MS DOS

[SexyGreyFox]

Because they introduced a GUI.

No matter how many times I read your post I can't understand it other than "DOS is still running in the background," which it isn't.

.

They introduced a GUI with Windows 3.1 and that definitely was running on top of DOS so you can't argue with GUI's.
I can't be arsed to look up which other GUIs ran on top of DOS although something is telling me that Vista still was and that's why Win 7 was built from the ground up (I'm probably wrong though).

Microsoft declare "We have got rid of DOS but we've still put all the commands there fior you old buggers and instead of calling it the Dos Prompt we'll call it Command Prompt and that will confuse the hell out of Grandad and the young ones can argue that it's got a new name".
Grandad can still write in his pretend DOS box with all his long commands and guess what, it will still do all the things he could 20+ years ago but it's only pretend but it does work.
Yes, we've got rid of all the old EXE files eg mkdir.exe, copy.exe, move.exe but we have put them somewhere else so Grandad can still pretend he's in the old days.

I don't have to use big words to prove that Microsoft have still left a remnant of the old days in Windows 7 no matter what name you want to put on it.
You say tomato, I say tomato

 

[LeJosh]

Yes I know but GUI was more popular and they built their next ones on GUI first, CLI second.

Jesus christ you're persistant.

It's not DOS. Get over it.

CLI, command line interface, that's why it's called command prompt. Because it uses a CLI, commands, that's all. DOS is gone. Say bye bye to it. If it were DOS, it would be called DOS prompt, now wouldn't it?

Don't know what grandad you're speaking of but mine is very much up to date. It isn't MS in scaring Grandads with no DOS shocker. :\

Edit - Just to re-itarate, DOS has nothing to do with Command Prompt. Or XP, Vista and 7.

 

[SoundsGood]

Wow what a petty row!

Move on people!

Glad someone said it

 

[SexyGreyFox]

It's not DOS. Get over it..

No way, I said that quite a few posts up but you wouldn't read it.

Here's my MSDOS Prompt in Windows 7 that works every day with all the good old DOS commands (EVEN THOUGH TECHNICALLY THEY ARE NOT DOS COMMANDS NOW BUT STILL WORK FOR SOME REASON)that I still use.

The main debate of the OP was using old DOS commands in Windows 7 and still writing his batch files.
I can confirm 1000% that he can still do it because Microsoft have still left that facility in no matter what name you want to give to it.
Am I right?

 

[LeJosh]

*sigh*

That's not what you said initially at all. The CLI command prompt uses commands, similar to your DOS. DOS is an operating system that used - wait for it - a CLI!

But well done on missing out on what I said completely too but you're just picking on things you have an answer to. Oh and if I highlight command prompt in the accessories, it says nothing about DOS. Go figure.

I can now see it's just an arguement of semantics now.

But whatever dm.

 

[Burnsy2023]

What the OP is after doesn't actually relate to DOS at all. He want to know about shell scripting, which is rather different to the OS.

Personally, if I were to want to script in Windows, I'd do it in PowerShell or VB.

 

[slylittlefox]

You're still wrong, there isn't DOS in the background (but I guess bigger text makes arguments more effective). However I doubt logic and reason can penetrate your field of self delusion, so I'm bowing out of this argument.

No amount of old sayings, backtracking or claims of misinterpretation can change the fact that you said "basically Windows 7 is still running with DOS in the background", which is completely wrong. But no, you're dmpoole so the thread has to stop in its tracks while you waste your time defending a position that numerous people can clearly see is wrong.

 

[NathanE]

I can't be arsed to look up which other GUIs ran on top of DOS although something is telling me that Vista still was and that's why Win 7 was built from the ground up (I'm probably wrong though).

- Vista didn't contain any DOS. The 32-bit edition might have contained an emulator, but that would be it.
- XP (32-bit) contained a DOS *emulator* to allow execution of 16-bit applications but nobody ever used it. I think maybe SP2 or SP3 may have actually removed it as well.
- W7 was not "built from the ground up". It's codebase is approx. 5-10% different from Vista's. The two OSes are essentially identical.

The idea of a hardware GPU accelerated desktop compositor running ontop of MS-DOS is frankly hilarious. Where does 64-bit Windows fit into all of this considering MS-DOS was a 16-bit OS?

