how DOS and WINDOWS run simultaneously on same computer at same time as these are two different OS?

Answer 1

Originally Windows included DOS as part of windows.]
If you are asking how to make a dual boot configuration on your computer... you need to partition your hard drive into two partitions. Then install DOS on one partition and Windows on the other.
When the machine boots it will ask which partition you want to boot from.
SEE: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559/ for detailed instructions

Answer 2

Dos and windows go way back but the bond is broken now.

Dos need about 64-128KB of ram and it directly talks to BIOS. So most of the computers have what it takes to run dos.

Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME


These versions of windows are running on DOS. If you check the MSDOS.SYS file there is a line saying

loadGUI=True ---> means load windows after loading dos.
If you turn this flag off computer will boot to DOS.

The windows used to be a shell that provides a common interface for all programs. Dos based systems did not have a common shell so companies like Norton and pc tools started providing menu-based systems. The menu based systems were not standard and programming them was difficult. So Microsoft came up with a common interface.

Some good things about this shell was hardware abstraction. All the hardware had to support a same interface (using windows drivers) this allowed software to interface with multiple pieces of hardware from different companies. Later the CPU/Memory was taken over by this shell, allowing multiple programs to run at same time. Dos used to use interrupts so only one program will run at a time, other programs will wait for there call. This started windows making more visible and closer to being OS. DOS was a fast and small system, but easy to reverse engineer and lot of security issues. Microsoft got fed up with fixing the security problems and wrote the Windows NT system kernel without dos support.

The NT based OSs like NT 4 / Windows 2000 and Windows XP are not dos based. They still have a dos simulator but DOS is not running in background.

Answer 3

In new versions of window like windows NT ,windows 2000 ,xp ,vista there is provision that u can works in both enviornemt .in prior versions there may be a problem ,but in now days u work on windows that run on the dos prompt , or make the harddisk into two parts in one u can load dos and in another window ,so whenever u start ur system, there might me a option on which u want to boot ur system

Answer 4

Windows required DOS in order to run, therefore Windows wasn't really an OS. It was more of an application running on top of the OS, being DOS.

DOS is still there, they're just trying really hard to hide it.

Answer 5

Assuming you're running Windows XP, you can:

1. Purchase Windows Virtual PC 2004 and install it into your PC.

2. From within Windows XP, you can start up that virtual PC, then install whatever DOS-based programs into it.

3. After installation, you can then at anytime, from within Windows XP, just start that virtual PC and from there run whatever DOS program you want as if you're running a PC within a PC!

I use this at work in order to test out our applications on different virtual hardware configurations as well as on different OSs and it works great.

Answer 6

Yes these two Operating Systems are entirely different but
every window is designed in DOS.

98,XP,Vista etc.. The programming of all these windows is done in DOS.If there is no DOS ,there is no window.

Windows cannot work without DOS,whole structure of any window is in DOS.

Answer 7

Yes windows is running on top of dos. So you can open up a dos window and do whatever you want inside of windows. Usually Start->Run->cmd will bring up a dos shell.

RJ

Answer 8

depends on which version of windows you are referring to

on windows 3.1 and 3.11 windows was NOT an operating system but rather a program that ran on top of dos

from windows 95 on windows was the operating system and there is no more "dos" per say

Disk
Operating
System

now "dos" is a program running under windows

dougc

Answer 9

Yup, you have as many OS as you desire. The cool element is which you're able to do it on one HDD as properly. you may desire to partation the HDD for the two between the OS. the main trouble-free format that abode windows supposrt is NTFS, yet once you propose on mixing the two OSX and abode windows then use FAT32.