PC going down and Microsoft is the anchor

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Question: What is the newest version of Windows that can still run DOS programs?

XP Pro can - what about 7? I'm suspecting not?

Depends. If it is a 32 bit win7 - then yes. No 64 bit OS will run dos.
 
You can run 32 bit executables in Win 7 64 bit. There is a "DOS" command line shell still in Win7 64 bit. I use it fairly frequently, though I haven't tried to run a DOS program in it, I would think it would work. Try setting its compatibility mode for an older OS like Win98 first. To get the Commnand line dialog, type "cmd" in the Run dialog. Or you could just create a VM within Win7 64. DOSBox is a free one.

http://www.dosbox.com/
 
Yes - you can run 32 bit exe. But I don't believe that you can run DOS on a 64 bit OS.

Looking further into it...it does appear that there are some DOS emulators out there that will allow it to run (DOSbox is one example). But without an emulator it ain't gonna happen. 64 bit OS simply can't read 16 bit programs.
 
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Question: What is the newest version of Windows that can still run DOS programs?

XP Pro can - what about 7? I'm suspecting not?
OMG you're in the dark ages with DOS! I have to run DOS on some old machines and it sucks! Our machines are networked to the nth degree so we need to be windows based plus the standard is MS office and is on everything we use and currently we use both ver. 2007 and 2010..

Ray
 
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Question: What is the newest version of Windows that can still run DOS programs?

XP Pro can - what about 7? I'm suspecting not?
Xp support life is ending soon too so if your running xp its time to move up to 7. I am no windows lover but I do like 7 for the most part.
Pete
 
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OMG you're in the dark ages with DOS! I have to run DOS on some old machines and it sucks! Our machines are networked to the nth degree so we need to be windows based plus the standard is MS office and is on everything we use and currently we use both ver. 2007 and 2010..

Ray

We have a couple of old DOS-based programs that do just what we want (coordinate geometry & drafting related). Despite having a Windows Cadd program also installed on this XP machine, I still use the DOS based one for drawing creation - then the Win based one for creating final product (usually a PDF file). Newer is not always better, moreso sometimes rather unfortunately inevitable.
 
We have a couple of old DOS-based programs that do just what we want (coordinate geometry & drafting related). Despite having a Windows Cadd program also installed on this XP machine, I still use the DOS based one for drawing creation - then the Win based one for creating final product (usually a PDF file). Newer is not always better, moreso sometimes rather unfortunately inevitable.
When living in the past you can't expect to be supported in the future.. With progress it goes lead, follow or get out of the way.. I understand the old programs work and that's great however you can't expect this to go on forever.. I have had hardware failures on Win 95, 98 and NT4 and good luck finding drivers anywhere.. We are phasing them all out and moving to win 7.. XP is next and needs to go too..

Ray
 
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I run ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and xubuntu 12.04 on my server. My wife and daughter both have win computers (Vista and XP) and if I actually need anything done in win (very rarely), I run XP in a virtual box on my laptop. The only Apple product I will have in the house is what I can bake in a pie.

I don't like Microsoft as a company, but windows is ok, just not as good as linux.
 
I run ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and xubuntu 12.04 on my server. My wife and daughter both have win computers (Vista and XP) and if I actually need anything done in win (very rarely), I run XP in a virtual box on my laptop. The only Apple product I will have in the house is what I can bake in a pie.

I don't like Microsoft as a company, but windows is ok, just not as good as linux.
I too am a Linux / Unix nut but to be honest it can't do everything ! It is getting better and better and it is a viable OS on its own but you still need windows for some things. I have unix programming experience and training so it is hard for me to admit it but windows is and will remain dominant for a long time to come. Personally I run a Mac mini dual with os 10.7 & Ubuntu 12.04 as well as a triple booted fun computer with 7, Ubuntu & Red Hat.

