
Does Windows still rely on MS-DOS? - Super User - ivoflipse
http://superuser.com/questions/319056/does-windows-still-rely-on-ms-dos
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thought_alarm
Well, when I upgraded to OS X Lion the installer failed because of a problem
with the BOOT.INI file on my Windows partition. Imagine my surprise at seeing
"BOOT.INI" in the Mac OS X installer logs. For a split second I thought that
OS X was just a shell on top of MS-DOS.

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bodhi
"BOOT.INI" was actually introduced in Windows NT:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLDR#boot.ini>

I'm planning to upgrade this weekend, hope I don't have a similar issue!

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thought_alarm
If you do, just clear the "read-only" and "system" flags from that file.

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fuzzix
I could be pithy and answer "No", but in my maintenance of Windows in various
contexts I rely on that shim of DOS emulation, Start -> Run -> cmd.

I feel like I get much of the quick info (e.g. ipconfig, net) I need here
faster than I would get it from Control Panel -> Network (something) ->
(forget the next bit).

Does Windows still rely on DOS? No. Do I? Sure.

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drivebyacct2
Try "command" in that field instead. I don't even know if it still ships with
Windows 7, but my gut says yes.

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fuzzix
Interesting that it still ship/s|ped/.

I am wondering why drive letters still exist. Was there a need for continuity
across Windows platforms with different bases (3.1/NT/9x) or was the mania for
backwards compatibility such that the model needed carrying forever?

Surely it is trivial enough to abstract \hd0 as C: for legacy applications.

This comes to mind because of the irritation of assigning a drive letter to a
SMB map only to have it usurped by some multi-card reader USB thing which nabs
drive letters up to H:

Surely a case for a class-based VFS - \hd, \usb, \opt(ical) ;)

 _edit_ I had momentarily forgotten about the 8.3 PROGRA~1/ mess. Please
disregard any misguided attempt at an elegant "out" ;)

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eropple
The drive letter mappings are essentially already that - partition letters are
totally arbitrary. Under the hood, partitions are addressed via UNC paths.

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yuhong
It is not UNC paths. It is NT device paths.

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derefr
If I were explaining this to someone who didn't want a long story, I would
actually say that newer versions of Windows don't rely, at their core, on an
implementation of DOS; instead, they rely on an implementation of VMS. :)

The long story:
[http://everything2.com/title/The+similarities+between+VMS+an...](http://everything2.com/title/The+similarities+between+VMS+and+Windows+NT)

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TwoBit
Windows may no longer have DOS _code_ in it, but it certainly has DOS
characteristics and limitations in it. Most significantly: drive letters,
backslash path separators, and 260 char file name limits. Also the pathetic
batch file system. There are a few other limitations that come from DOS days.

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jpitz
The Win32 subsystem certainly does enforce, at least in a default install, a
lot of conventions that allow the system to maintain backwards compatibility
with a long, long, MASSIVE legacy of software. Many, though not all, of them
can be changed or disabled. That includes the command processor that
interprets the batch language. If you think thats the only shell interpreter
that is available for Windows, you should have a look at PowerShell. It's not
too shabby.

