Paul A. Rubin wrote:
Steve Harris wrote:
Back in the Windows 9x era, I'm pretty sure that a command window was
designed not to be too easily killed (presumably lest one lose work,
possibly lest one leave an orphan process around), so I would not be
surprised if alt-F4 did not kill it. If you clicked the X (close) box
in the upper right, you got a stern warning that something dire might
happen if you really closed it that way. I haven't seen that warning in
XP Pro, and if you can kill the shell with the X box, no reason why
alt-F4 shouldn't do so as well.
/Paul
Well, does the nag come from a .lnk or a .pif?
#40 http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html#40
...
"Furthermore, it turns out that there are TWO ways to run CMD.EXE in
Windows XP, although this fact is not documented anywhere. CMD.EXE can
be run from a shortcut (a .lnk file, which is the way that the Command
Prompt window is set up "out-of-the-box" in Windows XP) or from a
Program Information File (a .pif file). (COMMAND.COM, on the other hand,
can ONLY be run from a .pif file, since it is a .com program and not
a .exe program.)
I have found the .pif file method for running CMD.EXE to be superior
in most respects. For one thing, the .pif file "Properties" dialog
gives you control of a lot more of the "compatibility" options. More
importantly, however, most of my DOS applications simply run better
when CMD.EXE is invoked by a .pif file. The most visible difference
is in the colors within the Command Prompt window. My favorite
DOS-based source code editor, for example, displays with a hideous
green background color when run under a CMD.EXE shortcut, but runs
correctly (with a black background) when run under CMD.EXE invoked
via a .pif file. The DOS full-screen "edit" command has similar
problems with colors when run under a shortcut, but again runs
correctly under a .pif file.
There are two minor annoyances, however, when running CMD.EXE
from a .pif file:
* Any switches that you specify in the "dir" command
(such as "/w") are ignored. The "dir" command uses ONLY the
options you have set in the environment via the "DIRCMD" variable.
* If you are sitting at a command prompt, not running a command
or application, and you try to terminate the window by clicking the
"X" box in the upper right-hand corner of the window frame, you get
a "nag" dialog.
The "exit" command does work correctly, without the nag."
SH: I suspect this change of behavior from Win9x to XP Pro is due
to an out-of-the-box OEM .lnk file, rather than a spiffy .pif file.
After doing about 3 hours of research on this, I couldn't resist
Sharing the wealth of knowledge :-)
Stephen
