MS-DOS

64px
An example of MS-DOS's command-line interface, this one showing that the current directory is the root of drive C.
Company / developer	Microsoft Corporation
Programmed in	Assembly language[1]
OS family	DOS
Working state	Discontinued/Historic
Source model	Closed source
Initial release	1981
Latest stable release	8.0 / September 14, 2000; 11 years ago  (2000-09-14)
Available language(s)	Multilanguage
Available programming languages(s)	C, Pascal, QBasic, Batch, etc.
Supported platforms	x86
Kernel type	Monolithic kernel
Default user interface	Command-line interface, Text user interface
License	Proprietary

MS-DOS ( /ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/ EM-es-DOSS; short for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

MS-DOS grew from a 1981 request by IBM for an operating system for its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), also known as 86-DOS,^[2] from Seattle Computer Products, and began work on modifying it to meet IBM's specification. The first edition, MS-DOS 1.0, was launched in 1982.^[3] The version shipped with IBM's PCs was called PC DOS. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, the two products eventually went their separate ways.

During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform,^[4] and MS-DOS itself would go through eight versions, until development ceased in 2000. Ultimately it was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI.

History[link]

MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS – informally known as the Quick-and-Dirty Operating System or Q-DOS^[3] – owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson.^[3] Microsoft needed an operating system for the then-new Intel 8086 but it had none available, so it bought 86-DOS for $75,000 and licensed it as its own then released a version of it as MS-DOS 1.0.^[3] Development started in 1981, and MS-DOS 1.0 was released with the IBM PC in 1982.^[3] (86-DOS, in turn, was a clone of Digital Research's CP/M (for 8080/Z80 processors), ported to run on 8086 processors and with two notable differences compared to CP/M, an improved disk sector buffering logic and the introduction of FAT12 instead of the CP/M filesystem. This became possible because of the increased availability of RAM compared to what was typically available when CP/M was designed originally.)

Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any 8086-family computer. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M, and with MS-DOS emulating the same solution as CP/M to adapt for different hardware platforms. To this end, MS-DOS was designed with a modular structure with internal device drivers, minimally for primary disk drives and the console, integrated with the kernel and loaded by the boot loader, and installable device drivers for other devices loaded and integrated at boot time. The OEM would use a development kit provided by Microsoft to build a version of MS-DOS with their basic I/O drivers and a standard Microsoft kernel, which they would typically supply on disk to end users along with the hardware. Thus, there were many different versions of "MS-DOS" for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible (or ISA) machine and an MS-DOS [compatible] machine. Some machines, like the Tandy 2000, were MS-DOS compatible but not IBM-compatible, so they could only run software written exclusively for MS-DOS without dependence on the peripheral hardware of the IBM PC architecture.

This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, and indeed the same design philosophy is embodied in Windows NT (see Hardware Abstraction Layer). However, in MS-DOS's early days, the greater speed attainable by programs through direct control of hardware was of particular importance, especially for games, which often pushed the limits of their contemporary hardware. Very soon an IBM-compatible architecture became the goal, and before long all 8086-family computers closely emulated IBM's hardware, and only a single version of MS-DOS for a fixed hardware platform was needed for the market. This version is the version of MS-DOS that is discussed here, as the dozens of other OEM versions of "MS-DOS" were only relevant to the systems they were designed for, and in any case were very similar in function and capability to the same-numbered standard version for the IBM PC, with a few notable exceptions.

While MS-DOS appeared on PC clones, true IBM computers used PC DOS, a rebranded form of MS-DOS. Ironically, the dependence on IBM-compatible hardware caused major problems for the computer industry when the original design had to be changed. For example, the original design could support no more than 640 kilobytes of memory (the 640 KB barrier), because IBM's hardware design reserved the address space above this limit for peripheral devices and ROM. Manufacturers had to develop complicated schemes (EMS and XMS, and other minor proprietary ones) to access additional memory. This limitation would not have been a problem if the original idea of interfacing with hardware through MS-DOS had endured. (However, MS-DOS was also a real-mode operating system, and the Intel x86 architecture only supports up to 1 MB of memory address space in Real Mode, even on Pentium 4 and later x86 CPUs, so for simple access to megabytes of memory, MS-DOS would have had to be rewritten to run in 80286 or 80386 Protected Mode.) Also, Microsoft originally described MS-DOS as "an operating system for Intel 8086-based microcomputers", and the 8086 CPU (and its cousin the 8088) itself has only 1 MiB of total memory address space.

