Replies

>> Actually, no, Win95 and 98 still required DOS underneath, although once they were running they largely ignored it. Try starting a Win95 system without IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, CONFIG.SYS, and AUTOEXEC.BAT and you'll see what I mean.

> Those were system files that were installed during W95 setup, so they were basically integrated into the OS. The older versions of Windows had to be installed separately from the DOS install.

I think we're talking about two different (though related) things.

You're correct that the Windows installer for 95 and 98 placed the MSDOS system files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS in the root. But that wasn't what I was referring to. I was speaking of the fact that Win95 and Win98 required MSDOS -- they couldn't start and run without it.

In both Win95 and Win98, the system actually booted first into an instance of MSDOS. Within the MSDOS system there was a command "WIN" that started Windows on top of MSDOS. The "WIN" was originally the last line of AUTOEXEC.BAT, but Microsoft later made it implicit rather than explicit, so that it appeared to the user that they had booted directly into Windows. But in fact if you suppressed the "WIN" command, you would be left running a fully-functional copy of MSDOS. You could type the "WIN" command manually from MSDOS and Windows would start. And you could exit from Windows and still be running the boot instance of MSDOS underneath.

The point I was making was that Win95 and Win98 could not start and run without MSDOS, even though they largely ignored it once they were launched with the MSDOS "WIN" command. If you don't believe me, start a copy of Win98, and launch the MS-DOS prompt to get a command line window. Type the command:

C:\> WIN /?

and hit Enter. You'll see the help for the WIN command, which reads like this (alert: Blast From The Past):


C:\>WIN /?

Starts Windows.

WIN [/D:[F][M][S][V][X]]

/D    Used for troubleshooting when Windows does not start correctly.
  :F  Turns off 32-bit disk access.
      Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: 32BitDiskAccess=FALSE.
  :M  Enables Safe mode.
      This is automatically enabled during Safe start (function key F5).
  :N  Enables Safe mode with networking.
      This is automatically enabled during Safe start (function key F6).
  :S  Specifies that Windows should not use ROM address space between
      F000:0000 and 1 MB for a break point.
      Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: SystemROMBreakPoint=FALSE.
  :V  Specifies that the ROM routine will handle interrupts from the hard
      disk controller.
      Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: VirtualHDIRQ=FALSE.
  :X  Excludes all of the adapter area from the range of memory that Windows
      scans to find unused space.
      Equivalent to SYSTEM.INI file setting: EMMExclude=A000-FFFF.

Incidentally, I got the above text by copy/pasting it from my running Win98SE VMware VM that's in another window while I FReep. :-) Otherwise I never would have remembered it all!

Anyway, I'll grant the point that Win95 and Win98 were -- once lauched -- largely independent of the MSDOS that had launched them, and they pretty much operated as stand-alone operating systems. But they could never get themselves going without that MSDOS startup. Everything in the MSDOS startup files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT mattered to Windows.

Here are the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files from my Win98SE VM. Remember HIMEM.SYS?:


C:\>type config.sys
device=C:\WINDOWS\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\oakcdrom.sys /d:cdr00001

C:\>type autoexec.bat
rem - By Windows Setup - C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\mscdex.exe /d:cdr00001
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\doskey /insert

Those lines about "cdr00001" are what make the CDROM drive appear in Windows.

A good time had by all.