Some days ago we hosted a head to head review of Bochs, VMWare Workstation and VirtualPC. I received a number of emails asking why I haven’t included Netraverse’s Win4Lin in the article. The main reason was because Win4Lin is not an emulator in the “traditional” sense of the word; neither it runs under Windows XP, where our previous test were conducted. In fact, Win4Lin can only run Dos and Win9x/ME, under Linux. We got hold of the brand new version of Win4Lin, version 4.0, and here is our review accompanied by some screenshots we grabbed for you. Installation
The installation of the package can be done either by executing its binary on a Win4Lin CD-Rom, or by downloading it off the web, after purchasing or registering the product online. The install application is about 8 MB, and by being graphical, it is easy to either upgrade or make a first-time installation. The installer will require to install a new kernel on your system (do not worry though, your old kernel is also available via the LILO menu during booting) and after you reboot with your new kernel, you will find two new menu items under the KDE or Gnome menus. One is the application that loads Windows and the other one is the further installation and setup options. This second menu is what you will need to load. Shortly after, you will be asked to insert your Windows CD so the Windows installation will start. Win4Lin only supports Windows 95/98/98SE and Millennium. The installation of the Windows operating system will only take 15-20 minutes, because the installation .cab files will be copied to your hard disk and then launched locally. It is amazing to see Win4Lin installing Windows, much faster than a real Windows installation.
The only additional manual setup I had to do was to add support for “backing store” on my XF86Config-4 file by adding a single line of text, because otherwise the Windows window was not refreshing correctly.
Usage and Features
After everything is setup, you can launch your Windows either by double clicking the first mentioned menu item on your Win4Lin launch menu, or by opening a terminal and typing: ‘win’ or ‘fwin’. The ‘win’ command will open a window on your current X11 session and load Windows in it, while ‘fwin’ will load a brand new X11 session with Windows loading in full screen mode.
And there you are, with Windows 9x under Linux. Of course, the question everyone is asking is how fast Win4Lin is. Well, the answer is that it is extremely fast! It is almost as fast as running it without the Linux layer underneath. I was indeed caught in a surprise seeing Windows 98SE “flying” by running almost in a native speed either under an X11 window or on full screen. In fact, I had never seen before Windows98 SE loading in 4 seconds and shutting down in 3 (Win4Lin does not load drivers and other dlls that are not needed under the already functional Linux environment, so that helps overall).
It is truly bliss to be able to run QuickTime under Linux, having Internet Explorer, Ms Office, PaintShopPro, even AOL, and at the same time being as fast, in contrast to slower VMWare (which is the fastest compared to VPC and Bochs). Also, through Win4Lin’s option application you can do many more things, like assigning COM ports, changing the way Windows should behave under X11, allocate more RAM for your Windows (up to 128 MB, default was 24 MB – I recommend at least 64 MB), changing the Autoexec.bat and config.sys and much more. One of the great features (and also a dangerous one) is that you can assign Linux directories as drive letters under Windows. For example, you can assign your /home/YourUserName/music/mp3s/ directory as drive letter D:\ under Windows. However, if you manage to get a destructive Windows virus, which deletes files on your hard drives, there won’t be nothing preventing you from losing data, so be careful which directories you assign as shared. Another nice feature is the fact that all the Windows files (c:\Windows\system\, etc.) are accessible under your Linux filesystem as well, stored by default on /home/YourUserName/win/. Your virtual Windows is using the underlying Linux filesystem to store its files, in contrast with the other emulators who create a huge bootable image file for their virtual machines.
Deep Down Under
The technique the Netraverse folks are using is a rather impressive one, and also different than what VMWare or Virtual PC does. So, what they do really, is changing some system calls in the kernel (hence the need for a custom Win4Lin kernel) and then they are loading a DOS-alike environment in the form of a “server”. When you load Windows9x, Windows thinks that it runs on top of DOS and not on top of Linux! Some specific drivers and services, like the NIC driver, the graphics card driver, keyboard and mouse, I/O operations etc, are not exactly emulated as VMware or VirtualPC do, but instead they “pass through” all of their requests to the underlying server. Then, the server is making sure that these calls/requests are executed by the real Linux hardware and drivers.
It would be sufficient to say that Win4Lin is something between WINE and VMWare. It loads a whole copy of Windows in a virtual machine (like VMWare does), but it is utilizing its extended Linux integration techniques to run, like WINE does. Someone would say that Win4Lin is the best of both worlds and techniques.