Versions[link]

Microsoft licensed or released versions of MS-DOS under different names like Lifeboat Associates "Software Bus 86"^[5] aka SB-DOS,^[4] COMPAQ-DOS,^[5] NCR-DOS or Z-DOS^[4] before it enventually enforced the MS-DOS name for all versions but the IBM one, which was originally called "IBM Personal Computer DOS", later shortened to IBM PC DOS. (Competitors released compatible DOS systems such as DR-DOS and PTS-DOS that could also run DOS applications.)

The following versions of MS-DOS were released to the public:^[6][7]

• MS-DOS 1.x
  • Version 1.12 (OEM) - Compaq release of PC DOS 1.10
  • Version 1.19 (OEM)^[8] - Zenith OEM
  • Version 1.25 (OEM) - Microsoft repackaging of PC DOS 1.10
• MS-DOS 2.x - Support for 10 MB hard disk drives and tree-structure filing system
  • Version 2.0 (OEM)
  • Version 2.1 (OEM)
  • Version 2.11 (OEM)
  • Version 2.2 (OEM)
  • Version 2.21 (OEM)
• MS-DOS 3.x
  • Version 3.0 (OEM) - Support for FAT16
  • Version 3.1 (OEM) - Support for Microsoft Networks
  • Version 3.2 (OEM)
  • Version 3.21 (OEM)
  • Version 3.25 (OEM)
  • Version 3.3 (OEM)
  • Version 3.3a (OEM)
  • Version 3.3r (OEM)
  • Version 3.31 (OEM) - Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 supports FAT16B and larger drives.
  • Version 3.35 (OEM)
• MS-DOS 4.x - includes a graphical/mouse interface.
  • Version 4.00 (OEM)
  • Version 4.01 (OEM) - IBM patched Version 4.00 before Microsoft released it. First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks (Disk duplication also).^[9]
  • Version 4.01a (OEM)
• MS-DOS 5.x
  • Version 5.0 (Retail) - includes a full-screen editor. A number of bugs required reissue.
  • Version 5.0a (Retail) - With this release, IBM and Microsoft versions diverge.
  • Version 5.0.500 (WinNT) - All Windows NT 32-bit versions ship with files from DOS 5.0
• MS-DOS 6.x
  • Version 6.0 (Retail) - Online help through QBASIC. Disk compression and antivirus included.
  • Version 6.1 (none) - IBM and Microsoft alternate DOS 6 versions. IBM released 6.3 also.
  • Version 6.2 (Retail) - Scandisk as replacement for CHKDSK. Fix serious bugs in DBLSPACE.
  • Version 6.21 (Retail) - Stacker-infringing DBLSPACE removed.
  • Version 6.22 (Retail) - New DRVSPACE compression.
• MS-DOS 7.x
  • Version 7.0 (Win95,95A) - Support for VFAT long file names. New editor. JO.SYS is an alternative filename of the IO.SYS kernel file and used as such for "special purposes". JO.SYS allows booting from CD-ROM to hard disk.
  • Version 7.1 (Win95B-Win98SE) - Support for FAT32 file system. Last general purpose DOS to load Windows.
• MS-DOS 8.0
  • Version 8.0 (WinME) - Integrated drivers for faster Windows loading. Four different kernels (IO.SYS) observed.
  • Version 8.0 (WinXP) - DOS boot disks created by XP and later contain files from WinME. The internal command prompt still reports version 5.0

Microsoft DOS was released through the OEM channel, until DRI released DR-DOS 5.0 as a retail upgrade. With PC DOS 5.00.1, the IBM-Microsoft agreement started to end, and IBM entered the retail DOS market with IBMDOS 5.00.1, 5.02, 6.00 and PC DOS 6.10, 6.30, 7.00 and 2000.

