The initial design and planning of Windows 95 can be traced back to around March 1992,[6][7][8] just around the time before the release of Windows 3.1. At this time, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows NT 3.1 were still in development. At this point, Microsoft's strategy was to have a next generation, high-end OS based on Windows NT, namely, Cairo, and a low-end, consumer-focused one as an evolution of Windows 3.1. The latter strategy was to develop a 32-bit underlying kernel and filesystem with 32-bit protect mode device drivers in Windows for Workgroups 3.11, to be used as the basis for the next version of Windows, code named "Chicago." Cairo would be Microsoft's next-generation operating system based on Windows NT, featuring a new user interface and an object-based file system, but it was not planned to be shipped before 1994. Cairo would never be shipped, however, although elements from the Cairo project eventually shipped in Windows NT 4.0 in late July 1996, without the object-based file system, which would later evolve into WinFS.
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To end-users, MS-DOS appears as an underlying component of Windows 95. For example, it is possible to prevent the loading of the graphical user interface and boot the system into a real-mode MS-DOS environment. This was done by inserting command.com into the autoexec.bat file or changing the BootGUI variable in the MSDOS.SYS file to 0. This sparked debate amongst users and professionals regarding the extent to which Windows 95 is an operating system or merely a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS.[16][17][18]
When the graphical user interface is started, the virtual machine manager takes over the filesystem-related and disk-related functionality. MS-DOS itself is demoted to a compatibility layer for 16-bit device drivers.[16] This contrasts with earlier versions of Windows which rely on MS-DOS to perform file and disk access (Windows for Workgroups 3.11 could also largely bypass MS-DOS when 32-bit file access and 32-bit disk access were enabled). Keeping MS-DOS in memory allows Windows 95 to use DOS device drivers when suitable Windows drivers are unavailable. Windows 95 is capable of using all 16-bit Windows 3.x drivers.
Windows 95 introduced a redesigned shell based around a desktop metaphor; File shortcuts (also known as shell links) were introduced [19] and the desktop was re-purposed to hold shortcuts to applications, files and folders, reminiscent of Mac OS.
Some of the user interface elements introduced in Windows 95, such as the desktop, taskbar, Start menu and Windows Explorer file manager, remained fundamentally unchanged on future versions of Windows.
32-bit File Access is necessary for the long file names feature introduced with Windows 95 through the use of the VFAT file system extension. It is available to both Windows programs and MS-DOS programs started from Windows (they have to be adapted slightly, since accessing long file names requires using larger pathname buffers and hence different system calls). Competing DOS-compatible operating systems released before Windows 95 cannot see these names. Using older versions of DOS utilities to manipulate files means that the long names are not visible and are lost if files are moved or renamed and by the copy (but not the original) if the file is copied. During a Windows 95 automatic upgrade of an older Windows 3.1 system, DOS and third-party disk utilities which can destroy long file names are identified and made unavailable. When Windows 95 is started in DOS mode, e.g. for running DOS programs, low-level access to disks is locked out. In case the need arises to depend on disk utilities that do not recognize long file names, such as the MS-DOS 6. x's defrag utility, a program called LFNBACK for backup and restoration of long file names is provided on the CD-ROM, specifically in its \ADMIN\APPTOOLS\LFNBACK directory.[citation needed]
The introduction of 32-bit file access in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 meant that 16-bit real mode MS-DOS is not used for managing the files while Windows is running, and the earlier introduction of the 32-bit disk access means that the PC BIOS is often no longer used for managing hard disks. DOS can be used for running old-style drivers for compatibility, but Microsoft discourages using them, as this prevents proper multitasking and impairs system stability. Control Panel allows a user to see which MS-DOS components are used by the system; optimal performance is achieved when they are bypassed. The Windows kernel uses MS-DOS style real-mode drivers in Safe Mode, which exists to allow a user to fix problems relating to loading native, protected-mode drivers.
OEM Service Releases of Windows 95 introduced support in Windows for several core new technologies which were not included in the original release of Windows 95. These include the Internet Explorer web browser, DriveSpace compression, OpenGL, DirectX, FAT32 file system support, UltraDMA mode for disk drives, Universal Serial Bus, IEEE 1394 (FireWire), and Accelerated Graphics Port.
