Windows

Unit 6 (Chapter 3):

6.1 Windows 3.x and Windows 9x/Me:

6.2 Windows 3.x and Windows 9x/Me:

Windows 3.x was not a true OS. It was a graphical shell that required DOS to interact with the hardware. Windows 9x/Me is really two products: a DOS protected-mode interface (DPMI) and a protected-mode GUI.

Later versions of Windows 95 and all versions of Windows 98, Me support the FAT32 file format, enabling partitions up to 2 terabytes in size. Before FAT32, the old FAT16 format had a maximum partition size of only 2.1 GB.

Windows 9x/Me systems allow filenames up to 255 characters while maintaining backward compatibility with the older 8.3 format. Windows extended the old 8-bit ASCII character set and adopted a 16-bit Unicode character set.

MSDOS.SYS is no longer part of the OS kernel in DPMI. It is now just a text file that replaces many of the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS functions that the system still needs before the GUI kicks in. MSDOS.SYS has hidden, system, and read-only attributes by default. MSDOS.SYS is organized just like an INI file with groups and options under each setting.

Windows 3.x used text files with the extension .INI to initialize just about everything from device drivers to applications to Windows itself. Although Windows 9x/Me and Windows 2000/XP rely much less on INI files.

All INI files are broken up into logical sections called groups. Each group starts with a word or words in square brackets, called a group header, followed by the settings for that group. The syntax is item=settings.

SYSTEM.INI was the CONFIG.SYS of Windows 3.x, where all the resources were initialized and some global settings that defined how resources were to be used.

WIN.INI was the AUTOEXEC.BAT of