The 9x series and ME use DOS during the boot process but not once booted, except for legacy disk access (if there's no 32-bit Win9x disk driver). Microsoft went

The 9x series and ME use DOS during the boot process but not once booted, except for legacy disk access (if there's no 32-bit Win9x disk driver). Microsoft went to huge pains to make Win9x act as if it was an application on top of DOS for compatibility reasons, but it very much isn't, it's a full-blown OS. This is almost true of Windows 3.x too or Windows/286 and Windows/386.