MS-DOS 5

MS-DOS 5 is a family of versions of MS-DOS, initially released in June 1991.

History

MS-DOS 5.00

MS-DOS 5.00 was released in June 1991. Various bugs from version 4.01 have been fixed. Additional utilities for working with memory and disks were added. A full screen text editor, EDIT , has replaced the former line editor, EDLIN , which was supplied since the early days of DOS.^[1] The SELECT installation program has been replaced with a new setup that further streamlined the installation process. It was also the first version to support 3.5-inch 2.88 MB floppy drives and diskettes and have support for up to four DOS primary partitions. Despite this, FDISK cannot create more than one.

This version includes the HIMEM.SYS driver, and loads portions of the operating system into the upper and high memory areas.

OEM versions

DEC OEM

DEC OEM
Legend OEM

Legend OEM

AST OEM

Setup

Setup
MS-DOS 5.00

MS-DOS 5.00

Compaq OEM

FASTART

FASTART
DOS Shell

DOS Shell
MS-DOS 5.00

MS-DOS 5.00

Epson OEM (PC-98)

Splash screen

Splash screen
Setup

Setup
MS-DOS 5.00

MS-DOS 5.00

MS-DOS 5.00a

MS-DOS 5.00a was released in November 1991 and fixed bugs found in the initial release, mainly pertaining to FORMAT and FDISK commands.

OEM versions

Olivetti OEM (Italian)

Olivetti OEM (Italian)
VEGAS OEM (Italian)

VEGAS OEM (Italian)
Tulip OEM - Setup

Tulip OEM - Setup
Tulip OEM (Dutch)

Tulip OEM (Dutch)

MS-DOS 5.00A

MS-DOS 5.00A (note the capital letter A) was released in November 1992 for the Japanese NEC PC-98x1 series computers.^[2]

MS-DOS 5.00A-H

MS-DOS 5.00A-H was only released for the Japanese NEC PC-98x1 series computers. It was pre-installed on/bundled with the original PC-9821 computers, and never had a retail release.^[3] Some PC-98 games require this specific version of MS-DOS; most notably Policenauts, which is known as being hard to install (for non-Japanese speakers) for this reason.^[4]^[5]