this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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DOS stuff is still in there. You cannot name a file "con" among a few other reserved names because those were reserved for outputs (that one was the "console") back in DOS. And in fact, I believe some of those came from CP/M at that.
Just one reason Windows can be a bit flaky - and although not everything from past versions works, a surprising amount does.
So while Microsoft probably sucks for many reasons, they do a not totally bad job in some ways arguably. :)
I know about the old command names, and I know they could fix it but the kernel and core explorer code is such a mess these days nobody dares change things that old. it's one of the reasons I think windows will never really get better, they dont have the balls to clean-slate it and start again, and if they did, it would be even more broken because they cant test everything.
one of my favourite apps is the old dialer.exe which is still there, sadly soundrec.exe was removed in w10, if you dig deep enough you can get a windows 3.1 file select window to show with the classic folder and drive icons intact.