Yeah, this was a common misconception - due to the fact you could boot into Windows (up to 95) from DOS, people assumed it was just a frontend program.
Not just up to 95, you could boot into Windows ME from DOS too.
But I agree that DOS was effectively just a bootloader for the 9x era of Windows. I was just being flippant in my previous post however you guys are right to call me on it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versio...