os2fan2

You can quite happily dual boot Windows 98, NT, 2k, XP, 2k3 and Vista all on the same box. I done this! You need to put these into different partitions, and make sure that the 98 and NT partitions are in the first 8G. Install all of the rest, except Vista, and then install vista. Alternately, you can use vista's utilities of fixfat or fixntfs to fix the boot sector to boot into the NT/2k3 style or Vista style boot manager. For practical purposes, you should name the computer by different names for each Windows install, if the computer is to be in a network. That is, you should not use the same computer-name for both the 2k and XP installs. You could use version-numbers as append, eg 98, 40, 50, 51, 52, 60 for these, eg TESTBED98. You can make these all use the same swap file, as well. Apart from that, there is no real probs. Give NT 2 MB, 2k 4.0 MB, XP 4.1 MB, 2K3 4.2 MB and vista 8 MB. Make these partitions different, so that the size itself makes the partition name. You can also install BartPE into this sorted mess, and make it use the X: drive as well. Install it into a second primary partition, and then use something to boot that (eg a boot-sector). W

While the GUI supports long file names, the raw DOS session (ie what you get from a DOS boot disk), does not. Windows 1.x, 2.x and Win3.0 can run in real mode. That is, that you can run it pretty much as any DOS app. I ran Windows 3.0 real-mode under an unmodified OS/2 prompt. Enhanced and Standard mode windows require a fair bit of MSDOS compatibility. You can't run Windows 3.1 standard or enhanced, or 3.11 enhanced, under any of the DOS VMs of OS/2 or Windows NT, or even Windows 3.1. You can't even run Windows 3.1 under the 32-bit DOS provided by Windows 3.1. When you run DOS on a LFN drive, you have no access to the long file names: you have to load the LFN driver (which is hidden in VFAT32.VXD or something), to get this. In many cases, the printer drivers are not loaded unless the GUI loads, so unless the printer is an LPT printer, that answers to > PRN or > LPT1, i don't think that you are going to print it. DOS does not support USB, so your USB printer is as usless as a metric ruler... In any case, you will find the file rather confusing to get to, unless you are using a non-standard tree.

The reason that people are pushing Windows 98, rather than Windows ME, is that Win98SE is the last DOS that is not specifically a windows loader. Unlike Win95, Win98 supports very large hard drives, FAT32 drives, etc, but not long file names. The thing can be coaxed to run older Windows, eg Win3.0 and Win3.1. You can pretty much do lots of DOS stuff on modern machines with Win98SE DOS. Unlike WinME, you can run your own command processor (eg 4DOS), and this will be loaded before the gui boots. So you can benefit from a shared loaded command processor. Please understand, that the various DOS implementations in Win95, Win98 etc, are all much and much like DOS 6.x, 5.x etc, except they recognise varingly, FAT32. These are a mixture of DOS-version-specific stuff, and open stuff. The DOS 8.0 in WinME does not support really, running DOS independently, and basically kills off lines in your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. You can't have a general purpose dos that can eventually get around to booting a Win9x session at the end. W

DOS is not "built into" Windows 9x. It is comingled. You can replace the DOS in Windows 9x with another version of DOS. The DOS files, like DOS 6.x and earlier, are version-specific. If you make a bundle of these, you can simply overwrite the DOS in some Windows with a later version of DOS (eg copy WinME DOS into Win95), with no registry fiddles or anything. That is, there really is no difference running Windows 98 under ME-DOS than running Windows 3.1 under PC-DOS, or something like this. Since Windows 9x checks for DOS >= a requirement, you then run any Win9x under the same DOS, and you can even multiboot multiple Win9x (of different versions) and Win3.1 from the same MS-DOS (7.1 or 8.0). The main difference between most of the WinME and Win98SE DOS utils is that that these simply check for different DOS version numbers! Run something like fc /b and you should see what i mean. W

browseui.dll ? W browseui.dll ? W

You may want to forage through the BIOS settings to get the system to treat USB keyboard/mouse to legacy support, or something. I got a USB keyboard to work under DOS etc in this, even when the PS/2 ports failed. W

