DOS in XP SR2 with ansi.sys

[Russell Lombardo]

I upgraded from SR1 to SR2 and now can no longer run dos applications that
require ansi.sys. Some programs boot, but do not acknowledge key strokes.

I use the DOS prompt with an autoexec.nt and an ansi.nt with the proper
lines to load the requisite drivers including ansi.sys. I use the same
configuration for an XP SR1 machine and it works without a problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

- Russ in Santa Barbara

 

[Galen]

In Russell Lombardo <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I upgraded from SR1 to SR2 and now can no longer run dos applications
that require ansi.sys. Some programs boot, but do not acknowledge
key strokes.

I use the DOS prompt with an autoexec.nt and an ansi.nt with the
proper lines to load the requisite drivers including ansi.sys. I use
the same configuration for an XP SR1 machine and it works without a
problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

- Russ in Santa Barbara

To be honest? I'd not recommend trying it at all. XP isn't really that good
with DOS and, in my opinion, rightfully so. While legacy support is nice
it's not something that I expect 20 years later. This doesn't mean there's
no solution, just that you're asking for a system to do something that it's
not really designed to do. For DOS I'd recommend that you pick and emulation
environment and this would be the one I recommend from experience:

DOSBox, a x86 emulator with DOS:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

There's always the compatability mode that you can try to use but, well,
it's not that effective as an application that's specifically developed just
to support DOS. The above does require a small learning curve but, truth be
told, if you were able to find this newsgroup you can figure it out in a
very short time and have no problems doing so.

Galen
--

"You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his
trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will
come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Sherlock Holmes