Re: MS DOS

From: cquirke (MVP Win9x) (cquirkenews_at_nospam.mvps.org)
Date: 03/15/04 

Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 02:59:57 +0200

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 13:17:05 -0800, "Matt"

>Hi does anyone know where the program MS-DOS is located
>on Windows XP Home Edition? Thanks

It isn't. XP emulates DOS internally, and offers a choice of two
command prompts; CMD.EXE (the native NT commad interpreter) and
COMMAND.COM (a rather dated DOS interpreter that looks like it came
from an MS-DOS 5 time warp).

There's no stand-alone equivalent to DOS mode either. You can run XP
with CMD.EXE as the shell (the "command prompt only" option) or you
can boot the Recovery Console off CD, which is not an OS at all, but
is instead a commad-line-driven grab-bag of handy fixers.

However, XP can generate DOS mode boot diskettes. These aren't much
good as DOS mode boot diskettes go, based as they are on WinME's
horribly botched DOS implimentation, and they can't read NTFS volumes.

Note that if you have a "brand name" PC, you may have been cheated out
of the Recovery Console by the computer manufacturer.

>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
  Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
  a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.
>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

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