Windows 7

[Albuquerque]

I'd love a similar seamless integration for DOS apps .

If you don't mind the method being used for XP3 VM-mode in Windows 7, then you can do the same with a Win98 VM. Or at least you can when using VMware Workstation 6.x as VMWare has offered "Unity" options now for a while...

You start up your guest windows OS in background mode, make sure it has the most recent version of VMWare tools installed on it, and then enable Unity. Your guest OS'es start menu becomes integrated with your host Os, and you can now fire off DOS apps just like you were in Win95 / Win98 / WinMe, whatever.

 

[suryad]

With the latest nVidia beta drivers you seem to get great 3d performance in Windows 7. It's often actually faster than Vista SP2 with the same beta drivers.
Looks like Windows 7 is going to become a great gaming OS.

Nice! I have seen some benches somewhere actually showing gaming improvements over XP as well which is great news because of my sincere dislike for Vista. I want to upgrade! I am a bit torn though...I dont know if W7 can set up a raid or not without me having to slipstream nvidia drivers into it...

 

[Scali]

I dont know if W7 can set up a raid or not without me having to slipstream nvidia drivers into it...

They seem to have packed lots of drivers into the DVD image. I installed it on my Intel ICH8R with 2 raid systems with no problem. But that's Intel...
And since Vista you no longer need a floppy to load drivers at install-time. So a USB stick or CD/DVD with drivers will do. It can also get drivers from Windows Update at install-time I believe.

 

[Silanda]

I'd love a similar seamless integration for DOS apps .

The issue of maintaining two environments is exactly what I hate with XP and dosbox. I have to run a half-assed non standard command line and segregate between DOS and windows games. It was much better with Windows 98, you had a real DOS with sound, networking and almost full compatibility, and you would use explorer, shortcuts and the regular command line without even needing to know you're running a DOS or a windows program.

You're remembering things a little more favourably than me then, DOS within windows was somewhat short of fully compatible even back with Win 95 and 98. An awful lot of DOS applications, especially games, would not run in Windows due to memory manager issues among others. When I ran Windows 98 I almost always had to quit to DOS if I wanted to use DOS apps well.

 

[Scali]

You're remembering things a little more favourably than me then, DOS within windows was somewhat short of fully compatible even back with Win 95 and 98. An awful lot of DOS applications, especially games, would not run in Windows due to memory manager issues among others. When I ran Windows 98 I almost always had to quit to DOS if I wanted to use DOS apps well.

In fact, it was physically impossible to run certain DOS games under Windows 98, even when you only booted to the commandline.
This is because the main DOS 'kernel' was way bloated compared to pure DOS versions, leaving less conventional memory, not enough to run certain DOS applications. Some applications required eg 615KB of conventional memory (or something to that effect). There was no way to free up that much memory under the 'DOS 7' that shipped with Windows 9x.
I always had dual-boot.

But indeed, Doom and other games using the famous DOS4GW extender had little problem running under Windows or OS/2, since DOS/4GW was well-behaved and used the DPMI extensions. Also, it didn't rely heavily on conventional memory.

Applications that wanted to use/reprogram the timer-interrupt also worked poorly in Windows 9x iirc (obviously, since Windows used that interrupt for basic OS functionality like task-switching, and had to virtualize the timer interrupt in a DOS box).

 

[Blazkowicz]

oh, thanks for the feedback everyone.
Sure, I have a fairly selective memory. Or I mostly had well behaved games (even those from 1989 to 1992 or such).
I find MSDOS 7.10 to easily give a lot of conventional memory without much tweaking, though. I really like that version (gives fat32 and there's hardly anything to miss from 5.x or 6.x) and still have it around . I rarely boot it but it's nice to have it, because I can.

In our modern, internet era, there are nice goodies to run on DOS : cutemouse (mouse driver that only takes a few K), a few unix tools (I like the du and less commands), scp and ssh , freeware 4DOS and ranish as a great partition tool.


so. I'll definitely try that vmware unity if I put my hands on an old windows CD.

 

[Albuquerque]

I had very few problems with Dos 7 being "bloated", hell it was pretty much the same as 6.22. Just like Dox 6.22, the original memory configuration was not very "optimized" to begin with, you needed to hand-tweak the appropriate DEVICEHIGH and LOADHIGH statements in their respective CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.

SmartDrv was usually the hog, and Dos 7 turned it on by default but didn't always either enable DOS=HIGH,UMB or didn't LOADHIGH the smartdrv app.

Now, as for the rest of the issues (virtualized interrupt timer, general compatibility issues) then I certainly agree. Playing most DOS games under a Win9x shell was iffy at best, at least in my experience.

