Ofir's Windows 95 Summary

• Support preemptive multitasking. Doesn’t support multi processors.
• Compatibility with MS-DOS & Win-16 bit.
• Compatibility with Legacy hardware.
• Plug & Play. (NT doesn’t have it).
• FAT (Up to 2GB) / FAT32 (OSR2 only, up to 2 TB).
• Minimum hardware requirements: 386DX/20, 4 MB RAM (8 recommended), 40 MB (for typical), VGA, MS-DOS 3.21 / Win 3.1 / OS/2.
• Installation: New: 50-55 MB, Typical: 35-40, Upgrading from Win 3.1: 20MB, Upgrading from Win 3.11: 10-20 MB.

 Dual Booting

• Minimum – MS-DOS 5.x.
• Install Win 95 in its own directory.
• F4 key during boot sequence.
• BootMulti=1 in MSDOS.SYS file.

• Must be FAT (NT cannot access FAT32 & Win 95 cannot access NTFS).

• Typical: Default.
• Portable: For mobile computer. Installs: BREIFCASE, DUN.
• Compact: For limited disk space.
• Custom: Based on user selection.
• In order to uninstall Win 95 you should install it to an existing Win 3.x directory.

• DETLOG.TXT: Created once Win 95 is installed, logs devices found during the detection process.
• DETCRASH.LOG: This is the binary file for DETLOG.TXT, created if the detection process stopped. Logs successful steps, so the computer won’t crash on the same problem. When hardware detection finishes - DETCRASH.LOG is deleted.
• SETUPLOG.TXT: Created once Win95 is installed, during hardware detection failure. Logs failures & success. Before hardware detection begins - SETUPLOG.TXT determines the point of failure.
• NETLOG.TXT and BOOTLOG.TXT created as Win starts up the first time.

(When Setup reaches 20% - it’ll ask for floppy to make Start up disk).

To troubleshoot the setup process (and everything else in life) use "FIT"

Find the problem, Isolate it, Test the solution.

Can be created during windows setup, or by Add/Remove Programs icon in Control Panel, after installation. Contains several files like – Command.com, Fdisk.exe, Msdos.sys etc. Recommended add-on files: System.dat, System.ini, Win.ini etc.

• If setup halts during hardware detection

Turn off the computer, wait 10 sec. Don’t press CTRL-ALT-DEL. Choose “Use Safe Recovery” option. Windows skip the portion of the problem.

• If computer locks during restart

1. Boot into Safe Mode (F5 at startup / win/d:m at command prompt), and/or
2. Remark out lines in the Config.sys file (conflicts with real / protected mode drivers), and / or
3. Check network components for improper configuration.
4. F8 at startup and choosing one of the options: Logged, Safe Mode, Step-By-Step Confirmation etc.
5. Try win.com switch: win /d

Uninstalling

Simply deleting Win 95 may not work. You must uninstall it.

• Uninstalling Dual-Boot computer restores the previous MS-DOS/win 3.x
• Uninstalling on upgraded (win 3.x) computer requires reinstalling win 3.x
• Uninstalling is not possible with Win 95 OSR2.

1. Saving system files during setup (W95undo.dat & W95undo.ini exist).
2. No compression of the system and/or boot partition after Win 95 installation.

• From Install/Uninstall page of Add/Remove programs (Control Panel).
• Uninstall.exe from startup disk.
• Uninstall.exe from command prompt.

You can create several hardware profiles for your computer, mobile computer, or different users.

 Creating new hardware profile:

1. Right-click My Computer, click Properties, click Hardware Properties, copy to new profile name.
2. In Device Manager tab – double-click a device, select/deselect device from one of the profiles you created.
3. When booting the computer – you can choose either of the profiles.

PC card (PCMCIA)

After installing PC card, the PC card icon appears in Control panel. From PC card properties you can:

1. Stop the PC card, if you want to remove it.
2. Configure PC card icon to appear on the Taskbar (stop it easily).
3. Display warning if the card is removed before it’s stopped.

Virtual Memory is a combination of RAM & hard disk space (swapfile). The swapfile is Win386.swp, in \win_root directory. It can be on compressed disk, if DRVSPACE.VXD exists, and controls the compressed disk. In networked computer the swapfile can be in the computer directory on the network. The swapfile is a dynamic file. Each program can use up to 4 GB (actual & RAM).

 If dual-booting with Win NT &ndash; you can use the NT swapfile (Pagefile.sys), by adding PagingFile=<drive_letter>:\pagefile.sys to [386Enh] section in system.ini.

 Manually configuring the swapfile can be done through:

Virtual Memory button on Performance tab in System, on Control Panel.

If you have drives C:\ and D:\, and you install Windows 95 on D:\Windows, then Win386.SWP will be on the root of D:\. Otherwise, it will be placed on the win_root.

The registry is a database, used for storing software & hardware settings. It can provide local and remote support for system configuration. Because 16-bit applications still use INI files, Win 95 support INI files for compatibility with those applications. Old programs that use INI files will continue to use these files. The registry built during setup & updated if changes are made to devices or software. It is made up of two files: SYSTEM.DAT & USER.DAT, in win_root folder.

• SYSTEM.DAT contains computer specific configuration.
• USER.DAT contains user specific configuration.

The registry is a hierarchical structure, with six subtrees. Its components are subtree, keys & values.

You can edit the registry with Regedit.exe (in win_root). The Connect Network Registry command is used to remedit the registry. The Microsoft Remote Registry service must be on the remote computer and you user-l.

Each time Win 95 successfully starts, it is copying the current SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT files to SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0. If Win 95 fails to start, the backed-up Registry from the last successful startup can be copied over the current Registry.

 Import/Export commands allow you saving registry data in a REG text file and restoring it when necessary.

 FAT / FAT32

 Win95 uses FAT16 (up to 2 GB disk). OSR2 can use FAT32 (up to 2 TB).

Fdisk.exe used to partition hard drives. With Fdisk.exe you can Create or delete: primary, extended or logical partitions and designate an active partition. Fdisk cannot delete NTFS logical drives in extended partition.

 Primary partition: active partition, used by the system to boot. (Up to 4 Primary partitions, only one can be active). Cannot be subpartitioned.

 Extended partition: created from free HD space. Can be only one. Can be subdivided into logical drives.

When deleting partitions, you must keep this order:

1. Non-DOS partitions.
2. Logical drives in extended partition.
3. Extended partition.
4. Primary partition.

• Quick: erases directory table. Doesn&rsquo;t erase data from disk.
• Full: erases all data from disk.
• Copy system files: copy system files & create boot sector.

Long File Names &ndash;LFN

Max of 250 characters, max entire path length &ndash; 260. LFN uses the first 6 characters of the name (Uppercase), adds tilde (~), a number and extension. The extension composed of 3 characters following the final period in the name.

• LFN not supported when booting to command prompt. (But supported from within Win 95 MS-DOS prompt.
• Some MS-DOS utilities destroy LFN.
• Using copy, edit, backup etc might change the alias (&ldquo;LONGFI~1.TXT&rdquo;).
• Using copy, edit, backup etc on the alias can destroy the LFN.
• 512 entries in the root are possible, but LFN uses more than one entry per file name, so it&rsquo;s recommended being conservative in the root directory.

Please feel free to send any kind of feedback here, to my e-mail

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