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Windows ME - The End Of UMSDOS And BeOSfs Over Vfat?
Posted by
Cliff
on Mon Aug 07, 2000 06:06 AM
from the they-call-that-backwards-compatibility dept.
from the they-call-that-backwards-compatibility dept.
Juan Rojo writes: "I recently got a copy of Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (which
is suppossed to be the next generation of the Windows 9x series, supposed to mantain 'backwards' compatibility with older versions. In them all the ports and memory access are unprotected). I was really surprised that "pure" DOS access was simply removed. You can't enter into pure DOS in any way. No more 'Command Prompt' option when pressing F8 at the startup.. No more 'Shutdown to MSdos' and no more shorcuts to DOS mode. I even tried removing the Windows directory and it crashes at the startup instead of going back to a DOS prompt (like Win98 or 95). The only possible way seems to be booting from a disk with a Win98 DOS kernel installed. This seems to be a serious problem for UMSDOS based unix distros, for the BeOSfs that runs over Vfat and even for using LoadLin, which many users still may need.
I wonder if Microsoft did this on purpose.. or if they have some 'excuse' about it." That doesn't sound very "backwards" compatible to me either. Considering the source, is anyone really surprised?
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Microsoft is weening us off our 9x "bad habits" (Score:2)
This is because Windows 2000 does not have it and they are expecting to move people off of the 9x architecture into Win2K very soon. They want the transition to move as smooth as possible.
Evidence of this:
- Removal of the DOS prompt.
- Adding more Windows 2000-like features to ME
- Changing the naming scheme of the OS. Windows 2000 took the naming scheme from this product line.
- The next version of Windows 2000 will include a consumer edition that will be sold for the same price as Windows 9x.
Microsoft has been promising to end the Windows 9x product line for 4 years now. They are finally starting to follow through.
I do have to add, that personally I think that removal of the DOS prompt is very premature. I feel they have to develop some decent recovery tools before taking the DOS prompt away.
Re:I can understand this (Score:3)
Afaik they killed dos because
- The luser doesn't need it, and the power user should use Win2000 in their view.
- The quickstartup shutdown feature is incompatible with the normal dos booting way.
Also maybe there is some util on the CD for real users to tweak things so that an dos prompt remains an option
Re:autoexec.bat (Score:2)
:P
A proper comparison (Score:2)
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Make your own command interpreter (Score:2)
Now, for the more interesting problem of 16-bit DOS, effort should be put into the FreeDOS project.
I know WinMe is going to cause trouble. There are a *lot* of devices out there that need bios upgrades, this, that, and the other thing, which are currently only currently possible through DOS. I had to upgrade my BIOS last night, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to boot into DOS, since I didn't have any disks with it. My roommate did have a 98 boot disk, though he runs Win2k these days.
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Ski-U-Mah!
Java JDKs (Score:2)
Oh well, for those that just need a command line, there will always be one, be it Bash or something like OS/2's and WinNT's CMD.EXE.
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Ski-U-Mah!
Re:IBM still supports PC DOS (Score:2)
Hmm.. Looks like it sells for $50-60. A tad spendy, but not too bad (I think they actually include an AntiVirus package, and it also comes with the REXX scripting language).
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Ski-U-Mah!
Re:What's Wrong With This Picture (Score:2)
It has been my (admittedly limited) experience that NT is, in fact, more stable than Win9x. However, only NT is more stable. The applications that run on NT (including Internet Explorer) are still flaky. I use NT at work (uggh) and I must log off and back on about twice a day to clear the system out, or things will just stop working. But I almost never have to actually reboot.
It's also worth noting that Windows is so inconsistent, it's not even consistently bad.
Another thing - it's my impression that Microsoft doesn't mess with the NT APIs too much (compared to Win9x), so NT should be easier to emulate with projects like WINE. OF course, most of the people working on projects like WINE are using Win9x, but in theory, wouldn't it be easier to emulate NT than Win9x? Are the APIs better documented? Perhaps a better question would be, are there as many undocumented APIs in NT as there are in Win9x?
Sorry for wandering off on a tangent; this is something I've been curious about.
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Re:What's Wrong With This Picture (Score:4)
Consider: many new motherboards have no ISA slots, and soon the ISA bus will be completely removed on all new motherboards. Does this benefit the consumer? What about consumers who have ISA modems? The answer is, yes, it benefits the consumer in the long term, at the expense of a minor inconvenience in the short term. Once everyone has switched completely over to PCI and USB, we can start using motherboards that have no ISA bus (not just no ISA slots, but no PS/2 ports, no floppy drives, and no other devices that still run on the ISA bus). This leads to a more efficient design, which gives us faster, cheaper, more efficient motherboards - and that benefits everyone.
