Questions tagged [ms-dos]

MS-DOS was the most popular operating system for desktop PCs until the mid-1990s. Do not use this tag for questions about Windows command line programs or scripts.

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Why did PC users need partitions in the 1980s

I'm currently working on research related to the history of file systems. Apparently the Master Boot Record was introduced with MS-DOS 2 in 1983, which was also the first DOS that supported hard disks....
Evert's user avatar
  • 423
0 votes
1 answer
91 views

How to boot from a USB floppy drive on a UEFI BIOS

I have a RAAYOO USB floppy drive reader and some generic 1.44 MB floppy disks. I am trying to boot FREEDOS Floppy Edition using this reader on a computer with a UEFI BIOS. It shows up under legacy ...
Badgerclaw's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
85 views

Memory performance on vintage 486 computers using SpeedSys

A seemingly large community of vintage Intel 486 computer enthusiasts use SpeedSys (among others) to check whether their newly acquired/repaired machine works as expected. This is what such a test ...
K. Nick's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
48 views

Force-Printing Partial pages in page oriented printer

How can I force a page-oriented printer to print a partial page? From a command prompt (In Windows XP, but true since MS-DOS days), if you direct output to a page oriented printer such as a Laserjet, ...
techineer's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
362 views

What does a YT-DLP batch file for MS-DOS look like which accepts URLs which have been copied to the clip-board?

Please view the batch file below. The goal ... is to run yt-dlp in a batch file, which then gives you a menu with six options: yt-dlp "%temp_file%" yt-dlp -f best "%temp_file%" yt-...
GwenKillerby's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
67 views

How do I send a file to an old pen plotter using a USB to centronics cable with Windows 11, ideally through DOS?

I have an old Graphtec pen plotter from the 90's that works perfectly well from ubuntu copying files via the terminal. It also used to work with windows 10 but I can no longer communicate with it via ...
spacetime's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
53 views

Building 8051 application under DOS

I'm trying to rebuild some 8051 code from 25 years ago and the documentation is a bit sketchy. It is all MS-DOS based and I'm running it from the Command Prompt on a Windows XP machine. I've managed ...
Betaweb's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
238 views

Misconception of MS-DOS booting process?

I was using the latest version of Rufus (more precisely, Rufus 4.1.2045 Portable) to createa a bootable MS-DOS USB drive. This works well, after booting, the ver command shows the following. Windows ...
Codor's user avatar
  • 113
0 votes
0 answers
1k views

Make a DOS Boot Disk on a USB stick using a Mac

I'm trying to make a DOS Boot Disk on a USB stick using a Mac. I don't really care if it's MS-DOS or FreeDOS, as long as I can use it to flash a faulty BIOS on a X9DRL-iF from SuperMicro. I don't want ...
brunobhr's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
193 views

How to boot a Windows 98 disk image restored in a larger disk?

Let me explain what I did in detail: found that the Samsung 1.6GB IDE HDD in a Windows 98 PC (Pentium 200MHz) was failing detached it and dumped it using gddrescue through a slightly newer PC running;...
Deim0s's user avatar
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0 answers
73 views

FreeDOS not working, kinda?

I am trying to make a usb bootable with rufus to run freeDOS, however, it may turn on, but then I cannot type anything. I also tried with the original DOS image with rufus and still, nothing worked. ...
Zeyrox fame's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
522 views

Windows 11 DOS FOR/IF

I am trying to include in a batch file a check to see if a java process is already running before attempting to start it. I have the following working command: FOR /F "tokens=*" %g IN ('wmic ...
Gavin Baumanis's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
72 views

Need help echoing audio sound cards to a text file in a dos bat

I have 8 sound cards installed and am trying to create dos code to dummy echo all the sound card exact names to text file. But ffmpeg won't echo output to a file . Here is what I have tried, and not ...
degarb's user avatar
  • 31
0 votes
2 answers
499 views

Leave directories in dos/cmd

I enter CMD or DOS prompt, (doesn't matter) and I enter "cd desktop/" so now I am in C:\users\USER\desktop\ and now I want to leave the desktop\ directory, how, because doing "cd USER&...
Humancoder1123's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
165 views

How do you prepend a string to each line of a file in MS-DOS?

