Archive-name: windows/win95/faq Last-Modified: 1998/11/08 Posting-Frequency: Every two months URL: http://www.orca.bc.ca/win95/faq1.htm Subject: 1. Administrivia, copyrights, etc * 1.1. What are FAQs? * 1.2. What is Windows 95? * 1.3. Why did you write this FAQ about Windows 95? + 1.3.1. Why did you cross-post this FAQ to all the .win95 newsgroups? + 1.3.2. Why do you have all the Win95 groups in the Followup-to line? * 1.4. Whose work did you include in this FAQ besides yours? * 1.5. What other FAQs are out there? * 1.6. What other resources are out there? * 1.7. Whose trademarks did you use? * 1.8. What restrictions do you put on usage of this FAQ? + 1.8.1. Disclaimers ------------------------------ Subject: 1.1. What are FAQs? FAQs are Frequently Asked Questions. FAQs minimize traffic on Usenet by providing answers to common questions, before users post those questions on newsgroups. If people knew about FAQs and used them, we wouldn't need ridiculous high speed links just to distribute Usenet news. Read the FAQs when available. Save copies. Give copies to your friends. Read all about FAQs and get others from the FAQ archives at rtfm.mit.edu and their mirror sites. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.2. What is Windows 95? Microsoft's newest "low end" operating system for Intel based computers. In my opinion, they designed it to wean DOS users off that 20 year old operating system and into some current stuff. It replaces DOS and previous versions of Windows entirely. In addition to completely re-working the user interface, Win95 brings over large amounts of Windows NT technology, allowing app writers to write for both operating systems. One of Microsoft's requirements for Designed for Windows 95 products is that the product must also run on Windows NT Workstation. It also (supposedly) helps you manage your hardware, your software, your time, etc better. It's also supposed to make you rich, good looking, sexually irresistible, and permanently wonderful. heh heh... ------------------------------ Subject: 1.3. Why did you write this FAQ about Windows 95? The traffic on comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc is ridiculous. Other Win95 FAQs I read were too sparse, too technical, too anti-Microsoft, or otherwise too un-useful for the common folk. Also, Microsoft's FAQ, which shipped with the CD-ROM version, was pathetic. But ultimately, I wrote it for the experience, so I can say, "Hey, I made a Web page!" I hope this page is useful to you out there. This FAQ tries to get the big questions answered while going into some technical detail for those who want to learn more. Where content goes beyond the scope of this FAQ, I link you to appropriate sites. * 1.3.1. Why did you cross-post this FAQ to all the .win95 newsgroups? Because I was asked to. One of the initial letters I received in response to the FAQ was to have me post it in the FAQ archives for news.answers, so non-WWW people could use it. And not everyone has FTP either; people using the Vancouver CommunityNet have no FTP access at all! To get in the archives I had to actually post it to, not only news.answers and comp.answers, but the groups directly concerned with the questions in the FAQ. I wouldn't have received approval from rtfm.mit.edu to cross-post if I wasn't supposed to. Cross-posting also takes less disk space on news servers than multi-posting. In a cross-posted article you have only one message ID (and only one file). Cross-posting the FAQ to the groups in question, as well to news.answers, takes the same bandwidth as a single posting to news.answers would. * 1.3.2. Why did you include all the .win95 groups in the Followup-to header? Originally, the .answers moderators' FAQ checker would reject the FAQ if it didn't include a followup-to line containing all the groups in question. I've started using only the .win95.misc group as it seems a better place for folow-ups to the FAQ itself. Yes, I've started reading .win95.misc to look for FAQ followups. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.4. Whose work did you include in this FAQ besides yours? These people: * Rich Graves: He runs the win95netbugs FAQ. He has excellent tech information but is very anti-Microsoft. He heeds help; he can't maintain the netbugs FAQ, so if you think you can do it, ask him. * Jim Farewell: My ex-boss, who allowed me all the resource material from Microsoft he had, and his computers. If it wasn't for this guy's patience and resources, the FAQ wouldn't be so comprehensive. * Creative Element: They run the Win95 annoyances FAQ, and they have plenty of brute-force methods for making Win95 work the way THEY want it to work. * Richard Evans: Who lent me his web server space to allow you all to preview this FAQ. * Glen Ninow: He runs The InterNet Store (With special emphasis on the capital 'N' in 'InterNet') and graciously offered his web server space to me for the permanent home of this FAQ, and his computers for me to bash after Jim Farewell handed me my pink slip. :p * Ben Goetter: He is writing a book on writing MAPI applications for MS Exchange, and has an excellent Exchange FAQ. * Sue Mosher: Excellent work keeping us updated on the Windows Messaging updates. * William Hartley: He prepared a .HLP version of this FAQ * Sean Erwin: He maintains the OSR2 FAQ. And then there are those who gave suggestions since the first release... sorry it took so long guys: * Eric Gisin for many corrections and a hack to MS's TCP/IP Properties sheet to let you make adjustments without Registry hacking, and for the Emergency Recovery Disk suggestions. Visit his new Registry site at http://www.webhaven.com/ericg/Windows/Registry.html * Ed Babin for some tape backup corrections * Michael Thomas and too many others not listed here, for encouragement * Kurt C. Joseph for the advice in running Win 3.1 within Win95 * Jack H. Pincus for the good news regarding Corel's version of WordPerfect for Win95 * William Hunt (E-MAIL address unknown) for the RNAAPP lockup fix and Eric Mitchell for telling me that it DIDN'T work * Eric again for the Documents Menu clean-up program, from MS Power Toys * Jeff Lawson for the Modem Break script to get SLiRP working with Win95 dial-up networking * Gordon McAndrew for the pioneering work into making TAPI work over packet radio * Anthony Humphreys for the nice package of MS Exchange add-ons, and FAQ page 10 corrections * Cassell for spelling corrections * "S. Dawson" for pioneering work into Banyan's VINES client for Win95 * Alan R. Miller for corrections in FAQ page 9 * Demetrio Lamzaki for encouragement in the face of OS/2 religious fanatics * Daniel Bourdon for the Rendering Subsystem/MS Fax clairification * perin@onyx.interactive.net for making a BOOTP client for Win95 * Many others for telling me about the WinWord 7.0a / MS Fax mail merge bugfix * S. T. Brown for nominating this FAQ answer as the funniest quote in the FAQ. Go to the bottom of section 3.1 to find the line. * Several users: for SUBST.EXE clairification * Mr. Harigan for telling me about IMAP4, MHS, and Newsgroup clients for Exchange (Search for ExpressIT! 2000 on the WWW) * Volker Hejny for adventures in DriveSpace 3 :-) and some clairifications * Dwight Jones for telling me about changing MAC addresses in the dial-up adapter * Breidavik Gistiheimili for VCPI information: Games that need VCPI services won't run in a Win95 DOS session * John English for publishing this and many many other FAQs on their Student Info CD-ROM from the University of Brighton, in the UK (And for giving me a copy) * Vincent Hsieh for translating the FAQ to Chinese (I don't have the URL; somebody PLEASE give it to me) * Jeremy Parkinson for alerting me to the missing Alias Monitor file from HP's web site (Another reason to keep HP on my Lamers page) * Witalka, Jerome JRV for pointing out more errors in FAQ page 9 * COPStalk info; finally, a Designed for Win95 AppleTalk client * Serg V. Shubenkov for mirroring my site in Moscow! * Jon Jacobik for the ultimate Win95 FAQ question: "How do you get Microsoft's attention to a problem like this?" (Answer: Return your copy of Win95 and phone MS Tech support asking for your registration card back!) * Oliver Knorr for experience in making User Profiles work on a non-centralized network * Howard Harkness for more Corel WP 7.0 lameness reports... I expected better from Corel. * The brave souls who harassed anyone who gave me sh*t for cross-posting the FAQ. I got a couple of nasty responses but I never heard from then ever again... heh heh heh... Perfect example of how The Net polices itself ------------------------------ Subject: 1.5. What other FAQs are out there? Too many... use them. Win95 Net Bugs: Win95 Annoyances The one on the Win95 CD-ROM even though it sucks now Ben Goetter's Exchange FAQ: Sue Mosher's Exchange/Windows Messaging FAQ: There's an excellent Win95 Usage FAQ at The OSR2 FAQ lives at ------------------------------ Subject: 1.6. What other resources are out there? There's Microsoft's Windows 95 Resource Kit which makes a great start. Definitely check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base, (http://www.microsoft.com/kb/) which has a lot of stuff who you might've thought only Technet users had access too. They recently re-did their search engine, so you can search on phrases like "Confirmed bugs" or "Bugs fixed", or "Files available for download". This stuff is right to the point. If you don't use Internet Explorer, visit http://www.microsoft.com/kb/softlib/ for a non-IE-viewable page of software. MS's regular Win95 pages have a bunch of tags that NCSA Mosaic barfs on. www.windows95.com keeps a well updated library of software. Search engine searches will give other sites of course. I won't recommend any magazines as of yet, because they're all full of MS ads and other un-productive junk. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.7. Whose trademarks did you use? Windows, MS-DOS, MS Exchange, MS Plus, Internet Explorer, DriveSpace: Microsoft Corp NT: Northern Telecom (Go figure) Norton Utilities, Norton Anti-Virus, Norton Navigator, etc: Symantec Corp Colorado Backup: Hewlett-Packard Corp Macintosh, AppleTalk: Apple Computer Inc Pentium, Pentium Pro: Intel Corp Netscape Navigator and Communicator: Netscape Communications Inc LANtastic: Artisoft Corp Disk Manager: Ontrack Systems DrivePro: Microhouse Stacker: Stack Electronics OS/2: IBM Corp TCPMAN: Trumpet Communications NetWare, MHS: Novell, Inc CleanSweep 95, QEMM: Quarterdeck SoftRAM: Synchronys Software (Evil, evil, evil, evil...) Award BIOS: Award software MR BIOS: Microid Research Sound Blaster (whatever kind), AWE32: Creative Labs Graphics Ultra/Pro/Expression: ATI WinCIM: CompuServe Inc WinFax: Delrina Communications/Symantec ------------------------------ Subject: 1.8. What restrictions do you put on the use of this FAQ? Distribution and mirroring are encouraged so long as the source is quoted, and it's distributed in full. (Unfortunately I can't control broken news gateways that won't distribute the FAQ pages... sorry). Translation to other languages and other formats is encouraged provided the intended content remains the same. People asked me about removing the "editorial comments" I scatter through the FAQ. I prefer you don't, but I won't mind. If you do this, please let me know so I can inspect it and make sure the answers are still accurate. * 1.8.1. Disclaimers: As MS fixes the bugs and as vendors come up with new products, this info may be in-accurate. Check with other sources (like the references above) if you are in doubt of any info I have here. I would appreciate updates and comments and you will receive recognition for your work. The opinions in this FAQ are mine, except where directly quoted and linked from. They do not reflect the opinions of my employer or the provider of this web space. Especially as I often argue with both of them about these topics. I can't be responsible for any damage this information causes you or your equipment. Try to avoid using REGEDIT. RTFM. RTFFAQ. Ask Questions. But don't come crying to me or sic your lawyers on me if you broke your computer. I can't fix it. Subject: 2. Installing Windows 95 * 2.1. Basics about Win95 vs Win 3.x and DOS + 2.1.1. Basics about OEM Service Release 2 vs original Win95, Win 3.x, and DOS * 2.2. How do I install Win95 on a computer with... + 2.2.1. ...nothing else on it? + 2.2.2. ...DOS and Windows 3.x on it? + 2.2.3. ...Stacker (tm) disk compression + 2.2.4. ...>500 MB drive running Disk Mangler, DriveLamer, etc + 2.2.5. ...Double/DriveSpace (tm) disk compression + 2.2.6. ...OS/2 (tm) ? (any 2.x or higher version) + 2.2.7. ...Windows NT (tm) ? (why?) + 2.2.8. ...no hard drive? (diskless station) + 2.2.9. ...notebook computer? + 2.2.10. How do I copy my Win95 installation to another hard drive? * 2.3. How do I install Windows 95 from... + 2.3.1. ...floppies? + 2.3.2. ...CD-ROM drive? (Harder than you think) + 2.3.3. ...network server? ("Standard" shared install) + 2.3.4. ...network server? ("Copy the cabs to a server" quick install) + 2.3.5. How do I make Setup NOT install things like Internet Explorer, MSN, etc? * 2.4. I'm having problems with... + 2.4.1. ...rebooting after first part of setup + 2.4.2. ...reading disk 2 + 2.4.3. ..."Safe" recovery + 2.4.4. ...part two of setup can't read drivers from CD-ROM + 2.4.5. ...part two of setup can't read drivers from network * 2.5. Can I install two separate copies of Win95? + 2.5.1. Can I boot from a floppy disk and then run Win95 from a hard drive? * 2.6. How do I install old DOS and Windows 3.1 in a Win95 system? * 2.7. Why should I make a startup disk? * 2.8. Top ten installation mistakes * 2.9. Things to try before Re-Installing * 2.10. Things to do before re-installing to ensure a good re-installation * 2.11. Top ten re-installation mistakes * 2.12. Things to try before giving up * 2.13. How do I un-install Win95 from… + 2.13.1. ...installation on top of old Windows 3.x? + 2.13.2. ...installation on separate directory or drive? + 2.13.3. ...a computer with DriveSpace 3 (tm) disk compression? + 2.13.4. ...a server based install? + 2.13.5. ...a diskless workstation? * 2.14. Top ten Un-Installation mistakes ------------------------------ Subject: 2.1. Basics about Win95 vs. Win 3.x and DOS Back up (Make a copy of) your hard drive first, if you don't know what you're doing! Back up anyway even if you do. Windows 95 is a very different beast from Windows 3.1, different from MS-DOS, different from anything else out there. Treat it like Windows 95 and not like DOS, and it will install and perform like Windows 95. This is especially true with installation. Try to remove as many old DOS drivers, TSRs, disk compressors, disk managers, etc before attempting to install. Setup will recognize a host of such programs and warn you to remove them before continuing. Heed that warning! And if you have any doubts as to what Setup will do to your computer, back up your hard drive first! One very useful function of Setup is creating a Startup Disk to start the computer from, in case Win95 can't start on its own. Setup will ask you if you want a Startup disk just before it copies its files to your hard drive. Make up a Startup Disk. You can even uninstall Win95 from this startup disk, provided you enabled Uninstallation in Setup (If you installed on top of Win 3.1). NOTE: The Startup disk that Setup makes for you will not contain any real mode (DOS) drivers for hardware. It only contains basic utilities you'd normally associate with DOS (scandisk, etc) plus utilities to import or export Registry keys (or the entire Registry), and the Uninstaller. You must add drivers to the disk's DOS configuration (and hence you should know how to configure stuff in DOS) if you expect to use such hardware after booting from that disk. Another very useful tool, though it doesn't get built during Setup, is the Emergency Recovery Disk. If you own a CD-ROM version of Win95, copy the ERU utilities, from \OTHER\MISC\ERU to your Win95 directory, after you finish installing Win95. Then, when you want to make a recovery disk, run eru.exe. Afterwards, if you ever corrupt your Win95 setup, run erd.exe (the DOS counterpart to eru) to re-build the lost configuration! * 2.1.1. Basics about OEM Service Release 2 vs original Win95, Win 3.x, and DOS Much of the original Windows 95 install rules above also apply to version 4.00.950B, more commonly known as OSR2, or even (quite mistakenly) "Windows 97". Here are additional points to know before installing 4.00.950B: * Without special "attention", 4.00.950B will only install on a clean computer (without DOS, Win 3.1, or Win95, or any other operating system). The OSR2 FAQ (http://ling.ucsd.edu/~erwin/osr2.html) contains details on how to install 4.00.950B on a system that already has a version of Windows. * 4.00.950B's version of DOS (DOS 7.1) will not run Windows 3.1 (as per FAQ pages 3 and 12). This version's IO.SYS includes special code to block other versions of Windows from starting. (Download this patch to fix DOS 7.1 so it can run Windows 3.x). However, this version of DOS will run other DOS apps, including games, as long as they don't perform direct disk writes (even if you use FAT32 file system). * Read the OSR2 FAQ after you read this one. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.2. How do I install Windows 95 on a computer with... Well, let me get some basics about the Win95 setup straight first. Floppy users should first virus-scan their systems before installing from floppies. MS's Knowledge Base article Q136111 explains how viruses can ruin your second disk, because that disk is in DMF (1.68 MB) format. A boot-record virus will remove the DMF boot record, rendering it useless. Alternatively, you can Write-protect the disks; Some idiot at MS's production lab decided they should ship all Microsoft disks write-enabled. That same KB article describes that, while Setup will try to write to Disk 2 with your name and registration info, you can leave the disk write-protected and tell Setup to ignore the write-protect error. CD-ROM users: make sure you can read the CD-ROM from DOS. This means loading a real-mode CD-ROM driver into your DOS config, either already on your hard disk or from your boot floppy. Network users: If you're installing from floppies or CD-ROM, pay attention to the above notes as though it were a stand alone computer. If you install Win95 through the network instead, also read the notes in 2.3.3 below. Don't forget to ask your Administrator if you can install Win95; he has to make preparations to his server to let it work! * 2.2.1. ...nothing else on it? You