The way Win4Lin works, has its ups and downs. The good part is that Windows is almost as fast as in a real installation, leaving any other virtual machines or even WINE itself, in the dust. The down part is that this technique can only load Windows operating systems that are mostly relying on DOS. Having support for WindowsNT/2000 and XP is a completely different kettle of fish. And of course, it can’t run any other alternative operating system other than specific versions of Windows.
Drawbacks
As with every product, there are always some rough edges. For Win4Lin, these rough edges would possibly be its inability to run applications, video or games that require direct access to the graphics hardware, through DirectX and DirectDraw. I was unable to run any 2D DirectDraw game, DivX that required overlay, while QuickTime had fall back to the “failsafe” (and slower) GDI for rendering.
I have also experienced some crashes, mostly at the end of installing applications, like Microsoft Works, while I had some graphics glitches that went away after enabling the “backing store” feature on XFree. The other (mostly annoying) problem is that because Win4Lin provides the font rendering, instead of the native Windows font rendering engine, it gets some fonts wrong. For example, when viewing www.OSNews.com with IE, the fonts are huge! I had to fallback to ‘Text Size->Smallest’ from its View menu in order to make IE behave font-wise as it normally does under a “native” Windows installation. Another improvement I would like to see is the Win4Lin installation part: after you have successfully loaded the new Win4Lin kernel and rebooted, it is not clear how a user can proceed with the Windows installation.
Netraverse are hard at work providing patches for most Linux distributions and their kernels, but not all Linux distros are supported. For example, they are still working on Red Hat 7.3 support, while there is no patch for Gentoo Linux.
Conclusion
All in all, I am very impressed with Win4Lin. In fact, this application is among the very few which got me extremely impressed the last few months. It is so cool seeing Windows running under Linux in almost native speed, and it is also cool when resizing the Windows window under X11, to have the Windows resolution change on the fly and get accommodated in the new window sizes (the special Netraverse graphics driver supports many non-VESA resolutions to please every window size)!
There are many ways to run Office under Linux: WINE, VMWare, CrossOver Office Plugin. However, none comes close to running Office as natural or as fast as with Win4Lin. More over, you are able to run many other applications, from IE to Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or your accounting software.
If you are a developer who is looking into developing operating systems or testing software among a large number of different OSes, get VMWare. If you are a user or a developer who wants to run or develop Windows applications under Linux with few or no headaches and speed loss, go ahead with Win4Lin. You won’t regret it!
Win4Lin requires the ownership of a valid Windows 9x/Me CD. You can buy a boxed or a web version of Win4Lin for $90, however, I would personally welcome a lower price for the web version.
Overall: 9 / 10
I have tried both VMWare and Win4Lin. If you don’t have a problem running 9x/ME then Win4Lin is the better choice I think.
I was using VMWare to compile a Windows application I was working on for a client. It took about 5 – 10 minutes to compile on a Native Windows machine and 45 – 60 minutes on VMWare. This was unacceptable to me. A friend suggested Win4Lin so I gave it a try. It was almost as fast as the native Windows install. I would only use either of these products if it was absolutely necessary though.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these…
… Oh, nevermind…
Are they able to bring it to XP/NT/2000
What? To enable Windows 9x to run on XP?
As the article says, it works by making Win 9x think that it is running on a Dos kernel, as opposed to the Linux kernel. It speficially says that it does not support NT/XP.
Maybe we can achieve that with some form of VMS layer…
anobody tried a development enviroment under win4lin (Delphi, MSVS)?
wine dows not support debuggers. . . win4lin does???
What’s the status of plex86? I see there back working on it. Please write something about the project.
Could we skip the Slashdot jokes? They are old enough already…
Merge was a pretty sweet product for SCO UNIX. Of course that was back in the early 90s, when Windows 3 was the thing. Since Windows 9x does not run on DOS, it must have been some feat to get it to work. It sure took long enough!
But I think that the folks at Netraverse have probably reached the limits of what Merge can do. And while I don’t see any technical reason why NT-based Windows couldn’t be made to work in a similar manner, I don’t envision it happening. The first problem is that the old Merge simply isn’t up to the task. It would have to be redone from the ground up.
