Windows supports loopback devices

[Love4Boobies]

I've started another article that I thought might be worth mentioning on the forum: http://wiki.osdev.org/Windows_Tools

This one covers some of the tools that come with Windows that developers usually either don't know about, or don't know how to use at their full potential. Notable things in the article:

• How to create disk images and mount them.
• How to concatenate files.
• How to zero out portions of files.

I've also included some stuff which might be useful for testing when used in conjunction with loopback devices (e.g., changing the 8.3 name of a file).

[Chandra]

I frankly believe that this page creates a border line between Windows and Linux Users. The next day we'll have a different page about 'Linux Tools' and it'll gradually start to become Linux Forum(people will start to ask how to use these tools). And yes, I'm thinking in a broad way and I'd personally recommend the stuffs in that page be kept OS specific. You could just add some Linux Tools as well and rename the whole page to 'Useful Tools'. Of course, that's just my suggestion, the rest is yours.

Regards,

[Chandra]

Linux tools are more visible and they have a man page, unlike windows.

I think I missed it. I take back everything I wrote. Never Mind.

[Love4Boobies]

To be fair, most OS-specific articles are for UNIX users (including the original article on loopback devices; in fact, even the bare bones tutorial has a Bash script at the end), while Windows users are left out. Then again, I don't think there's a way around this problem---development environments are just too different.

IMO, our biggest problem is how we categorize articles. For example, most of them assume that x86 is the only architecture in the world and/or C is the only programming language, while the ones that cover other stuff are scattered around. I'd like to see articles on languages (e.g., the one on C would explain what a freestanding C implementation is; what undefined, implementation-defined, and locale-specific behaviors are), articles on CPU/VM architectures (these would explain things like interrupt handling, bugs and undocumented features, etc.; everything in the appropriate subcategories, of course), articles on OS theory (nothing but theory and pseudocode---that way readers wouldn't need to know C or x86 assembly in order to understand what's going on, nor would they be able copypasta), articles on development environments (Linux, Windows, etc.---then there would be no more need to spread bits of information all over the place), articles on tools, etc. Obviously, some of the articles will belong to more than one category (certain buses, file formats, high-level techologies, certain devices, etc.) but that's ok---MediaWiki allows us to this: click on PC and you see whatever is relevant for you.