It was 1989, and I was obsessed with the Mac. Apple's portable, 9-inch-screen computer was an exciting graphical leap, and I wanted to use it for everything. But I wasn't using it. Instead, I, like ...

How was DOS part of the PC revolution? Is DOS still around? What did Bill write a long time ago? Remember the DOS prompt? DOS stands for disk operating system. The latest announcement is a blast from ...

TL;DR: Microsoft will likely never release the original source code of Windows into the wild, but the company is clearly interested in sharing important episodes of its software development history.

I am sure this question has been asked before but I have searched this Forum and Microsoft Knowledge Base and did not find the answer. Here is the question again.<P>How do you go about finding the ...

Reader Steve P. sends in this question: “I’m running Windows 2000 and want to upgrade my system BIOS. The instructions say to create a bootable disk with the format a:/s command. However, the /s doesn ...

A decade after releasing the source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and MS-DOS 2.0, Microsoft has open sourced a (slightly) more recent operating system: MS-DOS 4.0. First released in 1988, you can now download ...

Microsoft co-founders Paul Allen, left, and Bill Gates with an array of personal computers in the early 1980s. Microsoft’s decision to make software, rather than produce a PC of its own, defined its ...

Reader Rob W. asks: “Is there any way to create a boot disk that allows access to NTFS drives?” Sysinternals offers NTFSDOS, a utility that allows access to NTFS volumes from MS-DOS. A freeware ...

<I>/EDIT: Sorry all for three new topics, I posted in less than 30 mins, but I am on dial-up, and I usually write posts and mails, when not connected, and then when I on-line (for an hour or so), I ...

Facepalm: Microsoft deserves kudos for open-sourcing the MS-DOS 4.00 source code, shedding light on an important milestone in computing history. But the tech giant has bungled the release in a way ...