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Also see Disk Operating System.
MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) was the Microsoft-marketed version of the first widely-installed operating system in personal computers. It was essentially the same operating system that Bill Gates's young company developed for IBM as Personal Computer - Disk Operating System (PC-DOS). Most users of either DOS system simply referred to their system as Disk Operating System. Like PC-DOS, MS-DOS was (and still is) a non-graphical line-oriented command-driven operating system, with a relatively simple interface but not overly "friendly" user interface. Its prompt to enter a command looks like this:
C:>
The first Microsoft Windows operating system was really an application that ran on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Today, Windows operating systems continue to support DOS (or a DOS-like user interface) for special purposes by emulating the operating system.
In the 1970s before the personal computer was invented, IBM had a different and unrelated DOS that ran on smaller business computers. It was replaced by IBM's VSE operating system.
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Learn more about Windows legacy operating systems |
| Vista security option changes to named pipe access: Read about Windows Vista's improved named pipe security in this excerpt from Mark Minasi's book, Administering Windows Vista Security: The Big Surprises. |
| Learning Guides from SearchWinIT.com: Check out our selection of Learning Guides to get extensive information on Active Directory, Group Policy, malware, Windows 2003 migration and more! |
| How to get an attacker out of your network: This excerpt from Chapter 2 of "Protect Your Windows Network from Perimeter to Data," by Jesper Johansson and Steve Riley, is about.securing networks by understanding how hackers take advantage of ... |
| Taking over the domain: This excerpt from Chapter 2 of "Protect Your Windows Network from Perimeter to Data," by Jesper Johansson and Steve Riley, is about.securing networks by understanding how hackers take advantage of ... |
| Access control checklists: These checklists will help you lock down Windows access control settings. |
| CONTRIBUTORS: |
Jacob Ghitis, M.D |
| LAST UPDATED: |
04 Nov 2008
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