I copied MS-DOS 6 to my 486 computer now looking for a multitasking environment to run on top. I don't mind graphical interfaces but isn't necessary. The only requirements are it stable and can run multiple DOS apps without barfing (all this and free would be nice... Any suggestions?

Dr Dos is what you need for multitasking. The website is: http://www.drdos.com

Desqview is probably your best bet. Or install windows 3.11. Desqview and Desqview/X (it's graphical big brother) can both be downloaded free from the internet. Desqview can be kind of memory hungary, but once you get it configured correctly (best to use it with the QEMM memory manager) it can be pretty powerful. For simplicity's sake it may be best to stick with windows 3.11 as there is more support/knowledge for and about it. HTH, Michael

I'll second both of those. DV is kinda memory-hungry, but it's much more complete than DR-DOS's multitasking program. It can also be tweaked up and made to be very efficient if configured right. DR-DOS's multitasker also requires you to use their memory manager; otherwise, it's just a task switcher. I use QEMM with DESQview, which is a very powerful combination. QEMM provides all the advanced memory management features that work with DESQview. I ran DV on a 486\33 with 8 MB RAM and swap space, and it worked quite a bit better than Win31. DR-DOS's multitasker, however, can be pretty small, fast, and efficient. It has no windowing abilities, though, and support seems to be a little limited for some things. QEMM is also much better than the memory manager in DR-DOS (EMM386 generic or something). It was able to gain me something like 312K upper memory total, when all the Stealth ROM relocation was used, minus 64K for EMS page frame. I could also have gotten a bit more if I converted the 64K graphics memory at A0000, but I kinda needed that. The basic idea... QEMM386\DV is better.

If you just want to switch from one task to another DOSSHELL is part of MS-DOS. It won't run the tasks in the background however.

Thanks for all your replies. Yep, I am aware of DOSSHELL's shortcoming and was quite disappointed I couldn't get a task running in the background. Win 3.11 was never my cup of tea so that leaves Desqview/X. Where can I dl it?

Get DV/X here: http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html Make sure you get QEMM 8.0 also. -Michael