But the deal killer is that to get it to work without a full VM implementation, cooperation from Microsoft would be necessary. A new Merge would require a custom HAL at the very least. By the time someone reverse-engineered that stuff for one Windows version, a new version or two would be out and unsupported. This wouldn’t be a problem with Microsoft’s cooperation, but I doubt that MS would at any price.
I don’t like the new kernel thing either. I’ve had problems with previous versions of Netraverse’s kernels in the past. Don’t even think of running VMware and Win4Lin on the same system! And since the kernels don’t include source code, forget about compiling modules or applications that require kernel headers. Too restrictive, if you ask me.
I have tried MSVC++ and Borland C++Builder under both Win4Lin and VMWare. It is much better under Win4Lin. Under VMWare the compile time is exponentially slower.
I read the Tom’s Hardware review of Win4Lin and he gives a much different impression of the performance.
I am surprised that it would slow the machine down so much since it really isn’t emulating anything.
This review says the speed is very fast. Which one is correct?
I wish there was some emulator/virtualizer/simulator that would let me run DirectX games on a Linux host. WineX won’t run many games that I play, unfortunately. I guess Win4Lin doesn’t operate at a lower level, though.
> Which one is correct?
Tom’s hardware ran individual benchmarks which showed Win4Lin operating (depending on the test) from something like 50% of the native perforance up to 90%. This means that depending what you run, you will get Win4Lin to run almost as fast as a native installation, down to 2 times slower.
I did not make individual benchmark tests like Tom’s Hardware did. I just USED Win98SE with many different applications. My findings, with these “everyday applications” I used, were that Win4Lin is almost as fast as the real thing.
Speed-wise, it leaves VMWare in the dust. If you read my VMWare/VirtualPC review, I say there that VirtualPC is *unusable* running KDE 2 on Red Hat 7.2 under WinXP, while VMWare is just bearable/usable. But none of these can claim the adjective: fast.
Win4Lin can. For what it does and how it operates, it is MORE than “fast enough”. It is almost as fast as the real thing.
> I wish there was some emulator/virtualizer/simulator that would let me run DirectX games on a Linux host.
I agree. This should be the next big challenge for the Netraverse people.
there was a prog for SPARC/Solaris which did 3.11. It was great, I never had to use a Windows box, until my SysAdmin uninstalled it and pulled me into his office. And me companing the WinNT was a buggie pile of crap, and emacs was pants as a word proccessor did not convice him to reinstall it
Anyone know what it was called?
very nice review… i should consider buying that. sounds like it would be very helpfull…
…It was called WABI, and it is no longer updated AFAIK.
Speed:
Since Windows 9x does not run on DOS, it must have been some feat to get it to work. It sure took long enough
I don’t know what alternate dimension you are from, but on this planet, Windows 95 (all versions), Windows 98 (all versions) and Windows ME (ick!) are all DOS based. With the latter, references to command.com were hidden so that you could not boot to vanilla dos mode.
In fact, I recall when Windows 95 first came out, grabbing DOS off of it for a bit of a joke.
I copied all of the WindowsCommand directory (with good ol’ CLI Arj) onto a floppy, along with the couple of apps sprinkled in the Windows dir. Sys’ed it for good measure, and Voila.
I copied that onto one of my spare boxes (not my OS/2 boxen) that was running an AMD 486 at the time, (Hey, it was a long time ago!), and it ran WfWG 3.11 and Desqview quite happily on “MS Dos 7.”
You’ll find that, especially Win 95 A, was pretty much a souped up version of WfWG 3.11 with a new GUI (and the old one still there – try replacing “Explorer.exe” with “progman.exe” in your win.ini file!) and a newer version of DOS.
Of course, they had to add a few bits of code to ensure that it didn’t run with an alternative DOS product. tsk tsk.
That’s why the “NT Technology” (redundancy) is such a “new thing.” Because NT/2K/XP are the first non-DOS based MS operating systems that we have seen.
I still miss CPM…
[i]”NT/2K/XP are the first non-DOS based MS operating systems that we have seen.”/[i]
Xenix.
Sorry, I’m picky.. LOL. Shame MS didnt keep at it with Xenix actually.. Does anyone run the Unix version of Internet Explorer any more
The price is a bit of a kicker for me.
You can get an old PC for that price, and run VNC.
