[masfuerte]

Yes, but like Windows for Workgroups before them, they didn't need to rely on DOS services once they had started. They were 32-bit multitasking OSes that could host multiple DOS VMs and (in the case of WfW) a 16-bit cooperatively multitasked GUI.

DOS basically acted as a bootloader. But all of those OSes had the very weird feature that they could switch back into a virtualised copy of their bootloader.

I do feel that Wikipedia understates the importance of Windows for Workgroups. Internally, it wasn't just Windows 3.1 with networking. It was a trial run for the fundamentals of the Windows 95 architecture.

[userbinator]

In other words, they were bare-metal hypervisors which passed through the majority of the hardware, doing a minimum of virtualisation to allow sharing it between VMs. This is easy to see by comparing the responsiveness of a DOS box running something like EDIT in Win9x vs. NT/2K/XP's NTVDM; the latter is a full emulator of basically all the hardware except the CPU.

[cyberax]

The unresponsive NTDVM was mainly due to its piss-poor text mode emulation. Win9x still virtualized the graphics card (so you couldn't use SVGA games in Win9x) but its emulation was implemented better.

[anthk]

You can use Reactos' NTDVM in Windows XP just fine.

[ForOldHack]

See? Pepperage Farm and cyberax remembers! Exactly.

[CodeWriter23]

Win95's ability to host multiple VMs was marginally better than Windows/386. It was a step in the right direction with the new driver architecture and elimination of TSRs (TSR-to-95 porting was one of my roles bitd). Just a baby step though, you could be just as rude in a '95 driver as a DOS TSR.

[hulitu]

> They were 32-bit multitasking OSes that could host multiple DOS VMs

In theory, yes. Yet some games could not run in those "DOS VMs" because not enough real memory was available, which means that they weren't real VMs. The real "DOS VMs" appeared in Windows 2000.

[Loach505]

It was technically possible to have Windows 95 only boot into DOS. Helped when you only wanted to run DOS applications, especially certain games.

[ForOldHack]

This is exactly why I come to HN, vs Wikishemedia... People here WERE THERE!

When I worked at C_ we used to load Some solitaire game (Freecell) to verify that Windows98SE was in 32-bit mode before installing the network stack, and Chief Legal Officer, and from what I understand CLO was $4,000 a seat.

Load Driver, Reboot, Solitare, CLO. and then onward to disk optimizing, and then virus scanning... Two people did 89 machines, in 4 days. an entire floor... Food was delivered, and we slept for 4 hours, in the floor below, and on Friday, The head of Legal called us into his office... we showed him the checklist, as complete, and He laughed... the whole department was both amazed and happy.

He really called us to change his desktop into a scene from JAWS.

It was Windows 98SE that got a 32-bit disk driver upgrade, and FreeCell verified that it was installed.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Bizarre conflation between 3.x and 9x here.