The little-known winstart.bat batch file

EvanAnderson•about 1 hour ago

The architecture the DOS-based windows line, and particularly the versions that had the virtual machine manager and ran in 32-bit protected mode, is such an interesting crufty archaeological dig. The OS's are bristling with hacks to make things work in resource-constrained environments, all while having ridiculous amounts of compatibility. There's a certain perverse elegance in it.

NT, being a "real" OS (with memory protection, kernel/user separation, access control, etc), seems so much more obvious (and boring) in its design compared to the earlier DOS-based Windows series. The "adults" came in and showed the kids how to make a grown-up operating system.

I don't miss the instability of the older DOS-based Windows OS's, for sure. I wouldn't want to go back there. For their time, though, they really did punch above their weight.

Edit: I didn't mean "adults" in any negative sense. I think MSFT took advantage of an opportunity for some very senior and opinionated talent.

smackeyacky•about 1 hour ago

I don’t know about that “adults” comment. Microsoft grew their operating system up from a very low base where the “adults” moved theirs down. For most users, windows NT was ridiculous overkill.

At the time most users and businesses didn’t own a PC that could do the virtualisation tricks required by windows 3 (o windows 2 386). A lot of places still had XT class machines right up to the end of the 1980s.

So the Microsoft guys had a pretty complex landscape in which Windows had to operate and they managed a fantastically complicated solution. They were definitely adulting hard during that time.

pudgywalsh•33 minutes ago

> The "adults" came in and showed the kids how to make a grown-up operating system

Oh please — it's easy when you have the luxury of starting from scratch with unlimited budget.

DOS-based Windows had to both retain backwards compatibility with DOS applications and all their quirks and coexist with them at the same time.

The amount of hacks necessary to pull that off is an accomplishment unto itself.

Remember you couldn't really play games on NT-based Windows until Windows XP came out and even then DOS games were pretty much out until DOSbox came along.

Guess those "adults" had to stick with Solitaire and Hearts.

ahartmetz•13 minutes ago

Windows games worked great on Windows 2000! There were officially inofficial packages of DirectX and such - I never had any trouble with them.

I think DOS games also worked.

1970-01-01•about 1 hour ago

WINSTART.BAT is just "AUTOEXEC.BAT for Windows"

The extra diagrams to state how it all works were extra.

joshuat•about 2 hours ago

Always enjoy a Raymond Chen article

fragmede•40 minutes ago

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and oh man those diagrams. I could have used them back then!

The little-known winstart.bat batch file

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