It's sad, really. This is yet another example of Microsoft's technological achievements(successful migration of the PC industry from DOS/Win16 to Win32, excavation and elimination of DOS legacy code) being marred by the relentless drive of their business side to quell competition.
Wait a minute - what? you're saying moving from DOS/Win16 to Win32 is a good thing, and yet removing DOS is a bad thing? Think about this for a moment.
DOS is not just a lower operating system--it's a basic environment that can be entirely overwritten by whatever code happens to run underneath it. Much has been said about the ability to run alternative operating systems being quelled by this design; the faults generated are actually much more devious.
So, DOS doesn't completely control your system; rather, it lets other software do whatever it wants. This quells the ability to run alternative operating systems? That makes absolutely no sense. This design is what makes LOADLIN possible - LOADLIN can completely remove DOS, and replace it with something else, while the system is still running.
DOS lets the user replace anything with everything; under the Windows model, Microsoft holds the final say on what calls you're allowed to issue, what memory you may rewrite, what partitions you may generate.
Wow, that sounds remarkably like UNIX. Applications can't directly muck around in hardware (unless they're running with root permissions, in which case the OS selectively grants them access).
Even the simple requirement to rewrite applications such as Partition Magic in full Win32 code--and that's presuming a hard drive partitioner could be allowed to function through the API--at minimum makes the code much less portable across OS's, and gives Microsoft leverage over yet another critical element of system configurations.
Hmm, making software companies rewrite old applications that require a backwards-compatibility layer so that they're more efficient and work better is a bad thing? Windows NT is 32-bit only, and is much more stable than Win98, so Microsoft wants to migrate everything to NT. The more 16-bit apps that get rewritten as 32-bit apps, the more likely this plan is to succeed.
This isn't just about Microsoft making it harder for their users to run alternative operating systems; it's about Microsoft closing off direct access to a user's own system to the point of forcing the OS to crash before giving the user a command prompt.
Uhhh, who said anything about forcing the OS to crash? Where the hell did that come from? And by the way, someone else pointed out that you can still get to a command prompt by (surprise!) opening a command prompt window.
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Shocking (Score:3)
This IS NOT a backward compatibility issue.
Re:Shocking (Score:3)
In the case of programs, the OS (or kernel) mediates between them, and stops them trampling on each other's memory etc.
In the case of OSes, it should really be up to the firmware/hardware/BIOS to enforce rules for OSes on one machine to behave well, by hiding them from each other.
What's Wrong With This Picture (Score:3)
It shouldn't, I'm happy it's not, it's excellent that they've pulled out yet another layer of headaches, huzzah.
The problem--and it's a real one--is that they're preventing DOS from loading at all.
There's *no good reason* for F8 not to allow a DOS session to start up. Yes, there's a good reason for DOS not to load when Windows is loading--but from a pure troubleshooting point of view, access to the core filesystem is inordinately useful for system repair and there is no benefit to the customer for such functionality to be removed.
It's sad, really. This is yet another example of Microsoft's technological achievements(successful migration of the PC industry from DOS/Win16 to Win32, excavation and elimination of DOS legacy code) being marred by the relentless drive of their business side to quell competition. DOS is not just a lower operating system--it's a basic environment that can be entirely overwritten by whatever code happens to run underneath it. Much has been said about the ability to run alternative operating systems being quelled by this design; the faults generated are actually much more devious. DOS lets the user replace anything with everything; under the Windows model, Microsoft holds the final say on what calls you're allowed to issue, what memory you may rewrite, what partitions you may generate. Even the simple requirement to rewrite applications such as Partition Magic in full Win32 code--and that's presuming a hard drive partitioner could be allowed to function through the API--at minimum makes the code much less portable across OS's, and gives Microsoft leverage over yet another critical element of system configurations.
The philosophy of the DVD contracts was to achieve restrictions over consumers in excess of what the law would impose by preventing any vendor from being able to legally provide entire realms of fair use functionality to consumers. By doing an end run around the law, the studios hoped to effectively reverse entire swaths of public policy. Considering the anticompetitive and intrusive charges against Microsoft, this code extraction is similarly an end run around the technological capability of the generally open PC platform to run operating systems and environments other than those prescribed by Microsoft.