How do you prepend a string to each line of a file in MS-DOS? And with no 3rd party commands so nothing like AWK (which I understand some have got running on MSDOS) I know CMD(The cmd console in WinNT ...
barlop's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
166 views

Find the total time of all videos (.avi, .flv, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .swf, .webm, etc.) in a directory using only DOS commands (Windows / .bat) and

I would like to have a .bat file that finds the total time of all videos (.avi, .flv, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .swf, .webm, etc.) in one directory with no other frills. I want to use only DOS commands (...
SuperMusketeer's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
93 views

VirtualBox: Need example of MSDOS with IP stack to share folders with host machine

Does anyone have an example of the config.sys and autoexec.bat to setup an IP stack on a MSDOS virtual machine so I can share information between the virtual machine and the host? A downloadle VHD ...
Ruud's user avatar
  • 1
0 votes
0 answers
135 views

(libvirt/libxl) MS-DOS 6.22: Switching keyboard mapping kills input under Xen but works normally in QEMU

Since there are some old DOS games that I want to play (namely Ultima Underworld I and II) I have set up an MS-DOS VM under Xen (unfortunately Xen doesn't support / accept virtual floppy drives so I ...
Robidu's user avatar
  • 265
1 vote
1 answer
3k views

How can I set environment variable for another user account in Windows?

My scheduled task exe runs under a domain account. I need to set an environment variable for that account but logging in as me. I did StackOverFlow some answers where they suggest editing the registry ...
HillCountry's user avatar
0 votes
4 answers
150 views

Was the MS-DOS 5 Upgrade really able to "load over any DOS on anyone's PC"?

Microsoft made a comical video in ~1991 for sales people or people running computer stores. Some of the lyrics go: loads over any DOS on anyone's PC Source: https://youtu.be/WxC6PytZMqc?t=192 Is ...
Nordholm's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
544 views

cmd.exe - for loop and var value not changing

I'm trying to loop through music files under one directory. Why does the FILENAME var appear to have the same value each time through the loop? It does appear to be looping through files, however ...
dougd_in_nc's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
352 views

Is there any way I can measure the runtime of a program in DOS?

I just want to measure the time it takes a program to go from start to finish. In UNIX - I can use the time command. Is there any way to do this in a MS DOS or FreeDOS?
Coder's user avatar
  • 121
1 vote
1 answer
389 views

Sharepoint/One Drive "Free up space"

I use sharepoint to host files on the cloud, with a shortcut added to OneDrive so we can browse the files through windows explorer. We have a lot of automation, which pulls files locally and processes ...
matlabgui's user avatar
  • 135
0 votes
1 answer
443 views

How do i remove all the files that contain a certain string in their name?

How do i remove str files with names containing "fr" in them ("text.fr.str") using DOS command? I tried "DEL *.fr.str". Doesn't work.
Ilfat Gultyaev's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
427 views

How to see the commands that are executed by a silent cmd.exe

The cmd.exe process is taking up resources on a server, I would like to see what it is running. How can I do it? Task Manager
Rileon's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote
0 answers
480 views

Making a DOS 6.22 Network Boot Floppy from a Hard Drive

I have a computer (an oooold ALR, 486DX-66) that has a hard drive that boots to DOS 6.22. This ALR computer boots to DOS, loads network drivers (it has an old Dlink DE-220 network card). It then maps ...
TBone's user avatar
  • 113
0 votes
0 answers
18 views

Fix MBR for a 16-bit intel 80386sx cpu [duplicate]

i have an old classic computer running ms-dos 3.30 on computer architecture running a 16-bit cpu (80386sx, not to mistake with 80386DX which is 32-bit), i was playing around and messed up the MBR. I ...
Aqil Mehmood's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
4k views

Rename command in dos

this is my first question here. I just revived an old pc to play dos games. I couldn't rename a folder, but I can rename files. Any idea why? Q2: How to see the full folder name in dir command? I see ...
noname delete's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
943 views

Bash for MS-DOS? [closed]

This question was ported from Ask Ubuntu site. According to GNU link to Bash developer: Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, for the GNU operating system. The name is an acronym for ...
Polda18's user avatar
  • 65
1 vote
0 answers
170 views

How can I view the pushd stack in the Windows command line?

As per the title, how can I view the pushd stack in the Windows command line? I see this question for Linux doesn't have an answer, so I'm not holding my breath for a Windows command line answer. As ...
JMD's user avatar
  • 4,837
5 votes
1 answer
503 views

How to run a MS-DOS/Win9x batch file containing CD while preserving the original working directory?

Consider the following batch file test.bat: CD C:\SOFTWARE program.exe This script is run from C:\ELSWHERE C:\ELSWHERE> C:\test.bat After the script exits the current working directory is now C:\...
Zhro's user avatar
  • 867
2 votes
0 answers
2k views

How to discover the Heads / Cylinders / Sectors for an "SD Card-to-IDE" adapter?

I am attempting to use a SD Card-to-IDE adapter to replace a failed HDD in an ancient DOS laptop. However I am having trouble due to not knowing what settings I should use in the BIOS with regard to ...
user882326721's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
4k views

How to create a boot USB flash drive with DOS and GPT/UEFI?