Pete
 
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I run ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and xubuntu 12.04 on my server. My wife and daughter both have win computers (Vista and XP) and if I actually need anything done in win (very rarely), I run XP in a virtual box on my laptop. The only Apple product I will have in the house is what I can bake in a pie.

I don't like Microsoft as a company, but windows is ok, just not as good as linux.
I have played with Linux for near 3 decades with played as the keyword.. Linux is pretty and easy to install but the business world runs on Windows and I don't see that changing anytime soon.. MS Office is like my right hand and all other office apps are compared to MS Office.. The apps I run at work tend to be proprietary in nature and are always ported to windows. In my world Windows will always be king for this reason however I still find Linux interesting..

Ray
 
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I too am a Linux / Unix nut but to be honest it can't do everything ! It is getting better and better and it is a viable OS on its own but you still need windows for some things. I have unix programming experience and training so it is hard for me to admit it but windows is and will remain dominant for a long time to come. Personally I run a Mac mini dual with os 10.7 & Ubuntu 12.04 as well as a triple booted fun computer with 7, Ubuntu & Red Hat.

Pete

I find that everything I need to do, I can do in linux. However, of course, some still need win for some things. I used to boot win 2000, RH 8 (then 9) and Free BSD (which was an interesting OS) but I rarely booted into win and when I did everything tried to update at once. I then found that when I did need win, I just fired it up in virtual box.

As a matter of fact, did that just the other day because my DVD player borked and I had to add a new one to my Harmony remote, which requires win.
I like having lots of choices when it comes to computing and being free or cheap is even better.
 
I have played with Linux for near 3 decades with played as the keyword.. Linux is pretty and easy to install but the business world runs on Windows and I don't see that changing anytime soon.. MS Office is like my right hand and all other office apps are compared to MS Office.. The apps I run at work tend to be proprietary in nature and are always ported to windows. In my world Windows will always be king for this reason however I still find Linux interesting..

Ray

I played with Linux in college, Slackware and later the early versions of Red hat. Having to rebuild the kernel to incorporate driver changes etc got old. It was fun at the time, and useful to remote into the Unix systems at school - back then most of engineering systems where Solaris and AIX - but I always had to keep windows around to get things done. Same at work, early on we had all Unix - Solaris, AIX, Alpha Unix, IRIX - but over the years engineering cad workstations have moved 95% to windows and the only Unix we have left are servers.
 
I find that everything I need to do, I can do in linux. However, of course, some still need win for some things. I used to boot win 2000, RH 8 (then 9) and Free BSD (which was an interesting OS) but I rarely booted into win and when I did everything tried to update at once. I then found that when I did need win, I just fired it up in virtual box.

As a matter of fact, did that just the other day because my DVD player borked and I had to add a new one to my Harmony remote, which requires win.
I like having lots of choices when it comes to computing and being free or cheap is even better.

Linux is not truly free but I wish it was. You still need a computer for the OS and compatible devices to Linux which lets be honest HP is really about it for external devices that are current. I also discovered early on that I needed to do a lot of tweaking and installing or in some cases making drivers for things to work. So between getting the hardware weather it be preloaded or not and the time it really isn't free at all. The software center for Ubuntu has free and charge apps as well. I can see ubuntu moving to paid eventually no matter what they say. When my Ubuntu adventure began was 4.10 so I have seen and even helped develop many of the improvements in today's distro.

Pete
 
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Windows 3.11 for Workgroups to this day has been one of the most stable version of windows to date. That in NT4. I have been at this since the Fall of 95 and have seen Microsoft put out some poorly designed products over the years. Windows 8 was supposed to be the product that brought them back. I am afraid to say that the days of the conventional PC are over. Most enterprises are moving away from PCs and going into tablet technologies. Windows is is unnecessarily big and top heavy, there are so many things that could have been designed better, but I also think that technology has changed in so many aspect, its not just the technology that has changed but also the business culture. And what I mean by that is, people and businesses have become very "trendy", its almost a herd mentality. A great deal of IT directors and CIOs are following trends that are not necessarily beneficial to their line of business.
 