So, if you just want to run some smaller Windows apps, then it’s probably not worth buying Win4Lin
It only becomes useful if you only want to have 1 machine, either because you’re investing so much money into getting a high-end box, or for space/heat/noise/complaints-from-sig-other reasons. And given that Win9x is only going to support 1 CPU, and without directX, your nice gfx card isn’t going to do a lot, a large portion of the high-end box is wasted anyway.
I like the idea of Win4Lin
I’d be interested in it to run some old dos/windows stuff that I don’t want to bother rebooting for, but at that price, for my needs, a separate machine is more useful.
I’m sure the price is fair – they’ve obviously put a lot of work into this, but is it compelling?
Not for me.
Actually they never got rid of the old interface entirely. You can still run progman.exe in windows XP, though it doesnt get the settings from exploror.
I always liked the idea of WABI. Why was it abandoned?
Way back when, Sun had Wabi for Windows compatibility and MAE for Macintosh compatibility. Who knows why they dropped them.
I believe that Wabi is still available for Linux, from Caldera.
Rather than expend so much effort propping up these relics from the DOS era, I think the better choice would be to concentrate on Wine. VMware is the way to go when you need actual virtualization. Wine is the way to go for the best execution speed. If you develop for Windows systems, you might want to get a Windows PC.
Antarius, as much as I’d love to waste my time explaining to you the flaws in your inductive reasoning, I’ll take a pass. If you ever do want to find out how Windows really works, I suggest reading the Resource Kit books, Advanced Windows by Jeffrey Richter, and any of Mark Russinovich’s published works.
Speed, how many people in the computing world do you need to disagree with you? 2 different authors saying something, does not make it true. If it did, then with all the different Bible Translators, it’d have to be true!
It is an accepted fact that the underlying technologies for the Windows 9x family are DOS-based. And by DOS, I mean “Microsoft DOS” (as there are plenty more Disk Operating Systems around, and I hate that generalisation just as much as I hate the Windows(tm)…)
What would convince you? Running DOS apps on the DOS out of Win95? The striking similarities of himem.sys with himem.sys?
The difference is the integration of the code from msdos.sys in with io.sys, rather than the two “kernels” working together. msdos.sys is now a glorified config.sys & autoexec.bat. In fact, you can kill msdos.sys and put all of the device, file handles, etc into the relevant spots in config sys, and have autoexec.bat load win.com.
It was supposed to replace DOS, however it was just the “Emperors’ New Clothes,” being a new dress with the same arse underneath it.
Way back when, Sun had Wabi for Windows compatibility and MAE for Macintosh compatibility. Who knows why they dropped them.
Cool, I did not know about MAE.
I think the better choice would be to concentrate on Wine
Wine is no use on a SPARC
I think I can remember my sysadmin at the time saying the reason WABI was dropped is “legal issuses”. The ‘replacement’ is an Athlon chip on a PCI card.
Mlk
Please, can you guys make a win4lin version that supports 3d gaming, cause id love to be able to use 3d studio max on it, and also wouldnt it be great just to play CounterStrike on win4lin? Oh the joy, and the pain that it probably wont happen. sigh!
Yep, that’s how things are.
Being that the NT/2K/XP versions run on non-DOS core, guess what really underneath if you remove all the M$-tweaks ??
YES! It’s OS/2, but not as you know it !
That’s why NT/2K and (XP?) can run 16-bit OS/2 executables.
NT 3.51 even supported OS/2 HPFS filesystem.
(You can still get HPFS running under NT)
All this from a company that claims to be innovative !
IMHO M$ has never produced anything innovative.
(Except their outstanding mouse-products)
Yeah, I guess that Sun was pretty magnanimous at one time. I never saw MAE in action, but heard it was pretty sweet for its time. Scott McNealy’s animosity towards Microsoft is famous, so I don’t know if their dropping of Wabi was legal or simply the will of a charismatic leader. I can also believe that while Microsoft may have been liberal in licensing DOS and Windows 3.x to help grow the line, that by 1995 they could afford to not renew those agreements.
Yeah, I know that Wine isn’t going to help SPARC users, but by the same token you shouldn’t expect to get a lot of gaming performance when executing non-native code. Wine is the place where gamers and others who are looking to get DirectX working should look. If you’re on SPARC and have enough CPU to throw at it, there’s still Bochs. I kinda like the coprocessor card myself.
Speed, how many people in the computing world do you need to disagree with you?
