Question: I'm studying IT and in my current class am learning the basic MS-DOS commands (CD, DIR, TREE, etc...). At the school, I'm using Windows 7, and I don't know how, but I'm still able to run the old EDIT command in DOS.

However, in my Windows 8 (64-bit version) laptop I'm not able to run this command. I know that it's kind of silly to ask for that once I can use a common text editor like Notepad or [Notepad++](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B), but only as a way to recreate the environment hat I have in class I'm looking for a way to use the EDIT command.

I've heard some people talking about DOSBox or ExDOS as a solution, but I don't know them.

Answer: 
While it will work differently (definitely the EDIT utility will not be the same), you can [download a ready-made FreeDOS](http://virtualboxes.org/images/freedos/) virtual machine and run in VirtualBox. 

Or, if you have the access, install a 32-bit Windows in a virtual machine and run it there.
The ‘use legacy console’ option has nothing to do with the ability to run 16-bit applications, it only controls the new terminal. In particular, it will not make EDIT work on 64-bit Windows. Roger Bassaber is either running 32-bit Windows 10 (possibly on 64-bit hardware), or using a different 32-bit or 64-bit editor that also happens to be called EDIT, or lying.

To get EDIT to work on 64-bit Windows, the easiest way is this:

First, download EDIT.COM, it's very easy to find and get online.

Second, download DOSBox.

Third, place a batch file next to the DOSBox executable with the following contents:

```
%0\..\dosbox -noconsole -forcescaler hq2x -c "mount a \"%~dp1\"" -c "mount c \"C:\Program Files (x86)\DOS\"" -c "c:edit /64 a:%~nxs1" -c exit

```

This assumes that you placed EDIT.COM in the folder `C:\Program Files (x86)\DOS`. You can change the settings as you like. The settings shown here will hide the annoying DOSBox console, enlarge the text to avoid eye-strain when using modern displays, load the file as a binary file with 64 characters per line, and quit DOSBox when EDIT is closed. You could for example remove the /64 to load the file as a text file or add /H to get more rows of text on screen.

You can now drop a file on this batch file to open it in EDIT or invoke the batch file from the command line with the file to edit as the argument.