When I first got Windows 95 almost four years ago, I discovered by
accident that command.com, the DOS command processor, can be used as
the Windows GUI shell. When I remembered this recently, I realized
that it could be useful for some people running Prime95 on machines
that otherwise go unattended and do nothing else.
In the file \windows\system.ini, go to the [Boot] section and change
shell=Explorer.exe
to read
shell=command.com /c c:\prime\prime95.exe
substituting the appropriate path for Prime95. The next time the
system is restarted, command.com will launch Prime95 and quit, and
then Prime95 will be the only non-idle task running. In this setup,
not even Explorer or the command processor will be taking up CPU
time. The disadvantage is that the only way to interact with the
system is to type Ctrl-Alt-Del, which brings up the task list and
gives you the option to shut down the system.
This method eliminates the slim share of CPU time being consumed by
the usual GUI shell and other Windows processes. For a system that
must frequently be used for other work, it is not useful. But for
systems that sit unattended for days at a time doing absolutely
nothing but Prime95 (or some other computational program), this
method lets you squeeze out a little extra performance.
Any comments? Does anyone else have experience doing this?
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