A number of beta versions have surfaced on the Internet, such as 5.0 (a ten-diskette version in the same vein as 4.0), 7.00 beta 1 (based on 6.00), 7.00 beta 2 (based on 6.22). An OEM source package for 6.00, and a late release of 6.2(b) have also been seen. These are not retail versions.

Competition[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)

On microcomputers based on the Intel 8086 and 8088 processors, including the IBM PC and clones, the initial competition to the PC DOS/MS-DOS line came from Digital Research, whose CP/M operating system had inspired MS-DOS. In fact, there remains controversy as to whether Q-DOS was more or less plagiarised from early versions of CP/M code. Digital Research released CP/M-86 a few months after MS-DOS, and it was offered as an alternative to MS-DOS and Microsoft's licensing requirements, but at a higher price. Executable programs for CP/M-86 and MS-DOS were not interchangeable with each other; much applications software was sold in both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 versions until MS-DOS became preponderant (later Digital Research operating systems could run both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 software). MS-DOS originally supported the simple .COM, which was modelled after a similar but binary incompatible format known from CP/M-80. CP/M-86 instead supported a relocatable format using the file extension .CMD to avoid name conflicts with CP/M-80 and MS-DOS .COM files. MS-DOS version 2.0 added a more advanced relocatable .EXE executable file format.

Most of the machines in the early days of MS-DOS had differing system architectures and there was a certain degree of incompatibility, and subsequently vendor lock-in. Users who began using MS-DOS with their machines were compelled to continue using the version customized for their hardware, or face trying to get all of their proprietary hardware and software to work with the new system.

In the business world the 808x-based machines that MS-DOS was tied to faced competition from the Unix operating system which ran on many different hardware architectures. Microsoft itself sold a version of Unix for the PC called Xenix.

In the emerging world of home users, a variety of other computers based on various other processors were in serious competition with the IBM PC: the Apple II, early Apple Macintosh, the Commodore 64 and others did not use the 808x processor; many 808x machines of different architectures used custom versions of MS-DOS. At first all these machines were in competition. In time the IBM PC hardware configuration became dominant in the 808x market as software written to communicate directly with the PC hardware without using standard operating system calls ran much faster, but on true PC-compatibles only. Non-PC-compatible 808x machines were too small a market to have fast software written for them alone, and the market remained open only for IBM PCs and machines that closely imitated their architecture, all running either a single version of MS-DOS compatible only with PCs, or the equivalent IBM PC DOS. Most clones cost much less than IBM-branded machines of similar performance, and became widely used by home users, while IBM PCs had a large share of the business computer market.

Microsoft and IBM together began what was intended as the follow-on to MS-DOS/PC DOS, called OS/2. When OS/2 was released in 1987, Microsoft began an advertising campaign announcing that "DOS is Dead" and stating that version 4 was the last full release. OS/2 was designed for efficient multi-tasking — an IBM speciality derived from deep experience with mainframe operating systems — and offered a number of advanced features that had been designed together with similar look and feel; it was seen as the legitimate heir to the "kludgy" DOS platform.

MS-DOS had grown in spurts, with many significant features being taken or duplicated from Microsoft's other products and operating systems. MS-DOS also grew by incorporating, by direct licensing or feature duplicating, the functionality of tools and utilities developed by independent companies, such as Norton Utilities, PC Tools (Microsoft Anti-Virus), QEMM expanded memory manager, Stacker disk compression, and others.

During the period when Digital Research was competing in the operating system market some computers, like Amstrad PC1512, were sold with floppy disks for two operating systems (only one of which could be used at a time), MS-DOS and CP/M-86 or a derivative of it. Digital Research produced DOS Plus, which was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11, supported CP/M-86 programs, had additional features including multi-tasking, and could read and write disks in CP/M and MS-DOS format.

