New XP user questions

The DOS that ships with Windows 95, 98 and 98 SE is not fake

In 98 it is 1.6 meg of files. In 98 SE it is 2.1meg of files Both are in the C:\Windows\Command folder.

With ME and XP the Command prompt at bootup and the MS DOS Mode got lost.

See my reply in " Where is the DOS Prompt in XP "

I also found out tonight that XP use two DOS files from the C:\Windows\System32 folder at boot up.

Autoexec.NT and Config.nt.

And the edit of Autoexec.nt says so. ( at least mine does )

But there is a possibility here. Some of this may well have carried over from SE when I put XP overtop of it.

BillyBob

 

Make that almost a dead certainty.

To avoid confusion, I'll use DOS to refer to the two styles of command line windows you can run under XP and to refer to any other thing that is a left-over from MS-DOS days and 16bit windows 3.x apps.

The "real" autoexec.nt and config.nt files should live in %systemroot%\system32. And they are only activated when you start a DOS session or DOS app. Unless otherwise specified, they will provide environmental values to the original app started and to any subsequent ones. Note that they have absolutely nothing to do with starting the XP OS. It reads it's enviornmental values from a completely different place.

If you want to really customize things for 16bit apps, you can modify their PIF to take values from a totally different copy of autoexec/config.nt files located wherever you want them or to use an autoexec.bat/config.sys pair you've placed somewhere. The little reserved piece of memory the VDM runs in will have those values rather than take the default ones from the autoexec/config.nt files in system32.

A clean XP install won't even have copies of the files in C:\ although you are free to put some there. Just bear in mind that start~run~cmd or start~run~command will read the system32 versions as will any DOS apps that haven't been instructed otherwise.

If your apps need TSRs and not all need the same ones, you can easily put the TSRs you need in a special config/autoexex.nt file pair as long as the PIF knows where they are and is told to use them. That way each VDM will use only what it needs and you'll save some resources.

 

Since this thread has more or less evolved (devolved?) to a discussion of DOS and XP and since we have a thread dealing with nothing else, I'm going to lock this one.

If anyone has "new xp user questions" that aren't DOS related, please feel free to open a new thread but please use a slightly different name for it.