Windows 95 may fail to boot on computers with a processor faster than 2.1 GHz and more than approximately 480 MB of memory.[30][31][32] In such a case, reducing the file cache size or the size of video memory can help.[30] The theoretical maximum according to Microsoft is 2 GB.[33]
While only the 4.x series of the browser contained the option to install the Windows Desktop Update features, the subsequent 5.x version had the option hidden. Editing the installer's configuration file located in a temporary folder would make the feature available in the installer. Alternatively, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 users could first install IE 4 with the desktop update before installing a newer version of Internet Explorer. The last version of Internet Explorer supported on Windows 95 is Internet Explorer 5.5 with SP2, which was released on July 23, 2001. Windows 95 shipped with Microsoft's dial-up online service called The Microsoft Network (MSN).
The second service pack mainly introduced support for new hardware, most notably support for hard drives larger than 2 GB in the form of the FAT32 file system.[47] This release was never made available to end-users directly and was only sold through OEMs with the purchase of a new PC.
This tutorial will focus on setting up PCem to run Windows games from this era. You should also be able to run older Windows software and even many DOS games well as a bonus. If you need to see any of the images in more detail, right click on them and click view image. The files needed should be easily searchable by the names I give.
Now all those funny named folders have ROMs inside them. Most importantly you should have a file named 55xwuq0e.bin contained within the 430vx folder. This is the mother board BIOS ROM that we will be using.
Now we can copy the files from the CD onto c:\ . Type:copy e:\WIN95 c:\WIN95Press enter and you should see it copying the files. You can navigate into the folder and check that all the files are there by typing:cd win95Then:dir/p
If you start seeing texture corruption, quickly hit escape to enter the menu and then jump back in and you should be good for the rest of the mission. If you experience a crash soon afterwards, create a .bat file with these two lines:
And use the newly created .bat file to run the game. You can also limit 3DFX games to 2MB of memory in the 3DFX control panel (the one that is found by right clicking on the desktop and selecting properties.)
Daemon tools and imgburn (if you installed these) can be uninstalled via Windows built in program manager, which can be accessed via control panel or by typing appwiz.cpl into your start menu or the run dialogue (accessed by pressing windows key + R)
I'm asking this because I'm trying to access some files and folders on my iPad, but Windows 3.1 doesn't support long filenames, so it's impossible to really figure out what's going on (if someone knows a way of copying files with long filename support, then please tell!).
I was able to install Windows 95 just fine without making images, but I would get an error (SU992010) shortly after it finished copying the files (which took over 2 hours to complete). Trying to start it up with "win" results in a freeze.
Hopefully someone could shed some light if there's any way of having mounted drives show up in W95, or if there's a way of accessing long filenames files and folders from within DOS and getting them copied and whatnot.
DOS is limited to 8.3 filenames. Win3.x runs on top of DOS and inherits the limitation. I think some later versions of DOS, like the one you could boot with Win9X, had LFN support; but DOSBox does not emulate that DOS.
There is a utility program called "Instant File Access" (more info here) that adds support for long filenames in Win3.x. However, it maintains a database with a relationship between a long filename and the 8.3 filename used by DOS, and must first "learn" about that relationship before you will see the long filename in Windows, which is probably not exactly what you're looking for.
Thanks for the inspiration dada - finally managed to crack it. The error appears to have came from the fact that I had two copies of dosbox - one mounted as a .dmg file while another on the Macintosh HDD. Running the one from the hard-drive produced the error, while running dosbox.img would create a flawless Win95 install. Pretty strange, but there was probably some conflict between the two.
Now just a final polishing-off query. Win95 is running with substantial graphical glitches. Reducing the display to 16 colors fixes the problem. I have read elsewhere [Windows 9x DOSBox Guide (Not officially supported)] the key to getting higher colors is installing the w950109b.zip drivers. However, how do I move the driver folder over to the Win95 operating environment? I tried mounting c.img and putting the files straight there, but it just corrupts the c.img file. Any ideas? Sorry for the rather noob question. 2ff7e9595c
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