While OS/2 was under protracted development, Digital Research released the MS-DOS compatible DR-DOS 5, which included features only available as third-party add-ons for MS-DOS (and still maintained considerable internal CP/M-86 compatibility). Unwilling to lose any portion of the market, Microsoft responded by announcing the "pending" release of MS-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. This effectively killed most DR-DOS sales until the actual release of MS-DOS 5.0 in June 1991. Digital Research brought out DR-DOS 6, which sold well until the "pre-announcement" of MS-DOS 6.0 again stifled the sales of DR-DOS.

Microsoft had been accused of carefully orchestrating leaks about future versions of MS-DOS in an attempt to create what in the industry is called FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) regarding DR-DOS. For example, in October 1990, shortly after the release of DR-DOS 5.0, and long before the eventual June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, stories on feature enhancements in MS-DOS started to appear in InfoWorld and PC Week. Brad Silverberg, Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and General Manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, wrote a forceful letter to PC Week (November 5, 1990), denying that Microsoft was engaged in FUD tactics ("to serve our customers better, we decided to be more forthcoming about version 5.0") and denying that Microsoft copied features from DR-DOS:

"The feature enhancements of MS-DOS version 5.0 were decided and development was begun long before we heard about DR-DOS 5.0. There will be some similar features. With 50 million MS-DOS users, it shouldn't be surprising that DRI has heard some of the same requests from customers that we have." – (Schulman et al. 1994).^[10]

The pact between Microsoft and IBM to promote OS/2 began to fall apart in 1990 when Windows 3.0 became a marketplace success. Much of Microsoft's further contributions to OS/2 also went in to creating a third GUI replacement for DOS, Windows NT.

IBM, which had already been developing the next version of OS/2, carried on development of the platform without Microsoft and sold it as the alternative to DOS and Windows.

Legal issues[link]

As a response to Digital Research's DR DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft part of the Stacker source code. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk, using it as the core for its DoubleSpace disk compression.^[11]

MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code.

Prior to 1995, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS (and Windows) to computer manufacturers under three types of agreement: per-processor (a fee for each system the company sold), per-system (a fee for each system of a particular model), or per-copy (a fee for each copy of MS-DOS installed). The largest manufacturers used the per-processor arrangement, which had the lowest fee. This arrangement made it expensive for the large manufacturers to migrate to any other operating system, such as DR DOS. In 1991, the U.S. government Federal Trade Commission began investigating Microsoft's licensing procedures, resulting in a 1994 settlement agreement limiting Microsoft to per-copy licensing. Digital Research did not gain by this settlement, and years later its successor in interest, Caldera, sued Microsoft for damages. It was believed that the settlement ran in the order of $150m, but was revealed in November 2009 with the release of the Settlement Agreement to be $280m.^{[citation needed]}

Use of undocumented APIs[link]

Microsoft also used a variety of tactics in MS-DOS and several of their applications and development tools that, while operating perfectly when running on genuine MS-DOS (and PC DOS), would break when run on another vendor's implementation of DOS. Notable examples of this practice included:

• Microsoft's QuickPascal released in early 1989 was the first MS product that checked for MS-DOS by modifying the program's Program Segment Prefix using undocumented DOS functions, and then checked whether or not the associated value changed in a fixed position within the DOS data segment (also undocumented). This check also made it into later MS products, including Microsoft QuickC v2.5, Programmer's Workbench and Microsoft C v6.0.^[10]
• The (once infamous) AARD code, a block of code in the Windows 3.1 beta installer. It was XOR encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated, using various undocumented DOS structures and functions to determine whether or not Windows really was running on MS-DOS.^[10]
  • Note that the Windows 3.0 beta code only gave a warning that Windows would not operate properly on a "foreign" OS. It did in fact run just fine on DR-DOS 6.0.
• Interrupt routines called by Windows to inform MS-DOS that Windows is starting/exiting, information that MS-DOS retained in an IN_WINDOWS flag, in spite of the fact that MS-DOS and Windows were supposed to be two separate products.^[10]

End of MS-DOS[link]

In 2011, MS-DOS is still used in some enterprises to run legacy applications, such as this US Navy food service management system.