When you are booting by lan, you might be sending an image disk that connects over the LAN. It is probably expecting a version of DOS to do this, since the message is a DOS message. One possibility is to get hold of the freedos version of command.com (which is not DOS version dependent), or 4DOS, and then point to that, eg a:\command.com Explore the environment, ie SET, and find out what the truename of drives are, eg truename a:\ or dir c:\ W

you could download a grep.exe from somewhere. Semware Editor comes with one, as does the Resource Kits. you can search for lots of other freeware ones. Findstr.exe from Winnt 4.0 or the Win98 resource kit works under Windows 9x. W

reshack may be the appropriate tool here. W

expand itself does not use any environment variables. You might try doing something like grepping for "SET EXPAND" in your batch files, eg grep -i "set expand" *.bat DOS, Windows, or expand is not going to fall over because EXPAND is not in the environment. I suspect it's a woofy setup proggie that stuck it in there, but forgot to clean up after itself woof = sound of dog (ie it's a dog of a program). it refers to an correct implementation of a bad design [which is not a bug]. A dog of a program has lots of bad design faults, whether or not it is buggy as well. W

The windows version of PQMAGIC does create and do somethings faster than the DOS version, but the thing bombs out when you start fiddling with boot drives under Windows. It's best to have both versions, and Fred's request for a reg-key install is perfectly valid. Just stick the DOS version around too, since the Windows one uses it on occasion! Wendy

Hi fdv this works for either powerquest or norton version of PQMAGIC. Just dink the strings section for the correct maker. Wendy ; PE Builder v3 plug-in INF file for Nu2Menu ; PowerQuest PartitionMagic v8.01 Plugin ; http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/ [Version] Signature= "$Windows NT$" [PEBuilder] Name="FDISK: PowerQuest PartitionMagic v8.01" Enable=1 Help="PMagic8.htm" [WinntDirectories] a="Programs\PMagic8",2 [SourceDisksFiles] pqmagic8\PartInNT.exe=a,,1 pqmagic8\PMagicNT.exe=a,,1 pqmagic8\PTEDIT32.EXE=a,,1 pqmagic8\About.pqg=a,,1 pqmagic8\Splash.pqg=a,,1 pqmagic8\PQPB.RTC=a,,1 pqmagic8\License.txt=a,,1 [Strings] ; PQMAGIC=PowerQuest\PartitionMagic\8.0 PQMAGIC=Symantec\Norton PartitionMagic\8.0 [Software.AddReg] ;The follwing three lines are for registration information, ;uncomment them and add the appropriate information. 0x1, "%PQMAGIC%\UserInfo", "Name", "xxxxxxxxxxxx" 0x1, "%PQMAGIC%\UserInfo", "Company", "xxxxxxxxx" 0x1, "%PQMAGIC%\UserInfo", "SerialNumber", "xxxxxxxxxxxx" 0x1, "%PQMAGIC%\UserInfo", "License", "License.txt" 0x1, "%PQMAGIC%\UserInfo", "VersionNumber", "80" [Append] nu2menu.xml, PqMagic8.nu2

Christmas is summer holidays here. I should be thinking of you all here while i swelter in the 95°F temperture. Still, i do like the idea of being to cull out and otherwise fix windows. Kind of like UPDCD for OS/2. (but made more difficult by the obscuring of the process) Wen

This is what i use currently. I do some internationalisation settings, such as enable measurements, make Sunday the first day of the week, etc. It uses a different method to kill the internet connexion dullard too. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;My Computer First Desktop Icon [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}] "SortOrderIndex"=dword:00000054 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console] "InsertMode"=dword:00000001 "QuickEdit"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "MenuShowDelay"="2" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International] "iDate"="2" "iFirstDayOfWeek"="6" "iMeasure"="1" "iTime"="1" "sLongDate"="dddd, dd MMMM yyyy" "sShortDate"="yyyy/MM/dd" "sTimeFormat"="HH:mm:ss" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound] "Beep"="no" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment] "TEMP"="%USERPROFILE%\TEMP" "TMP"="%USERPROFILE%\TEMP" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor] "CompletionChar"=dword:00000009 "PathCompletionChar"=dword:00000009 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer] "Show_FullURL"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main] "IntelliMenus"="No" "Window Title"="MsMosaic" "AllowWindowReuse"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\MSKB] @="http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=%s" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\AV] @="http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=%s" ; this should kill this thing. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard] "DesktopChanged"=dword:00000001 "Completed"=hex:01,00,00,00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\Ggl] @="http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\MSN] @="http://search.msn.com/results.asp?q=%s" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\FM] @="http://www.filemirrors.com/search.src?file=%s" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "DontPrettyPath"=dword:00000001 "Hidden"=dword:00000001 "HideFileExt"=dword:00000000 "IntelliMenus"="No" "ShowSuperHidden"=dword:00000001 "SuperHidden"=dword:00000001 ; dont pretty path = show case as falls [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "ShowDriveLettersFirst"=dword:00000004 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Tips] "Show"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:0000000a "MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:0000000a [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "ClassicShell"=dword:00000001 "NoDevMgrUpdate"=dword:00000001 "NoWindowsUpdate"=dword:00000001 "NoInternetIcon"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "ParseAutoexec"="0" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search] "SearchAssistant"="http://www.google.com/ie" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions] "NoSplash"=dword:00000001

the idea is grand, but NJ is a tad out of the way. hope all goes well, though, and sending my love