No way, I said that quite a few posts up but you wouldn't read it.

Here's my MSDOS Prompt in Windows 7 that works every day with all the good old DOS commands (EVEN THOUGH TECHNICALLY THEY ARE NOT DOS COMMANDS NOW BUT STILL WORK FOR SOME REASON)that I still use.

The main debate of the OP was using old DOS commands in Windows 7 and still writing his batch files.
I can confirm 1000% that he can still do it because Microsoft have still left that facility in no matter what name you want to give to it.
Am I right?

Whatever program that screenshot is from is clearly out of date. It's not been called "DOS" in any variant of Windows NT. So that's NT 3, 4, Win2000, WinXP, Vista, W7 etc.

No 64-bit version of Windows has ever even contained a DOS emulator either.

The command prompt, command line, or command line interface (CLI) as it is often referred to nowadays is merely a DOS-like dialect. It is not a true DOS. It has a DOS-like CLI and that is where the similarities end.

The reason why Microsoft created the Windows CLI is because back then they didn't have an alternative CLI language. PowerShell didn't exist yet. So they stuck with the DOS syntax because that is what most people know.

 

[DreXeL]

something is telling me that Vista still was and that's why Win 7 was built from the ground up (I'm probably wrong though).

Windows 98 was the last 'home' version of windows to sit on top of DOS, from XP onwards it used the NT kernel.

 

[NathanE]

@DreXeL: It was Windows ME that was the last actually But we'll gloss over that because nobody used it anyway.

 

[DreXeL]

@DreXel: It was Windows ME that was the last actually But we'll gloss over that because nobody used it anyway.

Eurgghh, forgot about Mistake Edition

 

[SiriusB]

My first ever new PC came with Many Errors

Then my brother got me a copy of XP!

 

[NathanE]

True 32-bit versions of Windows, starting with NT and including 2000, XP, and Vista, are not based upon DOS. These include the NT Virtual DOS Machine (NTVDM), which runs a modified version of MS-DOS 5 in a virtual machine. While DOS-based versions used the traditional COMMAND.COM for a command line interface, MS-Windows NT and its derivatives use cmd.exe, a descendant of OS/2's command interpreter which recognizes many DOS commands (although COMMAND.COM is still called and used when DOS .EXE files are run).

 

[SexyGreyFox]

What the OP is after doesn't actually relate to DOS at all. He want to know about shell scripting, which is rather different to the OS.

This was his opening post and he can still do it with pretend DOS in Windows 7.
He didn't ask anything about scripting but how to use DOS commands in Windows 7.

I know DOS is an old language that not many people use now but it is something I've been wanting to learn for a while now.

I can do batch files to run programs from a location or to run several programs but I know there is much more that can be done with dos and batch files so does anyone have any good links for learning DOS? And yes I have looked in google but thought I would ask the technical members here for their best advice

- W7 was not "built from the ground up". It's codebase is approx. 5-10% different from Vista's. The two OSes are essentially identical.

Thanks for the history lesson (serious) but I know I read on these forums at one time that Windows 7 was going to be completely NEW.
It was going to be re-wrote and not wrote from previous code and that was what was special about it.

Whatever program that screenshot is from is clearly out of date. It's not been called "DOS" in any variant of Windows NT. So that's NT 3, 4, Win2000, WinXP, Vista, W7 etc.

It was a 'sort of' joke.
It's from the 64 bit version of Directory Opus and contains the same icon for both CLI and MSDOS (for us old uns).
However I can still do everything DOS related that I did with it's former Win95 incarnation which was called Norton Navigator.

is merely a DOS-like dialect.

But and this is a big but - it still does all the tricks that DOS did in the same way so people like me feel at home.

The OP can learn his DOS commands (or most of them), drop into the CLI and pretend he's using DOS and everything will run tickety boo.
You know I'm not wrong.

 

[stoofa]

Microsoft in recent times have worked on an "every other version of Windows being new".

A lot of the Windows 2000 code made it into Windows XP.
Windows Vista was new again, where as much of the Vista code was used in 7.

I have a rarity here at home - a copy of Windows NT5.
I'm on the Microsoft beta test and I've beta tested every OS since Windows 95.
Windows 2000 was called Windows NT5 for much of its development.
It was designed to be a replacement for NT4 and for Workstations and the corporate environment - not for home users at all.