Antarius, it’s not a matter of quantity, it’s one of quality. The people who I learned Windows architecture from not only have impressive credentials, but they can also back up what they say. You have done neither. And while you may be staking your ego on your braggadocio, this isn’t an ego issue for me.
If you really want to discuss the fine points of Windows 9x, I suggest that you learn a.) humility, and b.) Windows. Then you will know what’s wrong with your current claims, and you’ll be able to hold a productive conversation. As it stands, I have no interest in going over the litany of logical fallacies that you are using to misunderstand things.
As the report says, not all Win stuff is supported by Win4Lin (port expansion, direct draw, Win2K…). I need to develop some cross-platform apps that use multiple com (serial) ports and I would like to develop the Win stuff under Win2K. I’m considering having 2 PC’s, on keyboard and monitor and remote control the Win PC with VNC (or other) to get the best of both worlds. Anyone done this and can comment on the pors and cons between this approch and Win4Lin (if I limit my needs to what Win4Lin supports)?
Dave,
Transgaming.com has a directx version for linux. They claim 80 games run.
i’m planing on using VNC to remote control a windows machine when i buy a mac. I am also interested in how well this works.
Anonymous, I don’t think you’d want to use VNC on an extended basis. While it is nice for the price, it can be a little tedious to deal with. Something like pcAnywhere would be a better choice if you’re on a LAN. Newer versions of Windows have a remote console feature that is also free for single-user use, and is a bit less annoying than VNC can be.
> Because NT/2K/XP are the first non-DOS based MS operating systems that we have seen.
DEC Stand-Alone BASIC
CP/M 2.2 for the MS Apple II SoftCard
Microsoft Xenix (before it was sold to SCO)
MSX-DOS (clone of CP/M for MSX)
OS/2 wasn’t DOS based
> IMHO M$ has never produced anything innovative.
(Except their outstanding mouse-products)
They may be innovative, but it ain’t ‘MS innovation’. MS buy in the mouse innards and had nothing to do with developing them.
One fine day, “Speed” chose to write:
> Antarius, it’s not a matter of quantity, it’s one of quality.
Funny enough, the same can be said about you as well
> The people who I learned Windows architecture from not only have
> impressive credentials, but they can also back up what they say.
So can Aquarius and the whole rest of us. Just because Microsoft and certain “experts” with “impressive credentials” (I wonder how this should be possible with plain old stupid Windows 9x ! Windows NT – ok, but 9x ???) does not call the relevant components in Windows 9x “DOS” anymore does not change the facts. It is still a form of DOS. Plain and simple. If it looks like a DOS, it behaves like DOS, it smells like DOS, then it is DOS. If you’d rather believe Microsoft’s propaganda regarding this, well that’s your choice, but I’d politely suggest you don’t attack others about this, as it is fairly easy to demonstrate that there is still a version of DOS underneath Windows 9x and Me. Plain and simple
ddj, nobody is stopping you from trying to prove your claim. The only thing stopping you is the fact that it’s not true, and therefore no proof exists. No, I will not be devceived by non sequiturs and faulty logic.
Your fallacy is analogous to claiming that automobiles are powered by those little pine tree air fresheners, and then pointing to all the little pine tree air fresheners in taxi cabs. We all know that air fresheners don’t make automobiles run, and the proof is easy to find — simply try driving a car without one.
You’ll excuse me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for you to prove your claim. I’ve been around long enough to know that you never will. Even if you do actually attempt to test your theory, I doubt that you’ll come back to admit your failure.
Removal of a pine tree air freshener will not stop a car from working, neither will it stop a taxi from working. You are comparing apples and oranges. Just remove some typical MS-DOS files from your Windows 9x and ME installation and … whoops ! Quod erat demonstrandum. Fallacy? I think not. And why on Earth should I admit “my failure” ?
You maybe, but not me or Antarius. 
Antarius has already proved anything there is to prove. Just reproduce the simple experiment he mentions. If Windows 9x is supposedly not based on a form of “DOS” which is clearly sitting underneath it, how come that removal or tampering with of those parts can kill your 9x installation (we are not discussing Windows NT, which indeed is not DOS based!) ? How come that you can move those files around onto another machine and suddenly get a Windows 9x without GUI ? How come that you can indeed install a full MS-DOS ontop of Windows 9x (it is possible !!!) ? If it is not based on DOS (e.g. like Windows NT, 2000 and XP), how else is this possible ? Truth is, that Windows 9x are nothing but a form of MS-DOS 7 plus Windows 4.x, it does not matter what your so called “experts”, Microsoft or you claim.