A possibility for inclusion is win95cmd.exe, as cmd.exe. This is handy if you have multi-boot with Win9x and Win2k. Available in NT4 and NT2k flavours. W

There are several reasons that one might want to thin out some OS. One thing is the potential security risk. For example, removing IE as an integrated element, and then reinstalling it as a standalone thing, made Win98 much faster, and stabler. Another thing is to squeeze it into a smaller space, so that you can reduce the cost of supporting several operating systems. One can safely remove certian things to make Win2k leaner and meaner, without making it unstable. One can do things with the registry as well. On slower machines, the little animated throbber slows things down, and removing this makes a visually more responsive machine. Other cycle-soakers can be eliminated in a similar fashion. Cause, it makes no sense if you have to tweak registry all the time, so ye have a trusty rexx script to do the work. Wendy

You could use reg.exe, which changes the registry without need of a reg file. W

One can get the DOS 6.xx documentation from any Windows 9x cdrom. Look in the oldmsdos directory for the following files: QBASIC.*. HELP.* When you run help.com, you get the MS-DOS 6.22 help file, which has examples of how to create a multi-boot config.sys and autoexec.bat. It works under Windows 9x as well. W

The way Windows longhorn installs, is that it essentially unzips a huge WIM file, and post-configures it. The actual install program is a WinPE, that lives in a WIM file. This is unzipped to the ram drive, and the ramdisk is started. it loads faster, becasue there are fewer bites at the cdrom. Unlike the previous WinNT installs, you can configure the WIM file, by unpacking it, adding files, and repacking it. This is also how you do the WinPE thing too. I have had a shot at making a real WinPE out of the WinPE supplied. You basically add one or two files to the stock WinPE, and you get a command prompt, from which you can run setup.

I rarely let any OS partition go over 4GB. You should be able to fit all the progs etc into the partition. Most of the data lives in a large partition outside the OS partition, and i often have different installs of the OS for emergency use (should Windows do something nasty). Windows NT happily lives in a 2G partition without probs, you can put the paging file and the ie swap data on a different partition, if you want. We

Ah! the days of real DOS, when you could had A: *and* B: drive, rather than loading the floppy drive by a device driver, and using CAS: device, which is what my first puter did. Anyway, we still are stuck with DOS 1.0 mentality, so A: and B: are defaulted to floppy disks. Mind you, we also have the stupid edlin-diddling (oh! you're running edlin from DOS 3.21 on 3.20! stop it!). Try running programs from inside some different version of Windows, eg run a proggie under Windows 2000, when you're in the windows xp directory! Wendy

i use win98se because it had a half-decent dos with lfn support. in any case, if you use windows, you are using tomorrow's legacy system. all windows have a shelf life that ends on general availability. saves support cost. W

i once installed windows 3.1 25 times in an afternoon, but that was when K7654 was being laid out. for windows nt, i did five installs in a day, before i found out what snap-shot meant. for windows 2k, i did about three installs in a day, largely testing out the fdv files. generally, i avoid doing installs of #1 system, because one learns more from trying to keep the poor dear going. Wendy

"As I know ms has stopped its free support for win2k.but you can get free hot fixes from its website" Microsoft makes assorted commercial decisions about whether to stop/continue support for the OS. However, Win2K has seemed to attract the OS/2 style hackers, who largely did a lot of IBM's work for it. That is, there are comparable OS/2 + Windows 2000 projects, eg updcd cf hfslip.cmd / fred vorck's files / gurglemeier's USP5 However OS/2 never had to fight the obnoxious "difficult for difficult's sake", and thus the OS/2 bootable project is considerably smaller than the corresponding bartpe system, while still being more flexiable. I pretty much think that we largely suffer at microsoft's whims rather than imagining that its hotfixes are evenly distributed over all problems. A lot of the hotfixes are microsoft's fault in the first instance, largely because of their move to integrate <insert some middleware here> into the OS, leads to supprising security holes. W