Today, MS-DOS is rarely used for desktop computing. Since the release of Windows 95, it was integrated as a full product used for bootstrapping, troubleshooting, and backwards-compatibility with old DOS games and no longer released as a standalone product.

Windows XP contains a copy of the Windows Me boot disk, stripped down to bootstrap only. This is accessible only by formatting a floppy as an "MS-DOS startup disk". Files like the driver for the CD-ROM support were deleted from the Windows ME bootdisk and the startup files (AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS) no longer had a content. This modified disk was the base for creating the MS-DOS image for Windows XP. Some of the deleted files can be recovered with an undelete tool.^[12] With Windows Vista the files on the startup disk are dated 18 April 2005 but are otherwise unchanged, including the string "MS-DOS Version 8 © Copyright 1981-1999 Microsoft Corp" inside COMMAND.COM.

However the only versions of DOS currently recognized as stand-alone OSs, and supported as such by the Microsoft Corporation are DOS 6.0 and 6.22, both of which remain available for download via their MSDN, volume license, and OEM license partner websites, for customers with valid login credentials.

MS-DOS is still used in embedded x86 systems due to its simple architecture and minimal memory and processor requirements. The command line interpreter of NT-based versions of Windows, cmd.exe, maintains most of the same commands and some compatibility with DOS batch files.

Windows command-line interface[link]

All versions of Microsoft Windows have had an MS-DOS like command-line interface (CLI). This could run many DOS and variously Win32, OS/2 1.x and Posix command line utilities in the same command-line session, allowing piping between commands. The user interface, and the icon up to Windows 2000, followed the native MS-DOS interface.

Consumer Windows (up to 3.11, Win9x, WinME) ran as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) running on top of MS-DOS. With Windows 95, 98, and ME the MS-DOS part was integrated, treating both operating systems as a complete package. The command line accessed the DOS command line (usually command.com), through a Windows module (winoldap.mod).

A new line of Windows, (Windows NT), boot through a kernel whose sole purpose is to load Windows. One can not run Win32 applications in the loader system in the manner that OS/2, UNIX or Consumer Windows can launch character mode sessions.

The command session permits running of various supported command line utilities from Win32, MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x and POSIX. The emulators for MS-DOS, OS/2 and POSIX use the host's window in the same way that Win16 applications use the Win32 explorer. Using the host's window allows one to pipe output between emulations.

The MS-DOS emulation is done through the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine). This is a modified SoftPC (a former product similar to VirtualPC), running a modified MS-DOS 5 (ntio.sys and ntdos.sys). The output is handled by the console DLLs, so that the program at the prompt (cmd.exe, 4nt.exe, tcc.exe), can see the output. Command.com passes most of its commands down to the underlying processor (cmd.exe, 4nt.exe, ...), but is generally not used. If you need commands that rely on TSR programs, you must launch these from command.com. 64-bit Windows does not have either the DOS emulation, or the DOS commands (edit, debug, edlin, kbd16), that come with 32-bit Windows.

The DOS version returns 5.00 or 5.50, depending on which interrupt is used to determine it. Utilities from MS-DOS 5.00 run in this emulation without modification. The very early beta programs of NT show MS-DOS 30.00, but programs running in MS-DOS 30.00 would assume that OS/2 was in control.

The OS/2 emulation is handled through OS2SS.EXE and OS2.EXE, and DOSCALLS.DLL. OS2.EXE is a version of the OS/2 shell (cmd.exe), which passes commands down to the OS2SS.EXE, and input-output to the Windows NT shell. Windows 2000 was the last version of NT to support OS/2. The emulation is OS/2 1.30.

