China DOS Union

Yesterday I finished installing Windows ME and set it up in dual-boot with MS-DOS 7.10, and today I started testing how well WinME can be booted with MS-DOS 7.10. As everyone knows, MS-DOS 7.10 on a boot disk or on a hard disk can boot Win3.x and Win9x, so can it also boot WinME?

Directly entering WinME's WIN command under pure MS-DOS 7.10 naturally does not work. Because of the DOS version number (WinME checks at startup whether the operating system is MS-DOS 8.00), the system then gives the error message “This version of Windows runs only on MS-DOS 8.00” (that is: “This version of Windows can only run under MS-DOS 8.00”). So I used the VERS/DOSVER command to set the DOS version number to 8.00, then ran the WIN command again, and the prompt about the wrong DOS version no longer appeared. After that I got two kinds of results:

First case: after the message “XMS cache problem...” appears, it hangs;

Second case: it can successfully boot to the WinME interface, but it automatically uses Safe Mode.

As for booting into Safe Mode, I guess it was caused by my skipping/loading some programs in CONFIG.SYS. But for various reasons, I can't do more testing. Does anyone have a way to use MS-DOS 7.10 to boot successfully into Windows ME standard mode?

Could it be because one IF*.BIN-type thing wasn't loaded? I thought of it when I saw the description for a WINME patch. After applying that patch, you have to load HIMEMSYS and that thing in CONFIG.

Both HIMEM.SYS and IFSHLP.SYS are loaded. Sometimes it can boot into the WinME interface and run various programs, but it becomes “Safe Mode.”

What is IF*.BIN?

Yeah, mys, please explain it clearly.

Hehe, I also tried it recently.
First I changed the version number, and got the same result as Wengier.
Later I replaced Me's kernel with MS-DOS 7.1's. First I replaced IO.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com. Then I replaced VMM32. After booting, it said many .vxd, .386, and .dll files were missing. Then I found those files in 98 and replaced them. After finishing everything, on startup it prompted “System Protection Error”. Later I don't know what else I messed with, but every boot would bring up the Scanreg screen. After it finished scanning, it said the registry had been restored, but on the next boot Scanreg would still pop up again, and it just wouldn't enter the system. I couldn't even get into Safe Mode.

I think since WinME is only a GUI, in principle it should be able to run under DOS 7.1. But M$ is too strict about version numbers. If I keep replacing more of WinME's system files with 98's, wouldn't that just turn ME into 98?! So replacing system files is still not a solution. The best way would be to disassemble some of ME's system files and remove the version-number check. But those files should all be encrypted by M$ (otherwise compatible versions of Windows would be everywhere, wouldn't they?!).

If WinME's GUI could successfully run under DOS 7.1, that would of course be a very good thing. As everyone knows, DOS 7.1 is better than DOS 8. And WinME's GUI features are much more powerful than 98's. If DOS 8 didn't still have the use of booting WinME, I really wouldn't know who in the world is still using DOS 8 now.

[ Last edited by brglng on 2005-8-8 at 13:13 ]

I actually think win98se is better than winme; winme is just a bit better at supporting digital devices. In that way it's like xp.

I personally think WinME is an odd, “deformed” operating system in the Windows family. The reason I call it “deformed” is that it is a hybrid of Win98 and Win2000. Its desktop looks partly like Win98 and partly like Win2000. Although “My Computer,” Control Panel, and the system icons resemble Win2000, the startup LOGO, taskbar, Start menu, system properties, virtual memory management, WinME installation files, and various device drivers all follow the Win98 style. It has no Task Manager, its command prompt uses the MSDOS style rather than CMD, its DOS kernel is DOS 8.0, and it is fundamentally incompatible with an MSDOS 7.1 boot disk. Without a patch, when booting WinME it cannot boot to the DOS interface... there are too many things to list... The only bright spots are support for various digital devices and the System Restore feature.

No matter how much WinME looks like 2K in appearance or function, its kernel is still DOS. Since that's the case, if it can run under MS-DOS 8.0 then it should also be able to run under MS-DOS 7.10. At least aside from MS-DOS 8.0 having no real mode and the kernel providing XMS, I haven't found any other difference between it and MS-DOS 7.10. And the reason it can't run now is that M$ set WinME to check the DOS version number.
I forgot to mention that when replacing system files, the most important thing is to replace WIN.COM first, all with 98's versions. Hehe, after replacing IO.SYS with 98's, ME's startup screen became 98's.
WinME is more powerful than 98; I don't seem to have found any feature that 98 has but WinME doesn't.

[ Last edited by brglng on 2005-8-10 at 09:18 ]

M$ likes to play tricks the most. It was like this before as well, when they didn't want Win3.x to run normally under DR-DOS.

Yeah, agreed, M$'s stuff really is too strict about version numbers.
The results of my test were like this too: it prompted “XMS Cache Error”, then it did boot, but the graphics driver did not load properly (it didn't seem to be Safe Mode, just that some drivers didn't load properly, though that was basically equivalent to Safe Mode), and in many places the Chinese characters turned into underscores “_________”, the same as one time when I manually moved 98 installed on drive C to drive G.

I've actually never tried winme's System Restore feature. The first thing I did after installing it was hurry to find a way to disable System Restore and completely delete the _restore directory.
At one time, I had winxp, win98se, winme, and win2k all installed at once, and winme had the highest crash rate. But it supported my webcam even better than xp did. Under winme my webcam was actually automatically virtualized as an image folder. For something that cost only a little over 20 yuan to be supported like that by winme, it really moved me to tears; winxp couldn't even do that.
Now winme only remains in my memory.

Originally posted by Michael at 2005-8-10 19:38:
……But it supported my webcam even better than xp did. Under winme my webcam was actually automatically virtualized as an image folder. For something that cost only a little over 20 yuan to be supported like that by winme, it really moved me to tears; winxp couldn't even do that……

Actually this has to do with the webcam driver; it's not that all XP systems can't do this. One of my friend's webcams, after the driver was installed in XP, added another drive letter under “Removable Storage” in “My Computer,” also a virtual one. Double-clicking that drive letter let you see the live image being captured by the webcam.

WinMe's kernel is 8.0

My new machine supports USB booting. I copied the Dos Super Boot Disk made by Wengier onto a USB flash drive. Booting from DOS on the USB drive, I started Windows 98 on drive E:, and it was able to boot up smoothly. But in this kind of Windows interface, software cannot be installed!