 

[Scali]

I had very few problems with Dos 7 being "bloated", hell it was pretty much the same as 6.22. Just like Dox 6.22, the original memory configuration was not very "optimized" to begin with, you needed to hand-tweak the appropriate DEVICEHIGH and LOADHIGH statements in their respective CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.

You don't need to tell me. I'm not exactly a DOS newbie.
I used to have a bootmenu with various options, optimized for various types of applications (maximum conventional memory, XMS, EMS, skipping non-crucial TSRs etc).
But DOS 7 simply required considerably more memory than DOS 6, regardless of how much you tried to tweak it. Some applications simply couldn't run, no matter what you did. It was physically impossible.

 

[RobertR1]

I installed Virtual PC XP Mode and was generally pleased with the functionality. It's a little sluggish, so I turned off all the bells and whistles to improve responsiveness. There's no support for domains, however, which limits its usefulness.

What do you mean? I am running the Virtual PC XP Mode. I added the XP vitrual machine to the domain and it works great. I tried some of our older apps that had NO chance of running on Vista but run flawlessly using XP VPC. The way the XP apps are seamlessly integrated into Windows 7 is a real nice touch. So far, this OS has been just very pleasant.

 

[Scali]

Heh, I installed Virtual PC XP on my laptop, without thinking about my CPU...
When I tried to run it, it failed because I have a low-end Core2 Duo, without hardware virtualization. That sucks, to be honest. Especially since the regular versions of VirtualPC work just fine without hardware support. I hope MS realizes that this may be an issue to quite a few professional users, and allows software virtualization in the final release.

 

[ban25]

What do you mean? I am running the Virtual PC XP Mode. I added the XP vitrual machine to the domain and it works great. I tried some of our older apps that had NO chance of running on Vista but run flawlessly using XP VPC. The way the XP apps are seamlessly integrated into Windows 7 is a real nice touch. So far, this OS has been just very pleasant.

Hmm...so if I get my VM added to the domain, then it might work...I'll have to check that out.

 

[Albuquerque]

I don't know how Microsoft has done it, but under VMWare, the virtual PC is just as much a "normal" operating system as it ever would be. A cool widget in VMWare called "Unity" is what makes a single cohesive start menu out of the guest and host operating systems' combined start menus.

Thus, you could do all kinds of wonky stuff to the underlying virtual PC in theory -- even install old XP-only hardware. The problem is, only the apps will come across to the host OS.

 

[RobertR1]

Been using RC build at the office and home since 7100 was leaked. So far, no issues. It's fast and never seems to slow down. UAC is not annoying anymore. Virtual XP works fantastic for all of our old apps. The work maching has AMD 5000+ 2.6hz with 2GB of RAM and with the same apps running, it's smokes the Vista64 build on this machine.

 

[Valzic]

Been slowly moving applications to test under XP mode, some setup issues that have more to do with lack of documentation. My applications use OCX that needs to be loaded and so far got 4 of 5 working and just have to play around with last one.

It works great so far.

My friend and I found that MSN Messenger has a problem with Windows 7 in that it gets a stutter every minute or so. Typing stops and buffers. It seems like its trying to update its icons on the toolbar that of course has changed in Windows 7. So we downloaded a bunch of open source MSN look alikes and they work fine. Will do until we can find a fix or new patch comes out.

As advertised this is a RC/Beta so taking my time using dual boot. However the Corsair P256 SSD works amazing with Windows 7 and hoping I can resolve my last issue and switch to Windows 7 as main for while.

 

[Davros]

is there full h/w accell under virtualxp ?

 

[Kaotik]

is there full h/w accell under virtualxp ?

No, it's just XP running on Virtual PC 7, CPU gets virtualized, but that's it.
The only thing really "new" in it is how it's hidden from the user, there's no virtual desktop or anything to be seen, it just runs in the BG and the programs act like they'd be running under Win7 - except there's no preview windows from them in superbar and they have winxp-style windows

 

[Davros]

so if i had a game that only ran in xp it wouldnt work ?

 

[Scali]

so if i had a game that only ran in xp it wouldnt work ?

Nope.
You can only get a 16-bit desktop, and Direct3D/OpenGL don't work at all. So that rules out any games.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Guess I'll have to keep XP on my secondary machine afterall. No game support is a no-go for me.

 

[Sxotty]

Guess I'll have to keep XP on my secondary machine afterall. No game support is a no-go for me.

Yeah that totally sucks.

What are the limitations of the virtual pc? I used it to play some XP games in Vista that would not work in Vista and it was perfect, but I don't think they were very demanding (it was Riven I think).