Re: WARNING! Re: DOS printing under VMware (v-DOS) -- more re the WARNING and vDOS

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

Paul,

Thanks for the full and encouraging report. I
like the looks and approach of this. Will try it
out soon, when I boot up the 64-bit machine.


--Harry


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RE: WS.Reputation.1 --

The Norton site says:

Norton reputation-based protection is designed
to detect files that have not been previously
seen, which also match certain other criteria
that make the files suspect. Yes, this type of
defense is prone to false-positives, but it also
blocks many malicious files that would otherwise
go undetected. And since most users are
downloading known-safe programs, this is
normally only an issue for a small percentage of
early adopters and software testers - and they
can work around it easily. Since beta files and
software subject to NDA match the profile of the
types of things that would be included in
WS.Reputation.1, your solution would be to
disable that Norton component by simply turning off Download Intelligence.


Unfortunately, Norton does not tell exactly what
makes vdossetup.exe and vdos.exe suspect, so
there is no way to judge just how paranoid or
precautionary the antivirus program is being.
The setup program is, however, downloaded from
SourceForge.net, not FreeEastEuropeanSpyware.com.


Running BitDefender on my Win 7 partition (from
Linux) after vDos was installed found no issues
associated with vDos, though it did find 1 item in Norton hadn't alerted me to.


RE: vDos

vDos comes with two shortish PDF files that give
an overview of vDos and DOSPrinter.exe.
Interestlingly, if vDos is not run at 100
percent, ie fullscreen, the centered "window" it
runs in has no borders. A setting in config.txt
will add borders and title bar, if desired (for
more config.txt options, see below). The default font is quite readable.


Although the default C: drive is C:\vDos, that
is easily changed in autoexec.txt. One
interesting and potentially problematic note in
that file states: "Files/directories that don't
confirm to the DOS 8.3 filenaming are hidden (as
it should)"-- This could be a deal-breaker for someone using LFNs.


Config.txt spells out a lot of the options; for
those who might be interested but put off by
Norton's WARNING, I am pasting its contents here:


REM Configuration
REM =============
rem vDos supports some options, you set them in this file.
rem Most of the default settings should only be changed if needed.
rem Don't try to include DOS config.sys settings like KEYB=, that won't work!


REM Keyboard (docu)
REM ===============
rem [Alt][Enter] switches to and from (semi) full screen mode.
rem [Win]+F11 decreases, [Win]+F12 increases the
point size of the font and so the window size.
rem The point size of the built-in font is
always even, assuring an optimal alignment of line drawing characters.
rem [Win][Ctrl]+C copies the DOS screen to a
file that is opened by the Windows program assigned to text files.

rem [Win][Ctrl]+V pastes the Windows clipboard to the DOS keyboard.


REM Select and copy text (docu)
REM ===========================
rem Start selecting a rectangle block of text with [Win][Ctrl]+mouse click.
rem Drag the mouse and release the mouse button,
the selected text is in the Window clipboard.



REM Memory
REM ======
rem The first 64 KB (low) memory block is excluded.
rem If you need more than 575KB of conventional
memory. Caution: not all DOS programs can handle this:

rem LOW = ON

rem Upper memory blocks are not available.
rem You can get an extra 127KB with:
rem UMB = ON

rem Extended memory is 16MB, that should be sufficient for any DOS program.


REM Mouse
REM =====
rem In text mode the mouse is disabled.
rem Many DOS programs just manage the mouse badly.
rem MOUSE = ON


REM Window/font
REM ===========
rem Text is displayed using a built-in TTF font.
rem If you want to use another TTF font, copy
that file (consola.ttf...) to the vDos directory and:

rem FONT = CONSOLA

rem The standard vDos window is lean and mean, no borders or title bar.
rem Hover over the top line, a minimize button
will appear in the upper right corner.