Trendy is not a word I associate with corporate IT departments. I haven't seen any mass move to tablets, other than employers rolling out things like mobile iron to lock down employee mobile device access.

It might be a difference in industry but the problem we face more often than not with our customers is a hard time getting them to upgrade and move off old legacy systems.
 
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Windows 3.11 for Workgroups to this day has been one of the most stable version of windows to date. That in NT4. I have been at this since the Fall of 95 and have seen Microsoft put out some poorly designed products over the years. Windows 8 was supposed to be the product that brought them back. I am afraid to say that the days of the conventional PC are over. Most enterprises are moving away from PCs and going into tablet technologies. Windows is is unnecessarily big and top heavy, there are so many things that could have been designed better, but I also think that technology has changed in so many aspect, its not just the technology that has changed but also the business culture. And what I mean by that is, people and businesses have become very "trendy", its almost a herd mentality. A great deal of IT directors and CIOs are following trends that are not necessarily beneficial to their line of business.

Nonsense. I have worked daily for a living in every Windows OS since DOS 5.0. I can't tell you how many times I crashed the creaky Windows 3.11 for workgroups. It would be in the hundreds of times for sure. Windows 3.11 graphic routines and drivers were sometimes beta software at best and the printer drivers were pathetic. Without a doubt, Windows 7 64bit is the most stable and easy to work with version that MS has come up with. Drivers now update without rebooting and I have only had a single blue screen in 3 yrs. and that was due to a very faulty graphics driver and not the OS. Built-in security is much more robust too. Their server versions are also pretty good, but most folks don't work in them.
 
Nonsense. I have worked daily for a living in every Windows OS since DOS 5.0. I can't tell you how many times I crashed the creaky Windows 3.11 for workgroups. It would be in the hundreds of times for sure. Windows 3.11 graphic routines and drivers were sometimes beta software at best and the printer drivers were pathetic. Without a doubt, Windows 7 64bit is the most stable and easy to work with version that MS has come up with. Drivers now update without rebooting and I have only had a single blue screen in 3 yrs. and that was due to a very faulty graphics driver and not the OS. Built-in security is much more robust too. Their server versions are also pretty good, but most folks don't work in them.

I will second this. Every word of it.


Trendy is not a word I associate with corporate IT departments. I haven't seen any mass move to tablets, other than employers rolling out things like mobile iron to lock down employee mobile device access.

And Thank you. For anyone that thinks the desktop is going away...walk into your bean counter or Accounts Payable, or AR and tell them you are going to hand them an iPad. You won't be able to stand the high pitched whine.

Tablets have their place in the work force. They thrive for mobile communications of all sorts. They completely SUCK for any type of data entry of any volume. Period. My corporate office is small at 10 employees. There isn't a SINGLE one of those positions that would be improved by replacing their workstations with a tablet. Actually, productivity would drastically decline.
 
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I cut my teeth on WFW 3.11, NT 3.5.1 and NT 4.0, then Exchange 5.0 and 5.5. NT 4 wasn't bad, but 3.5.1 was a nightmare.

Attached is one of my favorite pics from the Windows 98/Office 97 era.
 

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i had run a decent DOS emulator on my 64bit Vista OS...so I could play classic games like Bard's Tale,Wrath of Nikademus, and Zork. Good times.
 
It would be in the hundreds of times for sure. Windows 3.11
how many times did you crash 95, 98 and all of its variations, 2000 pro, xp, win7. You guys make it sound like they dont all crash and have a lot of issues. we roll out weekly windows updates, that says a lot about a product that needs updates weekly and sometimes more often. I may be talking nonsense or maybe just what i have seen over the last 15 in different places.
 
Try Linux. Everytime you start it up the thing starts downloading dozens of updates.
 
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