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(Unverified)Feb 9th 2010 5:01AM

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"It has come to light that there is a security flaw in the NTVDM (NT DOS virtual machine), which is the process that runs when you open a command prompt (DOS window) on any 32-bit version of Windows."

Command Prompt isn't DOS window. Cmd.exe (process which is started by Command Prompt shortcut) is normal 32-bit/64-bit app and ntvdm is not used. Otherwise because Windowses x64 don't have ntvdm so would not have also cmd.exe. Examples of 16 bit processes in 32-bit Windowses are: sysedit.exe and command.com (this is actually DOS window).

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(Unverified)Feb 9th 2010 10:59AM

Neutral

True. This isn't the command prompt. This is the wrapper program that Windows uses to run old 16-bit Windows programs. If you run Civilization 2 (for example) on Vista and open task manager you can see that it spawns an NTVDM.exe and then runs civ2.exe as a child process.

If you need to run pure DOS programs under Windows, there's always DOSBox.

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