I don't like it, I'm not happy, and I do believe formal complaints should be issued in this circumstance. This isn't just about Microsoft making it harder for their users to run alternative operating systems; it's about Microsoft closing off direct access to a user's own system to the point of forcing the OS to crash before giving the user a command prompt.
Crashing is not a feature.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Re:Shocking (Score:2)
Not quite, no. It should work with all programs that used the documented APIs for the old OS. Now it sounds like MS haven't even done that, but you can't really claim that any previously working program should continue to work. IIRC, StarOffice used some undocumented Linux kernel features, and then broke when those features were removed in a newer kernel.
DOS Commands through IE? (Score:2)
Win2K has a neat CLI (Score:2)
In fact there is a registry setting you can do t enable auto-complete in the CLI like with BASH, tcsh, and other popular UNIX shells. Futhermore there is another registry setting that will allow a window to take focus with just the mouse over it...
Re:And what would you be saying otherwise? (Score:2)
> load Linux
Bad example: BootX quit working for many LinuxPPC machines sometime around Mac OS 9, which forced them into a special booter called yaBoot, a sub-OS requiring a special partition and everything. In other words, Mac OS changes (even before the oft-mentioned Mac OS X) have pushed us into similar territory, boot-wise.
This doesn't make sense, though (Score:2)
So if what he says was true (and, of course, all his words are suspect as he was a Microsoft employee), then future versions of Windows will definately contain some kind of CLI support (which will probably be MS-DOS based).
Can someone clarify this matter?
Interesting ... (Score:3)
wait... (Score:2)
Does BOOTGUI=0 or MODE CO80 work? (Score:2)
Personally, I used to love the way old versions of Win9x said "It is now safe to turn your computer off" - and if you typed MODE CO80 blind at that point, you got the C:\> prompt....go ahead, find an old W9x and try it!
Re:Stupid Stupid Stupid (Score:3)
The end of the CLI (Score:2)
Re: Isn't this Microsoft's preregorative? (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Haven't you ever heard of the First Amendment? I can damn well say anything I want about Microsoft's products. It won't do anything; but I can say it.
Re:Stupid Stupid Stupid (Score:2)
Yeah. Try that.
Re:What's Wrong With This Picture (Score:2)
Oh jesus h christ now i have heard it all. are you now crucifying microsoft for having protected memory?
Re:mode co80 co-dependent (Score:2)
Try turning off power management in the BIOS, lemme know if this works. I suspect not, it probably issues a HALT or something.
Re:Ok, probably a dumb question (Score:2)
In my opinion, Windows ME is for people who want to run crappy programs on new PC's. If you wanted to run good programs on a new PC, you'd run Windows 2000. Win2K doesn't work well with some older games, but it works fine with most newer ones. I've played Rogue Spear, Age of Kings, Diablo, Diablo II, Unreal Tournament, SimCity 3000, Jedi Knight, Quake 3, Alpha Centauri, and many others on my Windows 2000 box just fine. I'd say that covers many of the "must-have" games for the last 2 years or so.
If you can give up your DOS programs, Windows 2000 is the way to go. I was a hardcore DOS user back when Windows 95 came out. I refused to adopt it until well into two years after it's debut, simply because it was too slow, and I had DOS down to a science. That said, I haven't tinkered with an autoexec.bat or a config.sys in a long while, other than to make a DOS boot disk with network access here at work. I'm betting that 99% of Windows users will never need or miss DOS from their machines.
The only places DOS is really needed are shops that run DOS programs from 1992. You'll find a lot of places with some proprietary ISA card which uses some ancient DOS program, all manufactured by a company that is out of business or hasn't updated their software in five years. The solution is simple here, DON'T UPGRADE!
That's right, don't upgrade to a new machine. I've got a few of these situations here at work. Try finding a new machine with ISA slots from Gateway or Dell. You can do it, it's just a pain.
If your program was written 5 years ago to run in DOS, does it really need a Gigahertz Pentium III? No. Use your old boxes until they die, then find another old box. Upgrade to a different product, or insist that the vendor produce a 32-bit version of their software. Whatever you do, don't buy a brand new PC and then try to run your ancient software on a shiny new OS.
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bull -- still runs on top of command.com (Score:4)
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Re:Double Standards (Score:2)
~GoRK
Jesus, people (Score:3)
Haven't you heard of Partition Magic? (Score:2)
I think this whole issue is a tempest in a teapot.
