In
computers, a
terminate and stay resident program (commonly referred to by the
initialism TSR) is a
computer program that uses a
system call in
DOS operating systems to return control of the computer to the operating system, as though the program has quit, but stays resident in
computer memory so it can be reactivated by a hardware or software
interrupt. This technique partially overcame DOS operating systems' limitation of executing only one program, or
task, at a time. TSR is unique to DOS and not used in Windows.