I need to run a DOS application from the flash drive on boot, so I can create a backup image of the main hard disk. I have been doing this procedure for many years so far, but my new laptop is ...
Guybrush's user avatar
  • 151
1 vote
1 answer
518 views

DOS batch file to display netsh channel output

I'm trying to get wifi Channel output from netsh command to be 2.4GHz or 5GHz The following provides me with Channel output: netsh wlan show interface name=Wi-Fi | findstr "Channel" Output ...
mnauta's user avatar
  • 11
3 votes
1 answer
229 views

Origin of USBMS packets referring to MS-DOS

I've been messing around with traffic interception over USB (using Wireshark) when I noticed that one MP3 player was sending some odd packets in response to read request on the first block of the mass ...
user293815's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
75 views

Why would Quake run slowly in DOS on a modern, 2017 i5 CPU?

I noticed back in the DOS gaming era that DOS games ran slowly in hi-res modes. I was surprised to discover that this could be true on a modern machine. I booted a 2017 i5 7200u (I think) laptop into ...
Leon Simpson's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
165 views

How to discover the page code to show a specific character in MSDOS/Batch?

I made a batch-file snake game and inserted some special characters via HEX to ANSI conversion in Notepad++. It worked normally. But I noticed that there was an update to the Consolas font and two of ...
Zano's user avatar
  • 13
1 vote
1 answer
66 views

Trying to replicate tar output format on windows 10

I've been managing data at my work for over 20 years and we've always used tapes written with the unix command tar. The biproduct of this is a tar table of contents that I store for reference when ...
dinki's user avatar
  • 13
1 vote
2 answers
1k views

Why is change directory not working when SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION is used

I have an existing windows batch script (named as test1.bat) as below : @echo off SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION set nop=4 for /l %%z in (1, 1, %nop%) do ( set x=%%z echo !x! ) chdir /d D:\app\ ...
Shri's user avatar
  • 13
0 votes
0 answers
403 views

Accidental deletion of the System32 files in Windows

I accidentally executed the following command in cmd with administrative privilages in my c:\windows\system32 folder: del *.* /f/q/s > nul When I realized what was happening I quickly pressed Ctrl+...
SantaHopar's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
286 views

Formatting USB drive for a MS DOS drive

My USB drive works when I format it with my floppy emulator. But when I format it to FAT16 with diskpart I get an error when I start up MS-DOS and the drive isn't usable. I've tried partitions below ...
user1721061's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
814 views

Print to file from DOS 16-bit app

I have a legacy app which uses IPX/SP for networking and is a 16-bit DOS application. No access to source code, cannot change anything. The only way I can run it is under Windows XP. Trying to ...
nepdev's user avatar
  • 251
0 votes
2 answers
1k views

How do I make a bootable USB flash drive from a floppy disk image, and still make use of the full 32 GB?

When I format the flash drive with a image of MS-DOS and Windows 1.01, which is 1.44 MB, in Rufus 2.18 portable, the USB drive shows as 1.44 MB to match the floppy disk image. I am planning to add ...
Claudia Burns's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

Freespace in CMD command

This command is amazing and just what I need. Thank you to who have written it. I made a bat file that shows all PC details on one screen.... So when I use this command in my bat file it keeps closing....
user1288996's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
4k views

How to transfer files from host to DOS QEMU C drive?

I downloaded MS-DOS 6.22 and I installed it on my qemu. Now I want to transfer files from host to my DOS QEMU C drive. Edit: My host operating system is 64-bit Linux (Debian).
sbh's user avatar
  • 53
1 vote
1 answer
713 views

How do I download the RSS Feed XML file in dos command batch mode?

I have a specific requirement that I need to download the RSS feed file (it is in XML format) from the given link using dos command. I have tried the following command and it keeps giving me syntax ...
Manikandan Arunachalam's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
342 views

convert character set (German)

I have a text file that uses various characters in the 128+ range in currently non-standard ways. The file command just says Non-ISO extended-ASCII. From the context I can recognise these: Octal 201: ...
Tomas By's user avatar
  • 169
0 votes
1 answer
137 views

Corrupted Files Delete in Windows [duplicate]

I am preparing a file using shell script and while doing some tests, I added the pause> nul line into my sh file. Then I ran the sh file, but there was a file named nul on the desktop and I can't ...
user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
776 views

What is this for a file name encoding and how to fix it?

On my Linux machine I found old files (at least from 2004 if not older), so possibly Win9x days. Maybe they came over some old FAT drive on my disk or some old Samba share. Umlaute are very weirdly ...
divB's user avatar
  • 587
-1 votes
2 answers
441 views

can i connect a Floppy Drive to USB Adapter / copy data, can i emulate a floppy drive and rip?

can i connect a 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive Connector 34 PIN 34P to USB Adapter to somethign and copy the data, *(rather than connecting a floppy drive and copying to floopy and then transferign it ...
vince's user avatar
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