The reason is simple: there is this program called Partition Magic that allows you to run FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, Linux EXT2, etc. on the same hard drive. I'm sure the publisher of Partition Magic will update the program so Windows ME users can also load a second operating system on the same drive on a different partition such as commercial Linux distributions. I won't be surprised that Caldera will release an update to OpenLinux e-Desktop 2.4 that does this.
command.com under NT (Score:2)
Type
cd "c:\program files"
and the logical thing will happen.
The problem, of course, is that the long directory names they use are too hard to type, and there's no shortcut mechanism at all - you can't hit tab to complete the name, and you can't say "cd \progra*" to have the shell expand the name, because there's no file name expansion.
Ironically enough, for a lot of those file names, typing
cd c:\micros~1
would be easier. Unfortunately, NTFS is a "real" file system, so that won't work if you're using it (as I am on my NT system).
Hope that helps; I do 99% of my work in Linux, BeOS or MacOS nowadays, but I remember all too well the days when I had to use a Windows system all the time.
D
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Re:command.com under NT (Score:2)
(Even under NT 4.0, which is what I'm using).
D
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Re:NT command completion (Score:2)
Maybe it really is time to upgrade, although all that silly fading in and out stuff drove me bats when I saw it.
D
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Re:NT command completion (Score:2)
Wonder why they didn't just make that the default.
D
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Re:Nonsense guys (Score:3)
The original intent of Win32s and Windows 95 might have been to be a stepping stone to NT, but Microsoft has been strangely really lax about the execution. They've almost purpously kept NT out of the mainstream market by keeping things like Plug'n'Play, USB support, and DirectX on the shelf for 3 to 4 years after the 9x folks got it.
I wonder if this is a situation similar to Apple in the 1980s, where the "Apple II forever" people kept the lineup on the market for years past the point where it was competitive. It's almost as if iinternal forces inside Microsoft are conspiring to keep the 95/98/ME line going, and when upper management looks at the revenue figures, they can't argue.
Don't forget, these guys have a monopoly on the desktop. If they wanted the world to run the NT kernel, they could get us there. Instead, they want to treat Windows 2000 as an upsell and continually pedddling crap like Windows ME. The sell of Windows 95 was "Just like NT, except with backwards compatibility". But now the sell of ME seems to be "Just like 98, except without the backwards compability". Bizarre.
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no problem for Linux or BeOS (Score:2)
But this change will make some important procedures harder (fixing the BIOS, installing old games, etc.). Microsoft may think that most of their customers aren't doing that; but many of their cutsomers hire people to do that sort of thing (or ask friend to do it for them). This makes dealing with Windows machines even more of a pain than it already is. Of course, since CD-ROMs started being inaccessible from DOS mode under standard Windows installations, DOS mode had gotten significantly less useful anyway.
I can understand this (Score:5)
As I said, I don't like it, I prefer to do half my work CLI style, but I've seen it coming for 6 years now.
Dos not in ME? Why was Dos in 9x? (Score:2)
Windows is obsolete. This has been my assertion for a long time. It's not an operating system itself but a batch of enhancments to Dos (multiasker, graphical interface, and network driver...).
As such Microsofts cheaf compeditor wasn't Apple or Linux or IBM but Dubble Dos and Deskview and every Dos enhancment pacage out there.
This being part of why Windows won the market. Why switch to MacOs, Unix or OS/2 when you can continue to use Dos? The industry standard for 10 years...
Microsoft couldn't remove Dos... Dos is what put Windows in the marketplace.
Now Microsoft CAN and they DO. There is no omnus motive to this. So an old obsolete Dos ultility won't work on WinME... blah... LILO still works...
Linux dosn't run under Dos it reboots out of Dos into Linux. UMSdos still works. It just needs the stupid file system nothing more.
My worry isn't that Microsoft removed Dos from WinME. My consern is that 5 years of Windows computer experts successfully ignored it's the fact that it's there becouse Windows is still a Dos App...
The question is.... Did Microsoft really remove Dos or did they just do a better job of covering up it's existence?
Experement... this will mess your Windows up a tad but try this anyway...
Install a Dos upgrade (IBM Dos or DrDos... MsDos upgrade won't do it...) or just install Dos by hand
If it works it'll boot dos... not proff... That's got Dos installed on a Dos FS... like Linux installed.. it may not have been there before...