POSIX is emulated through the POSIX shell, but no emulated shell: the commands are handled directly in CMD.EXE.

The Command Prompt is often called the MS-DOS prompt. In part, this was the official name for it in Windows 9x and early versions of Windows NT, and in part because the SoftPC emulation of DOS redirects output into it. Some purists object to this name, because the underlying binaries are Win32 console applications, rather than DOS programs. This confusion does not exist under OS/2 because there are separate DOS and OS/2 prompts, and running a DOS program under OS/2 will launch a separate DOS window to run the application.

All versions of Windows for x86-64 and Itanium architectures no longer include the NTVDM and can therefore no longer natively run MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows applications. There are alternatives in the form of Virtual machine emulators such as Microsoft's own Virtual PC, as well as VMware, DOSBox, and others.

Legacy compatibility[link]

From 1983 onwards, various companies worked on graphical user interfaces (GUIs) capable of running on PC hardware. With DOS being the dominant operating system several companies released alternate shells, e.g. Microsoft Word for DOS, XTree, and the Norton Commander. However, this required duplication of effort and did not provide much consistency in interface design (even between products from the same company).

Later, in 1985, Microsoft Windows was released as Microsoft's first attempt at providing a consistent user interface (for applications). The early versions of Windows ran on top of MS-DOS and its clones. At first Windows met with little success, but this was also true for most other companies' efforts as well, for example GEM. After version 3.0 (1990), Windows gained market acceptance.

Later versions (Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me) used the DOS boot process to launch into protected mode. Basic features related to the file system, such as long file names, were only available to DOS when running as a subsystem of Windows. Windows NT ran independently of DOS but included a DOS subsystem so applications could run in a virtual machine under the new OS. With the latest Windows releases, even dual-booting MS-DOS is problematic as DOS may not be able to read the basic file system.

Related systems[link]

Single-user[link]

Several similar products were produced by other companies. In the case of PC DOS and DR-DOS, it is common but incorrect to call these "clones". Given that Microsoft manufactured PC DOS for IBM, PC DOS and MS-DOS were (to continue the genetic analogy) "identical twins" that diverged only in adulthood and eventually became quite different products. Although DR-DOS is regarded as a clone of MS-DOS, the DR-DOS versions appeared months and years before Microsoft's products. (For example, MS-DOS 4, released in July 1988, was followed by DR-DOS 5 in May 1990. MS-DOS 5 came in April 1991, with DR-DOS 6 being released the following June. MS-DOS 6 did not arrive until April 1993, with Novell DOS 7, DR-DOS' successor, following the next month.^[13]) What made the difference in the end was Microsoft's control of the Windows platform and their programming practices which intentionally made Windows appear as if it ran poorly on competing versions of DOS.^[10] Both IBM (DOS 5.02) and DRI (DOS 6 update) had to release interim releases to circumvent Windows limitations inserted artificially,^[10] designed specifically to provide Microsoft with an unfair competitive advantage.^[10]

• PC DOS,
• DR-DOS / Novell DOS / OpenDOS,
• GNU/DOS / FreeDOS / FreeDOS 32,
• PTS-DOS.

These products are collectively referred to as DOS. However, MS-DOS can be a generic reference to DOS on IBM-PC compatible computers.

See also[link]

• Bad command or file name
• Comparison of x86 DOS operating systems
• DOSKey, MS-DOS utility
• History of Microsoft Windows
• List of DOS commands
• List of Microsoft Windows versions
• List of MS-DOS games
• Microsoft Windows
• MS-DOS API
• Timeline of x86 DOS operating systems
• Win32 console - a text-rendering system akin to MS-DOS
• 4DOS - designed to replace the default command interpreter COMMAND.COM
• DOSBox

Quotations[link]

"IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up." -- Tim Paterson^[14]

Notes[link]

References[link]

Microsoft. MS-DOS 6 Technical Reference

External links[link]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Basic Computing Using Windows/Appendices/Dual Booting

