The MS-DOS Executive is the shell and default application launched upon boot in Windows 1.0 through Windows 2.1. It is a simple file manager and program launcher.

History

The first public demonstration of Windows, in 1983, had a simplistic shell called the Session Control Layer, which served as a constantly visible menu at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on Run would display a list of programs that one could launch, and clicking on Session Control would display a list of programs already running so one could switch between them.

MS-DOS Executive was introduced with the release of Windows 1.0 in November 1985. It was a simple file manager that differentiated between files and folders by bold type. It lacked support for icons, although this made the program somewhat faster than the file manager that came with Windows 3.0. Programs could be launched by double-clicking on them. Files could be filtered for executable type or by a user-selected wildcard, and the display mode could be toggled between full and compact descriptions. The file date column was not Y2K compliant.

Windows 2.0 made no significant change to the MS-DOS Executive.

In Windows 3.0, MS-DOS Executive was replaced by File Manager and Program Manager; it continued to be included until its removal in Windows 3.1 build 061d.

MS-DOS Executive was only available in the x86 16-bit architecture. It will only run on Windows 10 (32 bit) or older; newer versions of Windows will respond with "This app can’t run on your PC."

Screenshots

MS-DOS Executive in Windows 1.x.

MS-DOS Executive in Windows 3.0 build 33.

See also

• Program Manager

External links

• MS-DOS Executive at the BetaWiki
• Microsoft Windows MS-DOS Executive v3.0 by Microsoft at The Internet Archive
• Windows shell: MS-DOS Executive at Wikipedia

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