We have eyes, an open mind and we can see what we see. And some of us are engineers you know, so the chance that we might fall into your “air freshener trap” analogy is rather unrealistic. I find it insulting that you think of us as being that daft. We are not.
Speed, although I admire your stubborness on this point, but I find this discussion rather unproductive, as we are not even discussing about a real OS here. As much as I would enjoy a flame-war about the shortcomings of Windows NT, 2000 and XP and Microsoft products in general (those are at least worth a discussion), I am not going to waste my time discussing the truths about a 8-bit OS with 16-bit extensions and a so called “32-bit” GUI with someone who is unable to see simple facts that anyone with a Windows 9x installation can simply reproduce. And besides, there are tousands of detailed publications and articles out there that clearly prove you wrong. LOL.
Peace be with you, from whichever alternate dimension or galaxy you are from
– dj.
It’s obvious that you never bothered to do any test, ddj. If you had (and if you’re honest), you wouldn’t be repeating the rubbish that you are.
You have failed to show that Windows 9x uses DOS “underneath” it. That was your claim.
It’s no secret that Windows 9x has a “DOS mode” and includes a full set of DOS utilities. That was the whole point of having another 32-bit Windows — to provide full compatibility with legacy DOS programs. But you jumped to the conclusion that 16-bit DOS is active at the same time that 32-bit Windows is. And now you’re in over your head.
Let’s do a real test. You want DOS to be gone? Let’s do it! Someone mentioned that the DOS directory was moved to a directory called “COMMAND” under the Windows directory. Go ahead and delete it — delete it all! Not enough for you? Well we know that without COMMAND.COM you don’t have DOS, so delete any COMMAND.COM file you find. Get rid of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT too, if there are any.
Now, try booting to DOS mode. Can’t do it, can you? DOS is gone! Now boot into Windows…and eat crow.
Of course you might say “but wait, there’s still IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS!” That’s true, but as Antarius pointed out they’re not the same as any other MS-DOS files. MSDOS.SYS is nothing but a text file. IO.SYS is what loads the Windows kernel, so we can’t remove it any more than you could remove NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM or any of the other files that NT uses to boot. So as it stands, 2/3 of what makes up the bare minimum of a DOS installation is gone, and therefore DOS is inoperable. But Windows still runs.
You’ll find many things that look familiar to the DOS user. Why? Because Windows 95 was designed to provide full compatibility with legacy DOS programs. Those old programs look for certain files, and refuse to work if they don’t find them. Naming files the same names is an elegant solution to a bothersome problem.
If you like, you can rename the files, for example to NTLDR and BOOT.INI, just like in NT. You’ll have to alter the boot sector so it points to the new NTLDR file, and alter NTLDR so it looks for BOOT.INI, which shouldn’t be much trouble for bigshot engineers like yourselves. You can also build your own bootloader that sets up the initial environment, switches modes so the OS kernel can be loaded into high memory and executes the Windows kernel.
Or I can be lazy and ask you to explain why on a NT/2000/XP box I can bring up a DOS prompt. And why when I enter “MEM /P” (a DOS command) that it shows that MSDOS is running? Now you’re sunk, fool!
You’re right, I think of you as an ignorant fool — “daft”, as you put it. You give me good reason to think so. You could have learned something useful, but instead you chose to be a jackass. The joke’s on you, kid.
> (and if you’re honest), you wouldn’t be repeating the rubbish that you are.
Neither would you
> 16-bit DOS is active at the same time that 32-bit Windows is.
It is. Just ommit or load HIMEM.SYS or EMM386.EXE with your choice of parameters, and you will notice varying results with free resources, amount of free memory, types of memory and so on. So Windoze 9x is dependant on this, or at least can be extremely influenced by such stupid stuff that you put into your CONFIG.SYS file. If it was truly stand-alone this should not happen. Or just use DEBUG and overwrite the first 64 Kilobytes of your RAM with “00” (for liability reasons, I am not going to post that here, but anyone familiar with Assembler will know what I mean) – that’s where the DOS kernel resides. You want to know what happens ? Well, your machine will instantly *FREEZE*. This is only possible on DOS based OS’s, the same trick works for DR-DOS, PC-DOS, MS-DOS and last but not least with Windoze 9x. The very same assembler sequence does not function under Windows NT based OS’s or OS/2, or any other true 32-bit OS for that matter. Any explanation on this, oh Guru ?
