Zip drive, DOS and Wordperfect 5.1

[Patrick Hunter]

I've got a dean with a laptop that came with XP Pro on
it. He uses a couple of DOS based language programs for
his work (no, there are no windows versions of the
programs). I'm having trouble with Wordperfect 5.1 seeing
the zip drive. Zip works ok under Win98 and WP 5.1 on a
different machine. CD drive is not viewable either. Is
there something in how XP handles drives under DOS
programs that could cause this behavior with older
programs? Both drives are usable under a regular command
prompt. TIA

Patrick Hunter

 

[Chris Lanier]

Greetings

Windows XP is not built on and does not include DOS.

Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314106

How to Troubleshoot Hardware and Software Driver Problems in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=322205

 

[Fred S]

Pat,

You will probably have to load the drivers using the config.sys file.
Windows XP doesn't need/use config.sys, nor does it use autoexec.bat but
they can be used to load drivers needed by DOS based programs.

Fred

 

[Alex Nichol]

You will probably have to load the drivers using the config.sys file.
Windows XP doesn't need/use config.sys, nor does it use autoexec.bat but
they can be used to load drivers needed by DOS based programs.

And Windows XP does not load drivers from confirg.sys, and will under no
circumstances load real mode, 16 bit drivers. At all

 

[Doug]

Question - How does the Legacy 16 bit that is in XP do what it is suppose
to?
Cheers Doug

 

[Alex Nichol]

Question - How does the Legacy 16 bit that is in XP do what it is suppose
to?

It works through emulation of the 16 bit environment, backed by the
normal Windows file system - any IO it does is passed to that. As a
result there are some 16 bit Windows programs, as well as DOS ones that
are *not* going to work in XP

 

[Doug]

Thanks - I always wondered why all that Legacy stuff is all over in the
registry