During its development Microsoft decided that NT5 could be the bridging product they had been looking for (MS having had a business OS and a Home OS up until this point).
So the product was rebranded Windows 2000 (to follow on from Windows 95, Windows 98).
However MS had another change of heart towards the end of development and decided that the average home user wasn't yet ready for something based on NT.

Mainly because the software houses for games and other entertainment titles just could not cope with a HAL (Hardware abstraction layer) in the OS.
They wanted direct access to things such as soundcards etc.

By this time it was too late to rebrand again, so the product was released as Windows 2000 but heavily sold as a corporate OS and not advised for home use.
Of course people did use 2000 at home and in many cases very successfully, but it wasn't until XP that we had a proper home OS absed on NT.

And so endeth the lesson

 

[Valentino]

[QUOTE="Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#With_Microsoft_Windows]Windows]" is definitely still built on DOS[/QUOTE]

Quoting wikipedia should only be done as further proof, because as my quote shows, wiki can be wrong.

 

[LeJosh]

But and this is a big but - it still does all the tricks that DOS did in the same way so people like me feel at home.

The OP can learn his DOS commands (or most of them), drop into the CLI and pretend he's using DOS and everything will run tickety boo.
You know I'm not wrong.

Because it was command driven. Those commands are not DOS specific.

 

[NathanE]

But and this is a big but - it still does all the tricks that DOS did in the same way so people like me feel at home.

The OP can learn his DOS commands (or most of them), drop into the CLI and pretend he's using DOS and everything will run tickety boo.
You know I'm not wrong.

From a scripting/CLI point of view it is very similar to DOS. But by no means is it identical. Even the most remedial of commands like the file system operations of Copy and Move contain new switches/parameters that can be used. Likewise DOS didn't have commands like Netsh.

Likewise, try to execute a 16-bit game from the Windows Command Prompt and it will just laugh at you

I'm by no means a Linux expert but I don't find it all that hard to use a Bash CLI. Once you've learnt one CLI like "DOS" or the Windows Console CLI... the skill is generally highly transferable.

 

[NathanE]

Microsoft in recent times have worked on an "every other version of Windows being new".

No they haven't? Microsoft is very firm about this subject. That each Windows is an incremental improvement on the last.

A lot of the Windows 2000 code made it into Windows XP.

XP contained more code from NT3 and NT4 than it did from Windows 2000. Simply because Windows 2000 inherited 90% of its code from NT4, and NT4 inherited 90% of its code from NT3.

Windows Vista was new again, where as much of the Vista code was used in 7.

Vista was definitely not a new OS. It was based on the Windows Server 2003 code base (which in turn was based on 2000/XP). It was classed as a major release because, like Windows 2000, it contained a lot of breaking changes and technical enhancements to the kernel.

 

[stoofa]

No they haven't? Microsoft is very firm about this subject. That each Windows is an incremental improvement on the last.

I don't know where you are getting that information from.
There is next to no NT4 code in Windows 7.
Every other version of Windows has been almost a complete re-write.

2000
90% of which made XP
Vista
90% of which made 7

XP contained more code from NT3 and NT4 than it did from Windows 2000. Simply because Windows 2000 inherited 90% of its code from NT4, and NT4 inherited 90% of its code from NT3.

Now you are just taking the **** and basically arguing for the sake of arguing.
XP contained approx. 90% of the code base of Windows 2000.
We don't need to go any further back than that.
Once Windows 2000 was released it was no longer "NT4 Code", it became the product Windows 2000.

Vista was definitely not a new OS. It was based on the Windows Server 2003 code base (which in turn was based on 2000/XP). It was classed as a major release because, like Windows 2000, it contained a lot of breaking changes and technical enhancements to the kernel.

Vista & Server 2003 were designed along side each other and so yes, share code.
Vista was NOT based on Server 2003 - the two OS's were written side by side.
Vista was a major release in that it contained hardly any code from it's predecessor - XP.

You are throwing in Server OS's as if they are written seperately from the desktop OS - they are not.

Windows 2000 Workstation/Windows 2000 Server - Written side-by-side
Windows XP
Windows Vista/Windows 2003 Server - Written side-by-side
Windows 7/Windows 2008 Server - Side-by-side