>>I'm clueless about <g>
<g> comes before <h> and right after <f>.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I thought it was funny to practice
using DOS under NT, but in spite of that I was offering a
serious suggestion, which was that if you're uncomfortable
with DOS but have no reason to install one or the other
OSs, you could become more comfortable by using the NT
DOS prompt (also called DOS box, DOS window, etc.).
NT, like all Windows OSs, puts up a box (window -- derned if
I know it's often called a box, but it is) which will run
DOS applications, more or less in their native DOS
environment. The NT version is both more powerful and more
abstract from the real DOS environments than win 95/93 (and
Win 3.1, for that matter). Nevertheless, most ordinary
DOS applications, specifically, those that don't try to
goose the hardware, will run perfectly well under NT.
Those that want to pump up the hardware run into NT's
security wall, which is lacking or lax in the other
Windows environments, but enforce pretty well in NT.
This is why NT is more stable; it's also why NT is,
to borrow a technical term, a royal PITA when you
need to tweak the hardware or firmware, such as to
flash the bios, for example.
What NT does NOT have is any way to boot to a true,
old-time relaxed DOS environment in which anything
running can poke the hardware/firmware/bios/interrupt
addresses/adapter card registers/etc in their soft
underbellies. All the other Win environments allow
such a boot option, as, of course, does DOS itself.
In these environments, you can flash bios, run low-level
diagnostics on interface cards, test machine responses
at the lowest level, format disks, install viruses,
and generally run amok. Some amok is good; some is
bad; some get's rained out. NT provides for some of
these (like formatting disks), but by no means all
you might need.
The upshot is, if you ever need to run just a little
amok, you gotta have SOME way, outside NT, to get into
this happy state of freedom. There you can contemplate
... uh, skip that part for now ... but can execute your
essential stuff.
That's one side. The other side is, if NT won't boot,
you are, this is a technical term, screwed. BUT if you
can boot DOS, you have hope.
NTFSDos is a freeware utility that allows you to read
from DOS (or Win 95/98/3.1 for that matter) files in
NTFS partitions. You can't write them, but you can
read them. That means you can recover your NTFS data,
even if you NEVER resuscitate NT. It also sometimes means
you can recover the essential data you need to resuscitate
NT, though, as Sean will jump in and say if I don't,
if you've seen to your backups properly you won't need
either of these. For less organized mortals, though,
we need 'em. I cannot count the times NTFSDos has
pulled out the essential bacon I required from NT's
ashes.
If you don't have any NTFS partitions, you don't need
NTFSDos, except, that is, until you have done so and
forgotten to get it, so get it first.
This has gone on way too long, but I can see my earlier
comments assumed a lot of background (as we tend to do,
on this thread especially), so I let it flow. No energy
to edit, so if it seems confused so be it. It is.
Anyhow, I hope this helps a little.
NOW are you sorry? <g of evil aspect>
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