Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 6

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January 6

How do I install "F22 Lightning II" on my W7 system?

I tried to install a 16-year-old game that I did not manage to beat back in the day, over 10 years ago. Now, I get a pop-up that says "16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem" on the top bar, and "F:\INSTALL.EXE - This system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'close' to terminate the application."

Is there a way around this? I'm not trying to play an 8-track on an iPod because it's still an optical form of media. Thanks for helping me to get this game going again. --70.179.174.101 (talk) 14:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Download DOSBOX. It takes a couple of minutes to figure it out but that is well worth it because you can play almost every single DOS game ever made on the newest Windows computers. I love A-10 Tank Killer and Silent Thunder: A-10 Tank Killer II and Day of the Tentacle. Von Restorff (talk) 14:26, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I did, and it says "Insufficient Extended Memory Available." I'm attempting to install a game on a system made 11 years later. Nothing should be "insufficient" at this point, so how do I take care of that? --70.179.174.101 (talk) 00:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Did you figure out how to mount drives? Dosbox is a bit weird. For more detailed information on how you can configure DOSbox, please read the 60 Seconds Guide to DOSBox. Did you mount a drive with the driveletter C? Someone wrote: "The error message is quite misleading, the problem is as simple as that the installer needs a drive c: mounted.....". If it still does not work read this and that. Von Restorff (talk) 01:20, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Folder COM

Why does not Windows create a folder 'COM CON'? --Extra 999 (Contact ^me) 16:10, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The three-letter sequence "com" is rather special in Windows. See COM file. Therefore, Windows doesn't like having folders with that end in "com", especially ones ending in ".com". -- kainaw™ 16:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

That is not true. I think you mean CON; because it is possible to create a folder called COM. It is also possible to create a folder called random.com. CON is a reserved name since the days of DOS and cannot be used as a name for folders or files. Other reserved names are: PRN, AUX, NUL, LPT1, COM1. Von Restorff (talk) 16:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

That is Windows version-dependent. In Windows 7, I know you can make a folder like "mycoolwebsite.com". On a Windows 2000 box, on multiple Windows XP boxes, and a Windows 98 box, I found that it wouldn't allow such folders. On a different Windows 2000 box, it was allowed, but IIS wouldn't recognize it. On yet another Windows XP box, it was allowed and IIS would work with it. So, I believe it is an issue what was fixed during the transition from Windowx XP to Windows Vista. Since there are still a lot of old Windows machines running around, I assumed the question was correct and the user is having trouble making a folder ending in ".com". -- kainaw™ 16:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I will test it later in a couple of virtual computers but I have to cook dinner now, BRB. Von Restorff (talk) 16:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I second Von Restorff. As far as I can remember, Windows has always allowed folders named (and, more generally, ending in) 'com', but, of course not, 'CON'. I just tried in (1) Windows 95 and (2) Windows 95 with the shell update, and both accept folders named 'COM' and 'example.com'. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

In Windows 98 SE, XP, and Vista it is possible to create a folder called COM and it is also possible to create a folder called RANDOM.COM. I strongly dislike Windows 2000 and IIS so I am not going to test that claim. There is an email hoax about this. I found some info from Microsoft. CON, COM1, COM2, COM3 and COM4 are impossible to use. Von Restorff (talk) 17:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I cannot test it as I do not have any Windows machines at all anymore. Many years ago, we inherited some Windows machines from a webhosting company. I noticed that all of their hosts were in folders with names like "somesite.web" instead of "somesite.com". It was a workaround for the problem with .com folders. Because there are no domains named .con, I know it was .com that was the problem way back then. After seeing the hoax email, it is now more likely that the questioner is asking about CON instead of COM. -- kainaw™ 18:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I am guessing that their reason for naming those folders like that had to do with IIS, not the OS. I have never seen a Microsoft OS that was disallowing using COM or RANDOM.COM as a filename AFAIK. I spent a minute googling but I was unable to find sources that confirm that using COM or RANDOM.COM in a filename is a problem for IIS but that is not unlikely because everything is a problem for IIS; IIS sucks. Von Restorff (talk) 19:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The IIS restriction may simply be a setting (perhaps a default) to prevent downloading of .COMs (and presumably .EXE, .BAT, .DLL). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Our CMS created folders named after the hostname of a site since 1998... I can assure you that folders ending in '.com' have been perfectly acceptable from NT4 up to and including Windows 7, and that the Win9x versions didn't mind either. But IIS has a history of having never actually understood paths, see CVE-1999-0154,0229,0233,0253,0278 and more... - i can image them having gone overboard later and blocking way too much. Unilynx (talk) 19:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

While I can't speak specifically about IIS, I have encountered a limitation related to the mention in the KB article above when trying to delete one or more files that originated from a FreeBSD system (but were copied to an NTFS volume) with such a reserved name (I think possibly LPT1 and COM1). It's impossible to do with Explorer and needs to use special syntax with the command line, see [1] [2]. (This is for Windows XP but I encountered the same issue on Windows 7.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Table of Contents Greasemonkey userscript

So I threw together this userscript (where "threw together" equals shamelessly stolen from another, more comprehensive userscript), but tbh I haven't got a real clue of HTML.

What I'd like to add to this script is an additional TOC entry for a #top hook, ideally so that this new link becomes the first "section" link in the TOC. Could anyone please clue me in on how to go about this? --213.196.192.243 (talk) 17:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)