Windows on Windows: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:27, 16 May 2023

Revision as of 10:28, 16 May 2023

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Application compatibility issues, notably around [[long filename]]s, multiple users and the concept of [[Principle of least privilege|least privilege]], may prevent some applications from working. For example, they may incorrectly assume full write access to the whole file system whereas [[NTFS]] security is in place.

When the Windows 95 line of operating systems was designed, a key requirement was for the file system to keep backward compatibility with [[8.3 filename]]s to allow legacy applications to continue to work on the platform. Windows 95 and later operating systems therefore support a compatibility mode whereby both a long filename and a short filename are stored in the [[directory entry|Design_of_the_FAT_file_system#Directory_entry|directory entry]].

Furthermore, legacy applications that attempt to access hardware directly cannot do so in [[Protection ring|user mode]]. Legacy applications may also fail if system configuration files from the DOS and Windows 9x era are not present in Windows NT based kernels, hence the reason for zero-length versions of files like [[AUTOEXEC.BAT]] and [[CONFIG.SYS]] having to be carried forward on operating systems that do not use them.