Tech Support Pits:

From Britta===
Dear Webby
I held on to Windows 98 as long as I could, but finally had
to switch to XP with this laptop. Where is the DOS icon ?
Are those rumors that XP doesn't have DOS any more true?
I'll be lost without my bats!!!
Britta ===

Dear Britta
Relax! 
DOS is alive and well in the basement of Windows XP.
Windows XP has a totally different philosophy behind it.
Part of it is based on French tanks (15 speeds in reverse
and one forward, just in case the enemy attacks from the
rear)
The rest of it is based on that joke of the gynecologist who 
became a car mechanic and fixed an engine by doing all 
the work by reaching into it through the muffler.

If you can grasp those two concepts simultaneously, then
you truly understand Windows XP. That is why you can't 
set the explorer to go straight to the C: drive but have to 
slither towards that by devious routes.

To get a DOS icon, make a bat with these two lines in it:
@echo off
cmd


and an empty line below the cmd. Save it as dxp.bat in your 
bats directory and make a desktop shortcut to it.
When you click that shortcut, you get a DOS window with
the prompt in your bats directory.
It's in a bland grey on black, but you can change that right
from the bat:
@echo off
cmd /T:9e

gets you a high energy combo of yellow text on bright blue.
If you right-click on the top bar, you can set your defaults. 
Right-clicking on the top bar also lets you get to 
Edit Mark Copy / Edit Paste. 

Have FUN
DearWebby