As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

You know your brand-new computer is all set to run today's top-of-the-line software. What you probably spend less time pondering is "legacy support." That is, while there may be compatibility issues, ...

Microsoft arguably built its business on MS-DOS, and on Tuesday the software giant and the Mountain View, CA-based Computer History Museum took the unprecedented step of publishing the source code for ...

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 ...

Source code for Microsoft's MS-DOS and Word for Windows programs is now publicly available via the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Microsoft donated the code of MS-DOS versions 1.1 ...

Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows ...

In brief: A YouTuber has demonstrated the ability to run the venerable MS-DOS operating system and classic games directly on modern computer hardware without any emulation. This blast from the past ...

Clifford led How To coverage. He spent a handful of years at Peachpit Press, editing books on everything from the first iPhone to Python. He also worked at a handful of now-dead computer magazines, ...

In context: Back in 1980, Tim Paterson was creating a new operating system he called QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System. The system was later renamed 86-DOS, as it was being designed to run on ...

Tony Smith puns it up, with “Kudos to QDOS”: On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the…operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP). … The company had ...

Some things we don't think much about; we just accept them. But have you ever wondered why the hard drive on a Windows system ...