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Vista's pre-SP1 DOS (in)compatibility (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 22.11.2007, 15:43
(edited by Rugxulo on 22.11.2007, 17:07)

> Maybe not directly, but if another command.com can be run, then it can in
> turn run other needed utils, and experiments can be conducted. I'm
> depending on you - else I'd have to spend some actual money to get Vista
> (with or without a whole machine). :-P

As mentioned, you can run DOS programs in Vista 32-bit (e.g. Home Premium), but you cannot use more than 32 MB of total DPMI memory at any one time. The CMD prompt does not go full-screen, so some apps refuse to run (e.g. even UNZIP/DOS compiled by OpenWatcom/32-bit, strangely). There are indeed other minor anomalies re: cursor positioning, DOS API bugs, etc. And even MS's own Virtual PC 2007 won't install on Vista Home (Basic or Premium), but that AFAICT is "just business." SP1 is supposed to fix the 32 MB issue, but you'd think that'd be easy to fix and already put out via Windows Update (yet nope, nothing). Sad but true. Put simply, it's not a DOS-lover's favorite Windows (what is, Win98SE?). Even XP runs DOS stuff a lot better. So yeah, not sure if you're really wanting to upgrade, but unless you're willing to use a hypervisor/VM for DOS stuff, I'd advise against it. (Although Vista will probably eventually be ubiquitous like XP now is.)

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