Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Path: utzoo!utgpu!nishri
From: nishri@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Alex Nishri)
Subject: How does Win 3 multitask?
Message-ID: <1990Jun1.043448.29309@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 04:34:48 GMT

How does Windows 3.0 implement multitasking?  The press release claims that
in the 386 mode, Windows 3.0 has preemptive multitasking.  Am I to presume
that in the 386 mode, all programs run in seperate 8086 virtual machines which
are premptively dispatched?  (Some articles in PC magazines have suggested
this is true. On the other hand I used DOS debug to force a bad memory reference
and Windows told me it had been corrupted and I should reboot; if I was
running in a virtual machine I should have been prevented from corrupting
Windows.)

Is preemptive multitasking used in the 286 standard mode?  If not, then what
is the scheme to multitask?  What about in the 8086 Windows real mode?  Are
DOS calls hooked and dispatching only done on such a call?

For the purposes of multitasking are Windows applications treated the same as
non-Windows applications in all modes?  One of the big PC magazines said that
graphics applications are suspended when they are in the background; is this
true and if so what other types of applications are not run in the background?