Windows 9X/ME
November 20 (Day); November 14 (Night)
Introduction:
oWindows 95 debuted in 1995 and was Microsoft’s first standalone GUI operating
system. Although it was a GUI, it still required DOS at the lowest levels to
interact with the hardware (p. 69).
oWindows 9X/ME is really two different products: a DOS protected-mode
interface (DPMI) and a protected-mode GUI (p. 69).
In DPMI, it operates in 16-bit mode so it can still run old DOS programs.
In protected-mode GUI, it runs in 32-bit mode.
oWindows 9X/ME uses the FAT32 file system (p. 69).
oDOS and Windows 3.X could allow for filenames up to 8 characters. Windows
9X/ME can allow filenames of up to 255 characters (p. 69).
Core Files:
oWindows 9X/ME is composed of three core files: IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and
COMMAND.COM (p. 70).
oIO.SYS :
The primary job of the IO.SYS file is to check and see if the F8 key has
been pressed as Windows loads. If F8 has NOT been pressed, the GUI is
loaded. If F8 is pressed, the boot menu is loaded (p. 70).
Choices from the Boot Menu (p. 70):
Normal – boot Windows normally.
Logged – logs events of the boot process in a file named
BOOTLOG.TXT.
Safe Mode – loads only the OS and the mouse, keyboard, and
video drivers; you can boot to Windows without automatically
loading a bad driver or other system configuration that’s causing
trouble.
Step-by-step confirmation – goes through the OS loading process
one step at a time.