• MS-DOS Resources - Information on various aspects of MS-DOS including downloads
• Current License Agreement Policies for MS-DOS and Windows
• Tim Paterson on DOS - Paterson wrote the QDOS OS
• MS-DOS: A Brief Introduction
• Richard Bonner's DOS website
• Batfiles - the DOS batch file programming handbook and tutorial
• Arachne graphical browser for DOS
• MS-DOS Reference
• Linux/dosemu
• Ralf Brown's Interrupt List
• DOS command overview
• DOSBox, a multiplatform DOS emulator
• Garbo - An MS-DOS program distribution library at the University of Vaasa, Finland
• MS-DOS 6 Technical Reference at Microsoft TechNet
• Promotional video for MS-DOS 5
• List of all released Microsoft Operating Systems and betas

Bill Gates
Gates at the World Economic Forum in 2007
Born	William Henry Gates III (1955-10-28) October 28, 1955 (age 56) Seattle, Washington, United States
Residence	Medina, Washington, United States
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University (dropped out)
Occupation	Chairman of Microsoft Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO of Cascade Investment Chairman of Corbis
Years active	1975–present
Net worth	US$ 61 billion (2012)[1]
Board member of	Berkshire Hathaway
Religion	None (Agnostic[2][3])
Spouse	Melinda Gates (m. 1994) «start: (1994)»"Marriage: Melinda Gates to Bill Gates" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Bill_Gates)
Children	3
Parents	William H. Gates, Sr. Mary Maxwell Gates
Signature
Website
Bill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington)^[4] is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer (CEO) and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people^[5] and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third;^[6] in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person.^[7][8] During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock.^[9] He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts.^[10][11] In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.^[12]

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Early life[link]

Bill Gates was photographed by the Albuquerque, New Mexico police in 1977 after a traffic violation (details of which have been lost over time).

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His parents are of English, German, and Scots-Irish descent.^[13][14] His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix.^[15] Early on in his life, Gates's parents had a law career in mind for him.^[16] When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Congregational church.^[17][18][19]

At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.^[20] When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students.^[21] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine."^[22] After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.^[23]

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."^[22] At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.^[24] In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.^[25]

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT^[26] and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.^[27] While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft.

The Poker Room in Currier House at Harvard University, in which Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer formed Microsoft

In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems^[28] presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years;^[28][29] its successor is faster by only one percent.^[28] His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.^[30]

Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard^[31] and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.^[32] The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company.^[33] He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.^[31]

Microsoft[link]

BASIC[link]

MITS Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch (200 mm) floppy disk system

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.^[34] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS,^[35] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque.^[35] Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.^[35] Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.^[36] This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.^[35] The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979, after the former rejected his loan application.^[34]

During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.^[37]

IBM partnership[link]

IBM approached Microsoft in July 1980 regarding its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC.^[38] The computer company first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.^[39] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000.^[40]

Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system.^[40] They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.^[41] Despite IBM's name on the operating system the press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the new computer, with PC Magazine asking if Gates were "The Man Behind The Machine?"^[38] He oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.^[34]

Windows[link]

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences caused the partnership to deteriorate. It ended in 1991, when Gates led Microsoft to develop a version of OS/2 independently from IBM.^[42]

Management style[link]

From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."^[43]

As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.^[44][45] He often interrupted presentations with such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"^[46] and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?"^[47] The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced.^[46] When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."^[48][49][50]

Gates's role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100,^[51] but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products.^[49] On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.^[52]

Antitrust litigation[link]

Bill Gates giving his deposition at Microsoft on August 27, 1998

Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates's approval. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as, "compete", "concerned", and "we".^[53] BusinessWeek reported:

Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall,' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.^[54]

Gates later said he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree."^[55] Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.^[55]

Appearance in ads[link]

Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation.^[56] As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (Seinfeld).^[57] In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.

