Re: I want to go geek .. DOS subsystem

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

> When I was troubleshooting loss of FullScreen on this laptop with XP, I
> tried it both with and without that DOS Dir . Did not make any difference.
DOS is not a matter of those files in the DOS dir. DOS is contained in two
or three "hidden" system files. MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM, and at least one
other that I forget. Those files you're talking about--e.g., ATTRIB.COM,
FDISK.COM--are all ancillary utilities, not DOS itself.
> Now, what I wish I knew -- ... Could we freeze a DOS subsystem? ....
> provide our own, by capturing what works? My gut feeling is that of
> course there is something in the operating system that makes that DOS
> directory work ... and it would NOT be standalone portable ... Right?
Your terminology is a little confused. DOS is an operating system. You can
boot into it (as Windows 9x does before it loads the GUI). When you run DOS
on Win2000, XP, or Vista, those are no longer built on DOS, so they emulate
it, for backwards compatibility with things like Xy.
So I don't know what freezing a DOS subsystem means. We have access to DOS
on *every* Windows machine, regardless of which version of Windows. Now,
maybe a few years from now there'll be post-Vista versions of Windows
without a command prompt (DOS). But the older versions of Windows will
always be available on eBay or elsewhere. So what's your worry? Sure, Xy
won't be runnable in 50 years, but it will be for the next 10.


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx