Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has settled once and for all the question of why the Windows 95 setup program went on a tour of GUIs before finally introducing the user to the concept of the Start Menu. According to Chen, it was actually three setup programs chained together, and a lot depended on where a user started. If …
I queued up at PC World with my Dad in Slough to get my copy of Windows 95...I lied the next day about feeling ill so I could stay at home off school to install it...which was egregious because I think it was the second week of September so I'd only just gone back to school after the summer holidays. What really stung was that about half way through a disk was unreadable...so I had to get a copy of that disk from a mate to complete the install.
I remember being bitterly disappointed by it because it made my PC so much slower and the early versions crashed like fuck.
It was inferior to NT 3.5 and apart from the Explorer desktop, not much advantage over a decently installed Win3.11 or WFWG3.11 with 32 bit TCP/IP, disk, video drivers, VFW, Real Player and Win32s.
They had to release NT 3.51 because they deliberately added some APIs to Win95 used by Office 95, so it wouldn't run on Win3.x with Win32s. Not that Office was entirely 32 bit. Nor did Win95 install TCP/IP by default.
DirectX looked very like it was designed to allow easy porting of DOS games rather than being a well designed graphics system. Win95 was missing the OpenGL already on NT.
USB was added to next version of Win95 and deliberately held back from NT 4.0 to sell Win2000 (I had preview of USB on NT 4.0 but they cancelled release).
I also had explorer shell preview for NT 3.51.
OCX in the Internet Explorer was insane.
Win95 set back Win 32 security and NT. It should only have been sold for gaming & home and was a menace in offices. Of course Win98 SE was the peak and Win ME a horror.
However Win95 driver support meant the end of OS/2 as a consumer / home OS. Ended up mostly on ATMs by NT4.0. We replaced a lot of office based OS/2 with NT4.0 between 1996 and 1999.
"It was inferior to NT 3.5"
Technically it was streets ahead: multi-CPU support, NTFS, not prone to crash, proper multitasking.
Then again - NT 3.5 didn't support PCMCIA or APM, so it wasn't fit for laptops; it required 2x HDD space (vs Win95); it was a memory hog requiring 2-3 times RAM - average home/office computers back then didn't meet the minimum specs - but Win95 did.
Win95 also supported DOS games and other software that expected lower level hw access - any/most graphical software didn't work in NT. Backwards compatibility is a big plus, after all.
"not much advantage over a decently installed Win3.11 or WFWG3.11 with 32 bit TCP/IP, disk, video drivers, VFW, Real Player and Win32s"
Eh, not very many here would count Real Player as an advantage. Windows Media Player, Xing Player - even ITunes was less invasive than Real.
Multitasking was way better. Windows 3.1 was co-operative while Win95 moved to pre-emptive multitasking.
With Windows 3.1 formatting a disk while transferring data via modem was just impossible. Not so in Win95.
"DirectX looked very like it was designed to allow easy porting of DOS games rather than being a well designed graphics system."
Any reference to this? Wiki article on DirectX makes no such mention.
"Win95 was missing the OpenGL already on NT."
Non-issue - graphics drivers implemented OpenGL.
"Win95 set back Win 32 security and NT. It should only have been sold for gaming & home and was a menace in offices."
Can't disagree there.
The installation of 95 on low density floppies was an enormous task given that it was bundled (in oem sets ) with DOS and you also had additional disks not a clue what they were likely network drivers . Predictably my first attempt failed and in disgust I wiped the drive and reinstalled DOS and Win 3.1 .
Incidentally I still have a factory sealed DOS 6.22 and WIN For Workgroups (3.11) diskset and that my dears is 11 hi density (1.44mb) diskettes
Windows 3.11 only needed a few of floppy disks. IIRC there was one for printer drivers and another for networking that could be skipped on a basic enough system.
Office 6, now THAT was a long afternoon of swapping floppies about.
I've still got copies of each kicking about somewhere on the shelf above me, next to the box of USB storage that holds around a million times more data. Definite progress there!
6 cd's to install the companies image of xp. After the install was completed could recover several gigs of capacity by running disk cleanup. Convinced the image creators that if they did disk cleanup before creating the images we might need fewer cd's to install the image. Next round of computer updates came with just 4 cd's. Took a lot less time to install xp after that. At the time we could run windows 3.x from our server. We didn't have an internet connection, but we did have a lan. Some of the computers didn't have hard disks.
> 6 cd's to install the companies image of xp.
Remember a project (circa 2005) where development was split between UK and India. The UK dev’s didn’t take kindly to me laughing when they said they would FTP an image of the dev system to the team in India, I think after disk cleanup etc. the image was 18 DVDs…
The troubles really started when tools got updated and added to it and a new edition was released…
I fondly remember sitting for hours gradually swapping floppy disks from one pile to another via the floppy drive of the installing machine.
I remember one enterprising young idiot in our office who decided to copy the installation disks so he could install it on his home machine. From what I recall, which these days may or may not be accurate, some of the floppys (floppies?) had bad sectors in deliberate places as a form of copy protection. If the installation programme didn't see the bad sectors in the right place it would abort installation. The idiot found this out but thought the bad sectors were real and so fixed them. Thus, rendering the office's only installation disks unusable.
Back in The Day, I'd tell my clients, "buy a CDROM drive". If they wanted to pay me to insert floppy after floppy, I'd do it, but I'd point out that a CDROM drive cost about the same as one hour of my time, and it would save more than one hour of my time. It was far cheaper to pay for a CDROM and then have me do the install off CD, and then they had a CDROM drive on their computer (and by Windows 95 days, CDROM drives were getting pretty useful). I'm pretty sure I NEVER installed Windows 95 from floppy.
For Novell Netware 3 installs, I'd put my own CD drive in the server, install off that, then remove the drive, because other than the initial install, the CD on the server was of very minimal use. I'd have the customer buy on floppy, but install off my Netware CD, and serialize with their floppy. (by Netware 4 days, CDs were common enough I just told 'em to get one in the server).
Still happens, but they just tend to use "the same OS" (but a vastly older version number) via Windows PE.
That's all anything like PXE booting (SCCM / WDS / MDT) is doing, or installing from media.
It boots a WinPE environment that doesn't support everything (just enough to get started - and having to load network or storage drivers is still a common requirement like the old "Press F2 to install SCSI drivers from a floppy" prompts) and that then gets enough to get online, access the source data and the target device and then it just reboots after and hopes for the best. WinPE is just basically a cut-down Windows image, that's all it is, and if you manage WDS etc. then you'll actually create that image from an original Windows disk/ISO in the first place.
And it's quite obvious that this is the case even today, let alone back then when it was blindingly obvious that it was Windows (you could tell just from the Window decoration and the background setup wallpaper).
Sometimes bootstrapping like that is the only way to do things - same as compiling a compiler with a mini-compiler that was compiled from an assembler compiler that someone hand-wrote 20+ years ago and has barely any functionality, just enough to create an more featureful compiler in it.
They also rarely update the installer GUI - every client and server version since Vista had pretty much the same one, complete with Vista-style window icons, right up until W11 24H2 / Server 2025 which has a new design.
On the subject of installers, I recall that the Dell Poweredge setup CD / DVD (which was booted first, before giving it the Windows install media) was based on NT4 at one point many years ago. They subsequently moved to Linux, and later again came the appearance of the iDRAC controllers with a remote console (which I assume are also Linux-based).
Sometimes bootstrapping like that is the only way to do things
Umm, no. Microsoft could have easily written the full installer as e.g. a DOS application. It was simply a matter of expediency that they cobbled together some DOS bits, some Win3.1 bits, and then finished with some Win95 bits.
Yup , same for w2000 , XP ,
The mindboggling tedium is exacerbated by all the happy clappy messages saying shit like "Loading windows (new ver) for the first time!!" , "you're going to love it!" , "you'll be amazed at the new productivity tools"
Meanwhile I'm thinking "I'd be amazed if you got the usb bus to work properly"
"Hi! We're glad you're here!"
Are you? Are you microsoft? Because I'm bloody not. I'm not glad I'm here at all. I'm here because the students have managed to get into the local administrator accounts again and this room has to be re-installed from scratch before this afternoon's lecture and I have another two dozen machines to do, so I don't want to hear about how happy you are that I'm here.
God I hated those machines. I hated them doubly so because the college wouldn't spring for any kind of remote imaging tools, so it was muggins here (and a student temp if I could steal one from kitchen duty) who had to go around the whole lab and re-install them from CD - yes, actual spinning disks - every time some smartass found a new elevate privileges exploit for the sodding things and messed them all up.
Even then there were free tools for kinda imaging Win9x, and you didn't even need anything but windows' "DOS mode":
FDISK - create partition on secondary drive, make it active and reboot
FORMAT D: - because you never want to format your C: :)
XCOPY /whatewer c:\win95image d:\ - copy "image"
SYS D: - make it bootable
FAT32, no FS securiy, no ACLs, just simple file copy.
Of course, I assume having a fleet of similar machines with hard disk easily removed to be connected to master machine... have been doing this since '95, a bit more automated, of course, I made a "special" boot disk that would destroy anything on secondary drive and overwrite it with whatever current DOS/Windows 3x/9x was. It was life-saver when we had to deliver a bunch of new PCs to customers...
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Yup , same for w2000 , XP ,
Not exactly the same. Win95 I often had to restart the install several times because the install randomly completed incorrectly due to hardware detection issues.
I only ever did Win95 installs on 20-30 different machines total, but it was enough to be pleased that the Win98 installation (and 2K and XP), typically worked first time.
The NT product line (NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000, XP and everything after that) was a lot more stable and less prone to needing repeated reinstalls than the Win 3.1 'consumer' product line - i.e. 95, 98, 98SE and finally the worst of the lot, Millennium Edition. They killed it off after that and everything moved to the NT line.
I don't know. A year or so ago I embarked to re-create the PC that ran a friend's Facebook Marketplace sourced wheel-alignment ramp. Going back to it all felt quite magical I can assure. Similar when I threw together a DOSBOX to run some older games a while back. Worth a revist.
I wasnt a fan of the new fangled GUIs at first - not when you'd been in a constant battle with config.sys autoexec , himem.sys etc to try to keep the extremely limited resources un clogged.
It was nice you could just "quit to dos" in w95 if you wanted to run something that needed all the hardware.
... and how comes DOS Doom ran better in win95 that win95 doom?
I don't know if this applies to the "Upgrade" disc. I distinctly remember back in uni I had to install MS DOS and then Windows 3.1x (3.11) before I could install Windows 95 as I had an upgrade disc that wouldn't install Windows 95 if Windows 3.1x wasn't on the HDD already.
Although thinking about it, I vaguely remember a Windows Setup programme that was an "Upgrade" disc that was fine installing on a blank HDD if you at least "proved" that you have a previous version of Windows (the proof was by inserting the floppy disk or CD of the previous version so that it could check). Did the Windows 95 Upgrade disc work like this? I can't remember for sure.
Although my first programming steps were on the BBC Micro, the Gorillas.bas era was when I truly got the taste for hacking away at some code to achieve some feature like making the banana explosions bigger, and then fixing it when I broke it. Happy days!
You can relive the experience here:
https://playclassic.games/games/action-dos-games-online/qbasic-gorillas/
not sure, had to re-install win 2000 once from the cd i'd bought. Went on-line to download and install the updates, and had a virus before the download was completed. Had to format the disk and reinstall win 2000. the second time i downloaded the updates separately on a machine that had xp, copied the updates to a cd, did the updates and then went on-line.
Or maybe since NT 3.51 and certainly with NT 4.0
Accelerated with Win ME (pointless), Server 2003 (bloated compared to 2000) and bonkers with Vista. As Win7 is really a Vista SP, it should have been free. W7 was a brief nearly sane island as MS added Ribbons, pointless Win8, flat ghastly GUI and Internet dependence (Win10 and 11) . I saw Win 10 & 11 listed as Windows 1110, 8+4+2 = 14.
> Win ME (pointless)
With apologies for rehashing one of my own comments...
I remember that, before it launched, the *original* plan was for the next NT-based version of Windows (which ultimately became Windows 2000) to entirely replace the DOS-based line and become the "mainstream" version of Windows for all users (*).... except that they never quite managed that.
Compatibility issues et al (IIRC) meant Windows 2000 wasn't quite ready to take over, and it took a little longer until the NT-based Windows XP came out and they were able to entirely ditch the DOS-underpinned versions.
In hindsight, I assumed that was the only real reason for the (still DOS-based) Windows ME's existence and why it was so pointless and short-lived (**)- it was little more than a stopgap and backup plan.
(It might also explain why Windows 2000 has a more "consumer-friendly" style name that *sounds* like it's the direct replacement for 95 and 98).
(*) Something which its Wikipedia article appears to confirm I remembered correctly.
(**) According to Wikipedia- again!- Windows XP came out 13 months later, which- even allowing for the above- still makes you wonder why they even bothered with ME.
<nerd mode>Actually, Windows 95 used one operating system. MS-DOS. Windows 3 and Windows 95 were just graphical shells on top of the DOS OS. Still, it seems a little daft to have remnants of the Windows 3 shell lurking in Windows 95 - but visual consistency has never been Microsoft’s strong suit</nerd mode>
Not even "slightly more complicated" --- just false. DOS was a 16 bit OS. Even Win386 operated the processor in 32 bit mode.
You can argue (if you're a Troll) about the relationship between the Windows brand name and the DOS brand name, but pretending that Win95 was just a "shell" on DOS indicates either a profound ignorance of Win95, or actual malice.
“Just” is your word, and implies that a shell is a minor thing. It isn’t - for the majority of users the shell is everything. When most people think of the Mac OS they think of the GUI, but that ain’t it. The OS is Darwin.
The Windows 95 shell was a huge thing. As you say, it provided 32 bit compatibility (so did DOS/4G by the way, but that wasn’t an OS either). It provided preemptive multi tasking and memory protection. And I don’t deny that, once started, it took over some of the functions of the operating system. But could it boot the computer? Nope. Did it sit on top of DOS? Yes. You could argue that that just makes DOS the Kernel - but DOS is more than just a Kernel.
"It's easy to forget the excitement of installing Windows 95 for the first time"
Excitement that very quickly evaporated when you understood that anything and everything would bring it down. Mine reliably blue-screened when I ejected the CD-ROM. It wasn't until OSR 2-and-a-half that that worked.
Apparently OSR 2.5 was the last version of Windows 95 and released in late 1997, so I think that's what the PC I bought in spring 1998 came with. (I bought it a couple of months before W98 was released).
In my experience, that OSR version of "Windows 95" was close to being Windows 98 in all but name. Certainly more similar to 98 than what I'd seen of the original release of Windows 95.
(I had a Windows 95 book, which had numerous inconsistencies compared to my installation, including obvious variations in the interface. The Windows 98 book I bought later was close enough.)
Oddly, IIRC, the OSR versions of Windows 95 weren't sold via retail? (Which would have meant that anyone buying the retail version of Windows 95 at the time I got that PC would have received the original, out-of-date 1995 version...??)
"the OSR versions of Windows 95 weren't sold via retail?"
Not sold, no. Given away. I have copies of all the CDs, as distributed by Microsoft, and handed out by Fry's Electronics (Sunnyvale and (later) Palo Alto) to anybody who requested one. You didn't even need to have purchased a PC from them.
My first HDD was 5 MByte on an Apple II with a Z80 card, so running CP/M. That needed its own PSU. We had also added an 80 column card, dual 8ö floppy drives and proper keyboard. Buying the Apple II was a mistake. Should have got an S100 box. The Apple II disk system was a slow proprietary 100 k.
> PCs that had no HDD and double FDD. He asked "why?"
So you could copy that floppy.
Or to run large software. I had the full 6-floppy MS QuickBASIC and a 2-floppy machine. I'd hold 2 or 3 flops in the hand like poker cards, and usually could anticipate when the main program would demand which flop for some subroutine.
I think you have that the wrong way around. MiB is the binary megabyte, so it would be 1.41 MiB and 1.47 well, they probably should have a symbol indicating decimal prefixes to avoid confusion, but that one is supposed to be MB. I have to concede that the prefixes for every other unit are powers of ten, so maybe it is fair that MB or GB is assumed to work that way as well.
Were written to 1.7MB formatted floppies at the factory to try and prevent copying , as the standard format tool provided by Microsoft made all disks 1.4MB. Of course there were several 3rd party tools that happily made your floppies 1.7MB if you so wished to make........ er back ups.
Remember the song "Dont copy that Floppy!".
The other day I had to download more than 512Mb of containers and other nonsense to run a couple of six-line unit tests. I know this is old-man-yells-at-cloud territory but I don't think a handful of lines of code should need more storage than all the computers I used in the first half of my life put together.
Reputedly the first piece of software to have a larger budget for marketing than it had for development, which I always found very believable. It also introduced us to the memory-hungry registry database and the joys of regedit. I had the joy of acting as third-line support for this nonsense, luckily without ever having to actually use it myself. OS/2 Warp was far from perfect but it did have an incredibly fast NetWare client and the NetWare and OS/2 servers were my primary responsibility at that time.
Can’t remember when I started doing it, but I began coping i386 folder to the C: drive and then start the installer from there. That way, when Windows needed the installation files, it would have it available right away. Kept doing until Microsoft made Windows not ask for the installation files anymore…
The man that create Task Manager had a nice long chat with Raymond on his YouTube channel. Well worth a watch.
Just wish I'd found programming easier but I really struggled with it in college. We got taught Pascal and I made a lottery app but never bothered to look into how to do graphics so it was all text based. I then upgraded it in 2000 for Visual Basic and for my HND course. Got that running recently in a VM and fixed a 19 year old bug in my installer. Was a simple fix, no idea why I never resolved it back then.
Wrote a sniffer program in Pascal to sniff user names and passwords when people would login to their network account in DOS in college. That was the best I got and most of the code was taken from the Pascal help file and a Pascal book I had. Wish I'd understood assembly and then just code in general, a lot of the time the logic just does my head in.
I remember installing win95 from the 13 floppy disks that came in a brown envelope. Every time I got to the 10th disk, the install would fail. After 4 or 5 attempts, I gave up and actually telephoned Microsoft (in Ireland).
After explaining the situation they agreed to send me a new set of disks, which duly arrived a few days later.
Set about installation again, but yet again once I reached the 10th disk the install failed. After some head scratching I went out and bought a new floppy drive.
Suddenly the installation worked.
That was the only time I ever got one over on Microsoft.
From then on they made me pay dearly.
I don't recall much of Windows 95 setup, although the OS was only 12 or 13 floppies because my job had the images on the Novell network. Personally I liked Windows NT 4 better once I had a machine powerful enough and never looked back after Windows 2000. For everyday work it was stable and reliable where 95, 98 and ME would crash a lot,
The trippiest setup experience was installing Red Hat over a serial console. I was familiar with the curses based installer but this was pure text with a bit of ASCII art.
I’m still not sure what all the fuss about Win95 was, it was Win 3.0 that made the real difference, that was the one I waited for and installed on the day of release and then had to figure out how to get Lotus123 to access all that extra memory.
That was a good day.
Win 95 just gave us a pretty interface but no real benefit that anyone could make use of.
"In a trench coat" reminded back at that time, in the parts I then dwelt, there was an affiction of fœtid old gits attired (only) in filthy trench coats flashing their family jewels before the more vulnerable members of the public.
Nice look Redmond nicely mirroring the 90s' Zeitgeist.
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