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Reply 21 of 27, by koverhbarc

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That's not that helpful an answer, but Google tells me that an XPDM driver is (practically) simply one made for XP. I found no mention of NTVDM support. I don't even know if you could install such drivers for many ATI/Nvidia cards.

I wouldn't bet much on the ability to retain 'full' DOS support in Win7, as I think others would have figured that out if it were possible.

Reply 22 of 27, by DosFreak

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You're not going to find much because amazingly most people don't care about NTVDM, XPDM or WDDM.

There's are no issues with stability (well actually there is since XPDM is less "stable" than WDDM), unless the developer never tested their drivers properly of course.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 support Windows XP video drivers. Simply load the XP video driver if your video card is supported by those drivers.

On Vista and 7 if your video card only has WDDM drivers and/or you don't want to put another video card in there then simply disable your video card in device manager and use the basic video driver included with Windows or use the VBEMP NT video driver.

NT 3.x to Windows 10 (32bit) all have NTVDM there is no DOS and there is no "full" DOS support in NTVDM.

All of the above people figured out long ago it's just that only a niche ever cared and most of that niche moved to using DOSBox.

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Reply 23 of 27, by koverhbarc

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I believe you; yes, XP video drivers will work on 7 if installed (although I can't test that right now). That isn't enough to conclude that NTVDM will work the same, and in the absence of actual results on the question there is no further argument to be made.

Reply 24 of 27, by DosFreak

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There is no argument just you making statements about NTVDM without providing evidence to back it up.

I and other people have used XP video drivers in Vista and 7 and used NTVDM full-screen running with DOS programs using VESA in both operating systems. Just because you haven't bothered to do so doesn't mean it isn't supported.

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Reply 25 of 27, by koverhbarc

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My only real statement was that Microsoft has clearly abandoned NTVDM and it's no accident. I don't think that can be disputed.

As for Vista, I was just repeating what I've heard and had no reason to doubt, not having personal experience with Windows Vista or 7 32-bit; I guess I was wrong about its potential for DOS support. That's no problem for me, in fact I'm happy to hear that it might be possible and it's certainly of interest here.

It seems that the sound emulators should still work, too, if the video does.

Reply 26 of 27, by Jo22

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I pretty much agree to what DosFreak said earlier.
I'm speaking under correction, though, since I have no evidences at hand:

As far as I'm aware of, XPDM is basically an enhanced form of
WDM display drivers that came with Windows 98 and Win2k.

Unlike WDDM, the XPDM allows for accessing VGA directly in fullscreen, I believe.
Prior Vista, the NTVDM was also used to display the XP boot logo.

Another difference is security related. Window NT up to version 4.0 ran GDI in ring 3 (user land).
Beginning with NT 4.0, it was moved to ring 0 (kernal space) dueto speed concerns.
This changend with Vista again. Now, it is back in ring 3.

Moving GDI to kernal space caused a big uproar in the mid-90s among professionals.
If my memory serves, MS argued that it was no problem for servers,
since they run the well-tested VGA driver anyway.

While it is not strictly driver related,
I assume this change has some internal relationship to NTVDM also.

Another difference of XP vs NT 6.x is the missing EMS support I heard.
Somewhen in the late 2000s I heard about restrictions in that regard (Vista).
Perhaps it was no complete removal, but it was limiting somehow.

Anyway, as DosFreak said, people do care very little now about such things.

Personally, I rarely used XP's NTVDM myself. Except for Win16 support, of course.
About the same time when Windows XP came out, I also stopped using DOS programs.
I just recently switched over from rusty, old Win98SE and was glad to get past anything DOS. Finally a real OS, yay! 😀
It wasn't until a friend in school asked for help playing some older killing games (DOOM, Hexen, etc.), when I remembered all the old stuff.

He found VDMSound and was totally amazed by it (so was I). But the best thing had still yet to come: I discovered DOSBox.
And the eXPerience was mind blowing! While it was still an early version (~v0.60/63), it worked like a charm for me..
Among the first things I did was playing some classics, like Wonderland, Beneath a Steel Sky or Rise of the Dragon.

And Windows 3.1, of course. I have no clue if you still remember, but it was about the time when Enhanced Mode
didn't work properly yet and you had to change EMS=false in dosbox.conf.
Gratefuly, I had a copy of vanilla Windows 3.10 (5.25" version) which had kept its 286 Standard Mode intact, so I had little problems here.

And that's pretty much how it stayed. I never really looked back in playing DOS games in XP.
Today, I'm often using DOSBox/VMs with DOS 6.2. And MS-DOS Player for old command line tools (arc, pkzip, udf-ascii converters, etc.)

That beeing said, I understand if some people still have an interest in using DOS programs "natively" in Windows.
My father still likes to be able to run his old business applications (QB, dBase, Clipper), for example.
That's mainly textmode stuff, though. I wouldn't be surprised if such old productivity software is still in use on modern Windows.

So hopefully, someone finds a solutions for this. What about porting over ReactOS' "NTVDM" ? It's based on DOSBox. 😉

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Reply 27 of 27, by Jorpho

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Jo22 wrote:

Another difference of XP vs NT 6.x is the missing EMS support I heard.
Somewhen in the late 2000s I heard about restrictions in that regard (Vista).
Perhaps it was no complete removal, but it was limiting somehow.

It was also removed in XP by an update, as there was a security vulnerability. The solution is http://www.emsmagic.com/ .