DOS support removed, the OS is said to be free of the problems that arose from 16-bit core modules (its not FREE of problems in ANY CASE, mind you).

Don't worry about your old DOS programs, goto Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and create a Boot Disk from there. Boot using this floppy and most of your old DOS programs will run fine. Any exceptions, if there are, should be totally removed if you get a Windows 98 Boot Disk (from your friend's computer, for instance).




Manish
http://manishmalik.cjb.net - just another 1-page site.

 

[jerry557]

Microsoft is moving to start with a clean slate. DOS is ancient and goes back to the 70's. Microsoft wants to dump DOS and the Windows 9x kernel. They want to move in the direction to try and combine the Windows home user OS and Windows NT Technology. Which is supposed to be "Windows XP" which is set to debut in the fall sometime. It is supposed to be similar to Windows 2000 but without the compatibility problems with hardware, games and software. This "new" version of windows is supposed to be the most stable OS to date. Will never crash and you can keep it going for months without a reboot. (sounds like a fantasy to me but we will see).

What does this mean? Your current DOS-based games will not run with the new Windows versions. Why are they doing this, I don't know? But one expert told me that Microsoft believes that DOS is holding their advancement back and other OS's like Linux is catching up. So they want to dump DOS and put more time into the NT technology.

 

[ejsmith2]

I bet it's more efficient too. Designing one operating system lets you pool all your resources, and you only have one set of hardware/software conflicts to test.

Which reminds me, there's a 'real-mode-dos' patch for Winme, that i've seen on the net. The file name is mfddme13.zip, but I cain't remember where I got it from......

 

[Guest]

well, so far winXP sounds like crap

i'll stick with win98SE, im prefectly happy with it

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