DosWin32

Hex-Rays would like to bring the following interesting third party program to your attention:

DOSWIN32 - EXECUTE MS WINDOWS CONSOLE PROGRAMS IN MS DOS

What is DosWin32?

DosWin32 is an utility to run console (text mode) MS Windows programs under MS DOS. What if your favorite console MS Windows program could run under MS DOS ? DosWin32 allows just that; command line compilers, linkers, make, all cygwin (GNU) utilites, like ls, find, grep, etc will all happily run in a simple MS-DOS environment. DosWin32 can be very useful in cross development: instead of compiling in MS Windows and rebooting to MS DOS to test the next build, everything an be done in MS DOS.

At DataRescue, we use DosWin32 in order to run the Windows console version of IDA under DOS. This has allowed us to get rid of an increasingly inadequate Watcom compiler while at the same time allowing users to still run IDA under MS-DOS.

The strong points of DosWin32 are:

  • it emulates virtually all functions required to run console applications
  • supports up to 1GB of physical and 3GB of virtual memory
  • supports swapping memory to the disk (if there is not enough memory)
  • emulates MS Windows registry
  • emulates MS Windows clipboard (CF_TEXT, CF_OEMTEXT, and user types)
  • can load and run programs with unresolved imports
  • long file name support.

Where to get it

Visit DosWin32's Home Page or download the distribution archive.

Getting Started

unzip dw32core.zip into a directory of your choice and add this directory to PATH. That's all. Now you can run MS Windows programs by using

run32 <program_name> <program_parameters>

You can also type

run32

without any parameters to make DosWin32 resident in the memory. In this case you launch MS Windows program as usual:

<program_name> <program_parameters>


Related tools - UniLink

DosWin32's author has also developed a universal linker that could replace the current linker from your development suite. Why? The strong points of UniLink are:

  • it is fast. really fast.
  • it produces smaller executables.
  • it can use object files and libraries from different compilers in a single project.
  • its extensive object code verification catches many bugs made by programmers and compilers.

DosWin32 knows about the programs linked by UniLink and will load them without requiring any additional efforts from the user, a simple file name in the command line will be enough. Please contact license@doswin32.com to learn about licensing UniLink.

Pricing and licensing

The detailed information about DosWin32 pricing and licensing is described on the DosWin32 Home page

Essentially, DosWin32 is free for non-commercial personal use (however $15 registration fee will replace the "not registered" message at the exit time by the buyer's name). For commercial use, there are two options: either royalty based or fixed price. Please contact DosWin32's author for a quote.