Programming DOS - Windows Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks for Windows 9x

Just a few tips to help make your DOS sessions better.

If you would like your Windows 9x machine to boot directly to DOS, then edit your MSDOS.SYS file and change/add BOOTGUI=0. You will probably have to use ATTRIB to take the hidden/system/readonly attributes off to edit it. Make sure you re-instate these attributes when you are done.
Put a shortcut in the Start menu. This way you don't have to go through all menus until you get the accessories menu (if that is where your DOS prompt is).
Set the properties for this shortcut to allow more memory in your DOS session and define the special keys you want.
- Right click on an empty place on the task bar. Click properties. Start menu programs. Advanced. Here you should get an Explorer window. Find the DOS Prompt shortcut. Right click. Click on properties.... Under each tab you can:
- You can allow/not allow Windows screen saver (most of the time this is ignored)
- Allow Windows to allocate the memory for the DOS session, or you can enter a value of 640k as the available memory.
- You can set which key stokes are allowed. I use the ALT-TAB to switch between Windows95 and DOS.
You can set the font and size used in the DOS session.
You can tell it to use a full screen session, or use a standard window (make sure to CLEAR the check-mark to Close on Exit or you will not see any errors returned by DOS. When you are done with that DOS session, you can click on the X (close window).

Other tips to using some of the other utils in Windows95.

When using ScanDisk for Windows95 there are a few tricks to speeding up the process.
Depending on how your machine reserves/allows CPU access you can try the following:
- When Scandisk is checking the files and folders, make sure that the ScanDisk window is active. This will speed up the process of it checking the Files and Folders.
- Once it is back to checking clusters, make another window or the taskbar active and ScanDisk with zip through those clusters faster.
Hide the Taskbar by checking the Auto Hide on the task bar properties menu. Also check the Always on Top box too.
You can make the Taskbar animate the hide/reappear process by choosing Show Windows Contents While Dragging in the DISPLAY control panel. (Only if you have the SMOOTH FONT EDGES/PLUS! util from Microsoft.
If you are on a friends machine or can't find the DOS prompt icon, you can go to START button, RUN. Type COMMAND.COM
I use WINZIP 6.2 to view my PKZIP files and other archives. The shortcut is also in my Start Menu. You can find Winzip at www.winzip.com
Winzip allows you to view a specified file in your favorite viewer (notepad, wordpad, etc.) with out even unzipping the file to disk. (this is not a plug for Winzip, I just thought that if you didn't know about Winzip, you should.)