ansi.sys & Windows 2000

Factual Questions
1

I wrote a program for a friend a billion years ago. It was in DOS, and I used ANSI.SYS to do positioning and color and stuff. After Windows came along, this program worked great in a DOS box. But recently this friend did an upgrade to Windows 2000 and I can’t get ANSI.SYS to operate therein. ANSI.SYS exists in the \WINNT\SYSTEM32 dir, but loading it doesn’t seem to do anything.

Naturally, I don’t have source code for this program any more, so modifying the program isn’t in the cards.

Anyone have any thoughts of how to get ANSI.SYS functionality under Windows 2000?

2

Have a look at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q100/3/94.asp

Win2K is NT based.

I don’t have it here to test, but try let me know how it goes.

I found this on Google, doing a search for “ansi.sys windows 2000” (not a dig, just yet another recomendation for this search engine).

3

Dammit, I previewed as well.

I meant, “Try it out and let me know how it goes.”

4

I’ve used ANSI.EXE with success in the past. It was made to work with Windows NT. Just load it like an executable.

http://home13.inet.tele.dk/ajm/provide/ansi.html

5

Thanks, dylan, aaelghat.

I had seen the Microsoft article already, and unfortunately it didn’t help (I did do the obligatory google search before posting, believe me.)

Unfortunately, aaelghat’s solution didn’t work quite right; there were some timing issues, so half the screen would appear, then after pressing a key the rest would. Then it would immediately act on what the key stroke was, so that you never saw the second half of the screen.

But knowing that ANSI.EXE existed was great enlightenment, and I found something called ANSI.COM which is a TSR (remember those?) providing ANSI.SYS functionality. It actually works great; problem solved.

Thanks, guys.