Windows 98 Guest VM Additions on Windows 7

On Windows 7, Microsoft has decided that anything older than XP should just go die, and has removed support for floppy drive emulation, and VM Additions for anything that old as well.

Assuming you found a bootable Windows 98 CD, or had a VHD sitting around, you might have tried to get VM Additions like in VPC2k7. You will quickly find that it's unsupported, and even if you install instmsia.exe and then run the MSI directly, you will get nowhere.

I have found a workaround! On my laptop, I run XP and have Virtual PC 2007 (laptop doesn't support virtualization, and new VPC on Win7 requires it, so that's why). I grabbed a copy of the VM Additions ISO from the VPC2k7 folder on there, and mounted it in my 98 VM on my Windows 7 PC. It worked flawlessly.

Enjoy your unsupported, yet somehow fully functional legacy VM. ^-^

Pin BAT and CMD files to Windows 7 Taskbar

You may have noticed that when you drag a BAT or CMD file to the taskbar, you aren't able to pin it. The only option you have is to pin it to the list of an existing EXE item.

There is a workaround! Fear not!

1. Right click on the desktop (or anywhere really) and hit new->shortcut.
2. Type the following into the box (sans single quotes) 'cmd /c "path-to-your-bat-file"'.
3. Change shortcut name/icon accordingly.
4. Profit.

Minlogon Post-XP Operating Systems

I conducted an experiment today concerning the use of minlogon from Windows XP Embedded on newer platforms. Using it with desktop XP is a long-standing trick for increasing boot performance, and I wondered if it would work with Windows 7.

It caused the OS to continually reboot whenever it hit the part of the boot process where it would initialize winlogon. Don't try this at home. :P

Windows 7 - A Short Review

This blog's purpose is to report the findings of Infotaxis, but I feel the need to take a slight detour to discuss the latest member of the Windows family.

I've been using Windows 7 as my main desktop OS since the 68xx PDC builds, and now the RTM 7600 build, and let me tell you, it's wonderful.

Many will have you think that it is simply Windows Vista with some polishing and tuning up - they are wrong. While, being Vista's successor, 7 shares much of Vista's code, it is the differences that set it apart so distinctly. Interface-wise, Windows 7 and Vista are virtually indistinguishable in every way except a few tweaks to Aero, and the taskbar.

The taskbar, if you can even call it that anymore, is now something between OSX's dock and the original Windows taskbar. It provides the best of both worlds, and then some. I just wish I could gt rid of the start button, clock, and desktop button, and then turn the system tray icons into taskbar items, finishing by centering and cutting down the dock to a dynamically-expanding size. Oh well, did somebody say Windows 8? :P

To put it in a sentence, Windows 7 performs like a trimmed-down tuned-up copy of XP SP3, but looks better and is more feature-filled than Windows Vista. It's the best of both worlds, with an undeniable nod to Mac's user interface in the form of the dock.

To really understand why and how Windows 7 isn't just a stand-alone service pack to Vista, as some would put it, you need to use it. And I don't mean just for 5 minutes at a booth or on someone else's PC. You need to install it on your previously-Vista-running PC and use it for a good month. As you do, you will notice that every little detail of the OS is catered to the user's instincts. Every keystroke you "wish" worked, does.  Almost anything you think should be a feature is, and it is the small little features like these that make the OS feel perfect to me.

I loved Windows 98SE, and despised NT (the technical NT,  including 2K/XP/Vista/etc.) until the betas for Vista came out. They had new features and things I liked, and performed pretty well. When the RTM came out though, it was comparatively sluggish next to XP, and offered little practical reason to use it. I did, however, use Vista until the Windows 7 beta and thusly say the above things with proper knowledge. This is the first version of Windows since the death of the 9x series that I truly endorse. Let's hope Microsoft keeps going on this path and steers away from releases like Vista in the future (premature, unpolished, unintuitive).

As a footnote, I realize this wasn't the most technical review ever. If there's a demand for my analysis of the technical features in the comments, I'll post one. Otherwise, you'll have to look elsewhere.

P.S. - If you read this Microsoft, please bring back classic view in the control panel... that's really ticking me off.

Open in DOSBox

I spent some time mucking around to figure out the best way to set up a right-click context menu to open a file in DOSBox. I tried many things, and discovered that there is no way to get the current directory from the parameters passed to the context menu entry by explorer when you click on it. One would either have to write a program for DOS to use in DOSBox that would strp the filename off of the %1 variable, or some other such awkward solution. My (albeit slightly dangerous) solution is to mount the entire disk as the C drive, so that the absolute path provided in %1 works.

Without further ado, here is the .reg file content to get this going with DOSBox 0.73 installed to the default location:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open in DOS]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open in DOS\command]
@="\"c:\\program files\\dosbox-0.73\\dosbox.exe\" -c \"mount c c:\\\" -c \"c:\" -c \"%1\" -c \"exit\" -noconsole"

Note that you'll have to modify this to suit your needs, by changing the DOSBox  version, location, and adding extra -c "mount c c:\" switches for any additional drive letter you wish to use.