Then go to cd
Even if it has some nasty behavure and crashes if Win.exe runs and TRYS to boot Windows.. you have your varification... Thow it dosn't boot under any stock version of Dos.. this to be expected... I'm supprised that Win 9x ran fine under Dos 5.x
If however it dosn't even give a graphic "Booting Windows" or anything like that.. Dos really has been removed...
I'm saying all this while I have no access to WinME... so just experement and post responce..
Oh yeah and ummm reinstall becouse nodoupt this'll really mess up Windows
Re:Isn't this Microsoft's preregorative? (Score:2)
>"Microsoft has the right to produce whatever kind of program it wants to, and we have no right to judge its endeavors."
Actually, we have every right. The quality of a product is judged not by those who develop it but by those who use it.
As far as "backwards compatability" is concerned and as an administrator, I have since win95b considered having to be familiar with winblow$ having to be backwards compatable. Removing this makes dealing with users client machines that much more inefficient and unnecessarily difficult to maintain. All the more reason to use Linux or BSD exclusively.
...Of course I look at the very bright side to this. My company has been replacing Winblow$ and SCO servers for months now with Linux, now is the chance to really make some headway into clients desktop machines.
>when Windows Millennium Edition ships, I'll be standing in line for my copy.
That makes one of us.
>and I'm not going to pretend I'm some how more important than Bill Gates.
You've got to be kidding. This isin't actually *too* bad. it does *kind of* look like a fear tainted/ignorant newbie point of view. on the other hand though, it is pretty ignorant....definitely thinly veiled troll material.
OHMIGOD! (Score:4)
OHMIGOD, Microsoft has finally lived up to a promise from many years ago and removed support for MSDOS? Those bastards!
</SARCASM>
This is about a non-story if I ever heard one. On the one hand, MS is blasted by the non-MS community for maintaining legacy 16-bit code. Then, when finally cutting it free, the same community suddenly realizes that they've been benefitting from the old 16-bit code and throws a hissy fit. You can't have it both ways.
All this really means is that people will need to keep old boot diskettes around, or perhaps look at creating a boot floppy using FreeDOS. If it doesn't work now with FreeDOS, I suspect that it could certainly be made to given the proper impetus. In any case, it hardly means the End Of UMSDOS And BeOSfs Over Vfat, as the title of the article suggests.
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Re:Funny, but... (Score:4)
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
It is still there (Score:4)
Of course that is just my opinion
Nonsense guys (Score:5)
The entire Win32s for Windows 3.1 and Windows 4.x series (95, 98, 98SE, ME) has existed for one purpose: get all applications replaced by Win32 versions and migrate everyone to NT.
This is not a hidden agenda. Gates talked about this in the EARLY 90s ('92 or '93). Back then WinCE was referred to as modular windows, Chicago was Windows 4.0, etc.
None of this is secret. None of this is aimed at killing Linux. This is aimmed at killing DOS applications that won't run in a NT VDM. Those applications are the enemy, not Linux. They prevent MS from killing the DOS legacy and moving everyone to NT.
Right now, MS is saddled by that compatibility and limits their products ability to work. There is a world of difference between NT 3.51/4.0/5.0(W2K) and Win3.1/95/98 (can't say for me) in terms of stability, etc.
They keep migrating to new driver models that were more similar to the NT ones to improve stability and make the migration easier (more driver support for NT).
This isn't aimed at Linux, it is aimed at helping MS make a better OS.
Alex
And here it is... (Score:5)
"Officially, Microsoft says you can boot to the real-mode command prompt only from the Emergency Boot Disk, which may leave too little memory free for running BIOS-flashing and similar programs that run only from the command prompt. Unofficially, Microsoft insiders told us to create a minimal bootable floppy disk by copying Io.sys and Command.com from the WindowsCommandEBD folder to a blank formatted disk."
=======================
Enlightenment is a Trap
Re:Ok, probably a dumb question (Score:5)
Double Standards (Score:4)
I can see it now, if they had left dos in then the story would read "Microsofts 20th attempt at a graphical OS still relies on the command line".
Surely this is a step in the right direction and surely the linux/BeOS people can find a way round it.
After all winNT hasn't included a true dos for a heck of a long time and ultimately that is the model that the simultaneous windows versions are striving towards (slowly striving that is).
Re:Nonsense guys (Score:3)
Fools and other technological nitwits!!!! (Score:5)
Re:And what would you be saying otherwise? (Score:3)
But isn't it still a shell over 20 year-old DOS code, just now without access to the underpinnings of the shell?
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