MS Dos in WinXP?

[bille]

I have Windows XP home edition.
Is Dos seperated from Windows in this edition?
In Win9x I remember there being a Dos prompt in my
programs menu that I could ping from, and then I could
boot into a full DOS environment if I wanted to explore
directories.
I've tried restarting and hitting F12 for the boot menu.
Typing msdos into the run program area, and I found no
prompt in programs menu.

How do I boot into dos and/or get to the dos prompt??

--Bille

 

[purplehaz]

XP (and all NT based versions) are not built on the old Dos platform, thus
it does not exist.
There is a command prompt dos shell emulator. Start, run, type in: cmd, hit
enter.
You cannot boot into dos in xp, you'd have to install dos and dual boot.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I have Windows XP home edition.
Is Dos seperated from Windows in this edition?

There is no DOS in XP.

There is a command line prompt. You can find it at
Start|Programs|Accessories|Command Prompt.

That opens a console window, which looks and feels like DOS, except
that it will run 32-bit console programs as well as 16-bit DOS
programs. It will not run DOS programs that directly access the
hardware (some DOS games wrote directly to the video hardware to speed
things up), but most DOS programs will run here.

You use the commands that you're familiar with from DOS, and from
Win9x DOS boxes. A full reference to XP's command line is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds.mspx

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I have Windows XP home edition.
Is Dos seperated from Windows in this edition?

It's not that it's separated. It's that DOS doesn't exist in XP.

In Win9x I remember there being a Dos prompt in my
programs menu that I could ping from, and then I could
boot into a full DOS environment if I wanted to explore
directories.

Yes, but not in XP. One of the main ways XP achieves its much
greater stability is by not being based on DOS, as was Windows
98.

I've tried restarting and hitting F12 for the boot menu.
Typing msdos into the run program area, and I found no
prompt in programs menu.

How do I boot into dos

You don't.

and/or get to the dos prompt??

You don't do that either, but you can come close. At the Start |
Run line, type CMD. That will get you a command prompt window, in
which you can enter most DOS commands. It's not true DOS, but it
emulates it.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have Windows XP home edition.
Is Dos seperated from Windows in this edition?
In Win9x I remember there being a Dos prompt in my
programs menu that I could ping from, and then I could
boot into a full DOS environment if I wanted to explore
directories.

XP does not have DOS. At All. It has an emulation of DOS, using 32 bit
code, in which you can run a lot of DOS programs (but by no means all).
Start - All Programs - Accessories - Command prompt; or just d-click the
DOS program fie.

If you have reason to need a true 'real mode' DOS, you must reboot to a
suitable source of it; say a Win98 startup floppy