rem Left click and drag the window to move it.
rem No close button, you have to EXIT to close the window.
rem If youÂre willing to sacrifice some screen
space to get borders and title bar:

rem FRAME = ON

rem The initial window will cover max 75% of the screen.
rem To change this, use WINDOW = .
rem This would give you a full screen window:
WINDOW = 100

rem The window is by default centered on the desktop.
rem To set it at another position, use WINDOW =
, left x-pos : top y-pos.
rem Note the window is ensured to be completely
visible, if not, the x- and y-pos are dropped.

rem WINDOW = 80,100:0

rem The number of lines/columns in text mode are the familiar 25/80.
rem You can override this by LINS = <24..60> and COLS = <80..160>.
rem And use any combination of these.
rem See for yourself if this is useful or even supported by your application.

rem You can postpone vDos from displaying anything.
rem Default = 0.5 seconds, in most cases the
initial black DOS screen won't show up.
rem This value is in tenths of a seconds, to
hide the vDos window for 1 second:

rem HIDE = 10

rem To use a different color scheme in text
mode, supply 16 color values in RGB(r,g,b) or hexadecimal as in HTML: #RRBBGG.

rem This gives you a bit dimmed color scheme (first line is docu):
rem 0 - Black 1 - Blue 2 - Green 3 - Aqua 4 -
Red 5 - Purple 6 - Yellow 7 - White 8 - Gray 9 -
Lt Blue 10 - Lt Green 11 - Lt Aqua 12 - Lt Red
13- Lt Purple 14 - Lt Yellow 15 - Bright White
rem COLORS = (16,16,16) #1040B1 (0,152,0)
(0,144,176) (176,32,64) (144,0,176) (208,96,0)
(192,192,192) (96,96,96) (40,136,255)
(120,184,0) (144,244,224) (216,72,48) (224,244,255) (244,224,128) (240,240,240)


rem To scale the window in DOS graphics mode:
rem SCALE = <1..9> (thatÂs 100..900%).
rem It won't be that nice, 1 point is simply enlarged to 2x2 points:
rem SCALE = 2


REM Printing
REM ========
rem LPT<1..9> and COM<1..9> are available for
printing, creating RTF (Word), PDF documents or mailing.
rem The shareware program DOSPrinter handles
printer output. Note it only supports Epson
ESC/P (the most widely used DOS printer).
rem If nothing is set, it will pop up a printer
selection dialog when your application prints to a port.

rem Some examples, have a look at the DOSPrinter.pdf for more options:
rem LPT1 = /SEL2 /CPIA /LEFT0.50 /TOP0.50
rem COM1 = /SEL /SEL2 /RTF /CPIA /LEFT0.75 /TOP0.75 /65
rem If you have a (DOS) printer that supports
your DOS application output directly:

rem LPT2 = /SEL'HPLaserJet2200' /RAW

rem Other options, not using DOSPrinter.
rem Just ignore the output:
rem LPT3 = DUMMY

rem Let Windows figure out what you want to do:
rem COM2 = notepad #com2.txt

rem Start a hidden Windows application with the printer data:
rem COM2 = "windows\system32\notepad.exe" #com2.txt

rem If your DOS application supports PCL or PostScript printers.
rem YouÂre lucky: great printouts and nothing to set!
rem Output to these printers is automatically
detected, converted to PDF and shown in the default PDF reader.

rem For this the program (ps)pcl6.exe is required in the vDos directory.
rem You can download these at
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/ghostpcl.html (GhostPCL-W32-Binaries.zip).


-- The full directory contents of vDos are:

autoexec.txt
config.txt
DOSPrinter.exe
DOSPrinter.pdf
DPTEST (directory containing DataPerfect Test
Drive, easily deleted I'm guessing)

Language.ini (part of DOSPrinter)
libfreetype-6.dll
License.pdf
MSVC100.DLL missing.url (a link to Microsoft Visual C++)
SDL.dll
SDL_ttf.dll
vdos.exe
vDos.pdf

I don't know what else might be installed
elsewhere during setup. The only file Norton
rejected during installation was vdos.exe.


vDos seems to have real potential for someone
who wants to stay in Windows and can work with
DOS 8.3 filenames; it seems preferable (to me)
to DosBox. My brief test showed it to run quite
nicely in Win 7 64, which would seem to make it
an alternative worth looking at for someone who
wants a current fast machine with a Windows OS,
and doesn't want to run a Virtual Machine to run
Xy4. The info says it will run in WinXP thru Win
8. I don't see this as an improvement on my setup in Linux with Dosemu, though.


