Re: Seeing VERSIONINFO under Vista?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

In article news:<ux3YHohnHHA.4516@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alexander Grigoriev
wrote:
After Win9x boots, DOS is carefully packed in a cardboard box and put aside.
Windows sometimes looks into that box and kicks DOS to make sure it knows
what time it is. Nothing more. Filesystem is completely handled by Windows.

That's true.

Under Win9x a 32-bit process uses 32-bit filehandling APIs that don't go
anywhere near the 16-bit code. 16-bit processes still call software interrupt
21H to access the OS facilities, but the interrupt handlers are stubs that
forward to 32-bit code. There isn't really any of DOS doing anything.

Disk drives are completely handled by Windows.

That bit is not necessarily true. If all the hardware is supported by 32-bit
code (either by standard Windows-supplied drivers or by a vendor-specicific
VxD) it will be true, but if there's hardware that can't be fully handled by
protected-mode code then the filesystem drivers will call down to real-mdoe
BIOS (or DOS driver) code to make the system work. This is best avoided,
though, as it's less reliable and orders of magnitude slower.

There was no consumer OS with security at the market.

There was OS/2.

You could configure Win9x to have multiple user profiles, though.

Multiple /profiles/ yes, but they were just multiple sets of saved preferences.
There was no protection between profiles.

At the Win9x 'logon' prompt you can just hit ESC to start the system without
selecting a profile at all ...

Cheers,
Daniel.




.

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