Post-Microsoft[link]

Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft (where he remains Chairman^[58]), Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called The Character of Physical Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.^[59][60]

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures.^[61][62]

Personal life[link]

Bill and Melinda Gates, June 2009

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have two daughters, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996) and Phoebe Adele (2002), and one son, Rory John (1999).

The Gates's home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.

His 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m²) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m²) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m²) dining room.^[63]

Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.^[64] Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.^[65] He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.^[66][67]

Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire".^[68] Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought.^[69] Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667.^[70] He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.^[71] In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the second wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.

Philanthropy[link]

Gates (second from right) with Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Umaru Yar'Adua of Nigeria and other participants in a 'Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals' during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Gates began to appreciate the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted suggesting that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.^[72] The foundation allows benefactors access to information regarding how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.^[73][74] The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.^[75] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.^[76] They plan to eventually give 95% of their wealth to charity.^[77]

The foundation was at the same time criticized because it invests assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been charged with worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.^[78] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility.^[79] It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.^[80] The Gates Millennium Scholars program has been criticized for its exclusion of Caucasian students.^[81][82]

Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in The Power of Half.^[83] Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.^[84][85][86]

Recognition[link]

In 1987, Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.^[87]

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007

Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.^[88] In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".^[89] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.^[90]

In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000;^[91] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; invited in 2003 to deliver the keynote address^[92] of the Golden Jubilee of the Indian Institute of Technology,held in San Jose, California;^[93] Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007;^[94] Harvard University in June 2007;^[95] the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008,^[96] and Cambridge University in June 2009.^[97] He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.^[98] Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005,^[99] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.^[100]

In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".^[101] In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.^[102]

In 2011, Bill Gates was ranked as the fifth most powerful person in the world, according to rankings by Forbes magazine.^[103]

Investments[link]

• Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington.
• bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.
• Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.
• TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.

Books and films[link]

To date, Bill Gates has authored two books. The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995, and it summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Business @ the Speed of Thought was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help getting an edge on the competition.

Gates has appeared in a number of documentaries, including the 2010 documentary film Waiting for "Superman",^[104] and the BBC documentary series The Virtual Revolution.

Gates was prominently featured in Pirates of Silicon Valley, a 1999 film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. He was portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall.

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Microsoft portal

• List of billionaires (also see List of college dropout billionaires and List of wealthiest non-inflated historical figures)
• Paul Allen – Microsoft's co-founder, friend, and fellow billionaire
• Gary Kildall (October 25, 2004). "The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm. Retrieved June 9, 2010. 

Books[link]

• Fridson, Martin (2001). How to Be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-41617-7. 
• Gates, Bill (1996). The Road Ahead. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-026040-4. 
• Lesinski, Jeanne M. (2006). Bill Gates (Biography (a & E)). A&E Television Networks. ISBN 0-8225-7027-0. 
• Manes, Stephen (1994). Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself The Richest Man in America. Touchstone Pictures. ISBN 0-671-88074-8. 
• Wallace, James (1993). Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-471-56886-4. 

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• "The Meaning of Bill Gates: As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated", The Economist, June 28, 2008.
• Rivlin, Gary (1999). The plot to get Bill Gates: an irreverent investigation of the world's richest man...and the people who hate him. New York: Times Business. ISBN 0-8129-3006-1. 
• "83 Reasons Why Bill Gates's Reign Is Over". Wired (Wired) 6 (12). December 1998. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/microsoft.html. 
• Bank, David (2001). Breaking Windows: how Bill Gates fumbled the future of Microsoft. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-0315-1. 

External links[link]

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• Official website
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Profile at Microsoft
• Profile at Forbes
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Bill Gates on Charlie Rose
• Bill Gates at TED Conferences
• Bill Gates at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill Gates collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Bill Gates collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Bill Gates collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
• Bill Gates collected news and commentary at Bloomberg News
• Works by or about Bill Gates in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by Bill Gates on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Bill Gates at the Notable Names Database
• How I Work: Bill Gates, Fortune, March 30, 2006
• The Forbes 400