Paul Lagasse

On 04/08/2014 07:50 PM, Harry Binswanger wrote:

Norton decided that VdosSetup.exe was malware and summarily deleted it.

More info from Norton:


Behavior

WS.Reputation.1 is a detection for files that
have a low reputation score based on analyzing
data from Symantec's community of users and
therefore are likely to be security risks.
Detections of this type are based on Symantec's
reputation-based security technology. Because
this detection is based on a reputation score,
it does not represent a specific class of
threat like adware or spyware, but instead applies to all threat categories.


The reputation-based system uses "the wisdom of
crowds" (Symantec's tens of millions of end
users) connected to cloud-based intelligence to
compute a reputation score for an application,
and in the process identify malicious software
in an entirely new way beyond traditional
signatures and behavior-based detection techniques.


Antivirus Protection Dates

* Initial Rapid Release version March 27, 2009
* Latest Rapid Release version April 20, 2010 revision 025
* Initial Daily Certified version March 27, 2009 revision 005
* Latest Daily Certified version April 20, 2010 revision 024
* Initial Weekly Certified release date April 1, 2009


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In reply to my post to the VMware forums complaining about the
inability (or at least the yet-to-be-solved difficulty) of printing
from DOS under recent VMware, I got this reply:

>If you want to run DOS (text mode)
applications under Windows (32 or 64 bit).

>
>Try the more direct and convenient way with vDos:
>https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/?sourc
e=navbar>http://sourceforge. net/projects/vdos/.

>
>It won't take minutes to start a virtual XP with your application
>ready to start..
>
>Less than a second, better experience and
integration with the WIndows host.


Apparently this system has been created for the benefit of
WordPerfect/DOS users, and I don't see why it shouldn't work with
Xy4, though perhaps not in graphics mode. The reported speed sounds
interesting, and the author seems to know all about TAME:

http://www.wpuniverse.com/vb/showthread.php?35978-vDos-a-new-system-for-running-WPDOS-under-Windows



I will definitely give this a try. And though I find that waiting for
a VM to boot up is not onerous on recent fast hardware (a few seconds
rather than a few minutes), it would be nice not to have go through
the whole VM experience just for a DOS program.

One thing that is cheering about this is though we have the feeling
that there are very few of us out there, there appears to be a
substantial community of diehard WordPerfect DOS users, and what
benefits them will presumably benefit us.
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In reply to my post to the VMware forums
complaining about the inability (or at least
the yet-to-be-solved difficulty) of printing
from DOS under recent VMware, I got this reply:


If you want to run DOS (text mode)
applications under Windows (32 or 64 bit).


Try the more direct and convenient way with
vDos:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/?source=navbarhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/.


It won't take minutes to start a virtual XP
with your application ready to start..


Less than a second, better experience and
integration with the WIndows host.


Apparently this system has been created for
the benefit of WordPerfect/DOS users, and I
don't see why it shouldn't work with Xy4,
though perhaps not in graphics mode. The
reported speed sounds interesting, and the author seems to know all about TAME:


http://www.wpuniverse.com/vb/showthread.php?35978-vDos-a-new-system-for-running-WPDOS-under-Windows



I will definitely give this a try. And though
I find that waiting for a VM to boot up is not
onerous on recent fast hardware (a few seconds
rather than a few minutes), it would be nice
not to have go through the whole VM experience just for a DOS program.


One thing that is cheering about this is
though we have the feeling that there are very
few of us out there, there appears to be a
substantial community of diehard WordPerfect
DOS users, and what benefits them will presumably benefit us.

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