DOS in XP (1 Viewer)

[Tom Weeks]

According to everything that I have been able to determine, there is no DOS program on the Windows XP OS. My wife has several online courses that involve DOS. Does anyone have or know of any way to establish DOS on XP? (sorry, pretty redundant). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Andrew Chong]

Look for 'Command Prompt'. This will open a DOS-type window (a shell) that will allow you to issue DOS commands or use FTP, etc.

 

[Kong Chang]

Although XP has a command prompt, it doesn't necessarily mean it can execute 16-bit or lower programs anymore. It may or may not work anymore, depending upon the program.

MS made XP such that DOS and 16-bit programs will not work effectively in the 32-bit environment.

You can try, but I wouldn't guarantee anything to work properly.

 

[Scott L]

I tried to update my mobo bios which requires you use a program that only works in DOS. In WinXP Pro I open the command prompt but it says cannot run program in safe mode. Sucks especially since I can't update my bios.

 

[Kyle]

If you are trying to update your bios- Just boot to an old dos disk or 95-98 boot disk and just run from there. It shouldn't be an issue. But you can do a selective startup (by press F8 right away) go to a command prompt only when booting to XP if I remember correctly.

 

[Thom B]

There are a couple of possible workarounds for these kind of issues.
Tom,
If you're trying get a dos prompt to play around in, the command prompt shell should work for you. If you're trying to run a program that has an .exe which launches it, try the following-
Find the .exe that you're trying to run.
Right click the file and select properties from the drop down menu.
Select the compatability tab, and set the app to run in Win95 compatability mode.
If that doesn't work, try all the modes.
Scott,
Get a Win98 boot disk from
here. Boot the machine with the disk and select command prompt from the boot menu.
Once you get to the prompt run your bios update.
T

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The only problem I've ever had with a non-game DOS program in Windows 2000 or XP was a program that thought it was running in OS/2, apparently it detected the (limited) OS/2 subsystem but something was messed up. But it is possible to disable the OS/2 subsystem. The program then thought it was in DOS and it ran fine.

 

[Steven K]

You mean to tell me that typing "cmd" from RUN will not bring up a DOS prompt in XP? It has in every other NT-Based OS... but then again, who knows with XP.

 

[Thom B]

Steven K,
You are correct sir. cmd will bring up a "dos" prompt, but it's a shell and doesn't function like "pure" dos. This is actually true of NT4 and 2k as well.

T

 

[AllanN]

You can run DOS programs in XP/2k/NT as long as they dont try to directly access the hardware.(Like in upgradeing the bios) So some basic software will run but noy many utilties will. Also somewhere in XP there is a wizzard for running old software. Im not sure where it is though.
Scott L:
Check out Link Removed You can download DOS and Win9x bootdisks that you can use to update you BIOS with.