MSDOS & Windows95

[tarun_prank]

I wanted to know the primary and major differences between the two operating systems MS-DOS and WIndows 95?

[Deniz]

MS-DOS is exactly what the name says: Micro$oft Disk Operating System. It was simple and it worked for a long time till hardware technology really took off and there was a need for a user friendlier OS.

Win95 is the first in a series of unsuccessful attempts at creating a new OS, but only in theory. What it really was, was a GUI shell for MS-DOS.

Just my $0.02

[galathaea]

I too would describe it like Deniz. Basically, windows 3.x and earlier were DOS extensions for the most part. No preemptive multitasking, 16 bit, etc. Windows 95 added preemptive multitasking (sort of), basic multiprocess virtual addressing support, 32 bit emulation lower down, and a few other capabilities to bring it more in line with the Macintosh GUI features people wanted (a "start" bar, for example). But it was still very much a DOS extension.

[aio]

There could be lots, there could be few differences, it will probably depend on different perceptions.

But the biggest difference that I strongly felt was in manner of programming something that requires manipulation of large data. Because of DOS' limitations to access memory beyond 640kb, I always have to map out drive space and faking it as if it was part of the working memory (and many similar tasks) to do the job. It was really a painful experience to me -- something that I have not (and probably will never be) experienced in win95.

In other words, the biggest difference is the amount of pain handling both OS.

[Mick]

I would think, that somewhere on msdn.microsoft.com is a comparision article/whitepaper/listing whatever have you of the major/minor differences between MSDOS and win95, generally when a new OS is released, some technical document goes along say this is why you should use our new spiffy improved OS. I would think the documents are still around somewhere...probably find a lot of documentation on it via google.

[Mick]

sometimes things just happen to pop up when your not looking for them....this isn't going to format correctly, so I zippered it up, but you can find it in the platform SDK under win32 programming, using the win32 api, platform differences.

[dimm_coder]

Originally posted by galathaea
Windows 95 added preemptive multitasking (sort of), basic multiprocess virtual addressing support, 32 bit emulation lower down, and a few other capabilities to bring it more in line with the Macintosh GUI features people wanted (a "start" bar, for example). But it was still very much a DOS extension.

Yep. I remember that a big part of code wasn't 32-bit, but 16-bit. And about some kind of global mutex wich wipes the primitive preemptivity out when some application deals with GUI code.
Virtual adreessing support is a seave.

I wonder all the time what a big thing is advertisement. And Gates is a great dealer indeed.