> Well we know that without COMMAND.COM you don’t have DOS, so
> delete any COMMAND.COM file you find.
Not entirely correct. COMMAND.COM matters only if it is the default “shell” (to use some UNIX style terminology) for your DOS installation. There have been plentiful of ancient DOS-based security enhancement software packages from third party vendors back in the 80’s that would make boot sectors of your harddisk unreadable (so you could not boot from floppy and access the harddisk that way) and dump COMMAND.COM altogether and replace it instead with some restricted menu driven programs, where e.g. CTRL-C would not work and where you could not launch programs by typing in arbitratry commands. Anyone long enough in the industry will remember such tools and remember such tricks. It was fairly easy to define any other program as default shell instead of COMMAND.COM so that the computer could not run any unwanted programs.
Now guess what: Windows 9x is not any much different. The default shell there is WIN.COM (taaadaaaa !), and only if it cannot find this one you will get into trouble. Your example is void regarding this. As long as you do not delete the default “shell” program you can delete whatever you want on a DOS installation. As you mention editing, well, load a hex editor that is capable of editing harddisk sectors directly and search for the boot sector. You will find “WIN.COM” somewhere out there. Edit that one to something of your choice and suddenly pooof! Windows GUI is gone and the stupid DOS kernel there will load whatever program you told it to. Just like in good old MS-DOS 2.x
> Naming files the same names is an elegant solution to a bothersome
> problem.
So, you call Windows 9x “elegant” ?
<LOL>
> Or I can be lazy and ask you to explain why on a NT/2000/XP box I
> can bring up a DOS prompt
CMD.EXE can be replaced with anything you like. “GNU bash” for example. It requires some tweaking but it can be done. BTW, your argumentation is getting illogic. Just a few sentences above you praised Microsoft’s art in keeping things consistent for existing programs and users. This here is no different and only proves that even after 20 years Microsoft has not managed to come up with a decent command line interpreter. But CMD.EXE is an entirely different thing. Windows NT is an entirely different thing, with a totally different kernel architecture than DOS and Windows 9x which are – and I will gladly repeat that – nothing but a form of MS-DOS 7 plus Windows 4.x on top.
> You’re right, I think of you as an ignorant fool — “daft”, as you put it.
> You give me good reason to think so.
Ah, finally we share some mutual feelings about each other
> You could have learned something useful,
ROFL! “Something useful” … ? I will tell you what something useful is: OS/2 was useful, Windows NT is useful, as mastering it was the begin of my professional career ages ago, Windows XP is useful, MacOS X is useful, FreeBSD is useful and is an OS I want to learn more about in the future. Linux is useful, as it lets me do what I want to do on my home and work PC and doesn’t get on my nerves with deliberate crashes and bluescreens (which only exists as screensaver). SUN Solaris is useful and HP-UX is useful, as mastering these two fine OS’s is now the base of my income and my current career. Knowing PERL is useful as it makes your life easier, knowing PHP4 and Apache is useful. Being aware of .NET is useful as this seems to be where future Microsoft software is headed. Having an open mind is useful, being critic and cautious about the crap we are fed everyday in the news and in newspapers is useful.
But there is nothing useful you could have taught me, as your “knowledge” is no real knowledge but rather blind feverish belief what Microsoft and some of it’s “experts” claim to have taught you. Reading stupid books written by stupid people about a stupid pseudo-OS is definitely not useful, and mentioning the crap you read there over and over again does not do you any favour.
> but instead you chose to be a jackass.
Eeee-aaaah
> The joke’s on you, kid.
Don’t you worry, I have a splendid sense of humour.
– ddj.
Merge was a pretty sweet product for SCO UNIX. Of course that was back in the early 90s, when Windows 3 was the thing. Since Windows 9x does not run on DOS, it must have been some feat to get it to work. It sure took long enough!
The $25 SCO OpenServer “freebie CD” from a few years ago (1997 I believe) came with Merge that would run Windows 95. When I got it, I installed it just to try it out. SCO itself was a chore to install, but the Merge install went okay. After a day I got bored, deleted it, and restored my Linux system.
the review at TOM’s HW guide used version 3 of Win4Lin this review has version 4….
and for all u martians ;P all win9x are run of DOS…