While the Workplace Shell uses file EAs extensively to store settings information for File System objects, no DOS programs know how to handle them. This can cause problems when a DOS program does not write the EA back to the disk along with the file. Without its settings information, the file will lose information such as a modified icon or the file type.
The problem occurs because many applications do not write back to the same file they read from. Instead, the applications typically perform the following actions:
Programs do this to reduce the likelihood of the original file being corrupted if the system crashes. The problem is that if the application does not know about EAs, then the above sequence will lose the EAs. All DOS and Windows applications are affected by this, although the problem is more likely to affect programs, such as word processors, which work with files rather than those which work with records within a file, like data base programs.
To get around this, you could create a command file that would use EAUTIL to split the EAs from the file, invoke the DOS application and then, when the DOS application has finished, use EAUTIL to join the EAs back to the file.
An alternative, though long-term, approach is replace DOS versions of these programs with OS/2 versions, which will not have this problem.