need to prepare a File Allocation Table (FAT) partition on your hard drive to install Windows 95 to. The first bootable partition must use FAT file system, regardless of where you install Win95. If you bought the Win95 package designed for PCs without Windows (meaning not the upgrade) it will come with a startup disk for this purpose. The startup disk works much like the setup disk for MS-DOS 6.22; it will create a partition and format it for you. The disk also contains the traditional MS-DOS utilities like fdisk, format, sys, himem.sys, to do this manually. It will then ask for Setup Disk 1 or the CD-ROM, which installs the Win95 setup wizard to take you the rest of the way. NOTE: Some OEM CD-ROM distributors might not have included an MS-DOS driver for the CD-ROM drive on the startup disk. If this is so, when the boot disk setup asks you for the CD-ROM disk, it won't find it. Tell the manufacturer to correct this. If you're adventurous enough to do this yourself, the config.sys and autoexec.bat files on the boot disk have instructions on how to add your DOS CD-ROM driver. If you choose to install the upgrade version on to an empty system, you will need a boot disk with the DOS utilities I mentioned. You will also need your Windows 3.1 Disk 1, as proof that you're eligible for the upgrade. Part way through preparing the inital setup, it will ask you to "locate" the original installation of Windows 3.1, at which point you can insert your Windows 3.1 disk 1 and have Setup search there for it. 4.00.950B users must use their Win95 boot disk (DOS 7.1), add any needed CD-ROM or network drivers, AND use that particular version of fdisk to create FAT32 partitions. If you don't want to use FAT32 you can use any DOS version to create hard disk partitions and run the Setup from. I could install 4.00.950B with only a DOS 6.22 boot disk. * 2.2.2. ...DOS and Windows 3.x on it? Most likely you will have the upgrade version of Win95, and in the case of the CD-ROM version, you will already have a DOS CD-ROM driver loaded and working. Microsoft recommends you run Win95 setup from within Windows 3.1, which does work, but if you plan on installing Win95 in a separate directory than your existing Windows, you should run setup from DOS instead. Keep it simple. If you install from within Windows 3.1, and you choose to install on top of your existing Windows, be sure to allow Setup to copy your existing configuration in case you wish to uninstall Win95 later. A safer bet is to install Win95 in its own directory, which gives you the option to dual-boot between your original DOS and Win95. Uninstalling then becomes a simple matter of deltree c:\win95, and removing the remaining traces from the root directory (including a sys c: to restore the original DOS system files). * 2.2.3. ...Stacker (TM) disk compression? Microsoft recommends to uncompress your drive before installing Win95, but it does work with real-mode Stacker drivers. Just install normally, but keep your real-mode Stacker disk drivers installed when you do. You will lose performance on disk access as long as you maintain your DOS version of Stacker. Otherwise the same rules apply as for DOS and Windows 3.x. * 2.2.4. ...>500 MB drive running Disk Mangler, DriveLamer, etc? These disk managers allow systems, that otherwise can't handle drives with more than 1024 cylinders, to work with these drives. They're typically larger than 500 megabytes. Ontrack's Disk Manager and MicroHouse's DrivePro work OK with Win95's 32-bit disk drivers, so you can install like you could for an upgrade, but you should consider a BIOS upgrade and a system backup before attempting to install Win95 on systems with disks bigger than 500 megabytes. These disk managers are vulnerable to boot record viruses, making your system unstartable! On a system that supports large hard drives by design, a virus strike will not cause such damage (though it will do other nasty stuff of course; at least the virus is easier to remove!) Warning on FAT32: Ontrack's Disk Manager 7.0 or earlier does not work with protected mode disk drivers and FAT32 (it does seem to work with MS-DOS mode access though). If you must keep the disk mangler because your BIOS does not work with disks larger than 500 MB, use normal FAT instead. Let me get this 1024 cylinder nonsense straightened out once and for all. IBM compatibles, ever since the XT, cannot start from a hard drive partition with more than 1024 cylinders, even though partitions may exist beyond that and may even be accessible after starting up. The original FAT file system cannot exceed this 1024 cylinder limit either, and FAT partitions can't go past cylinder 1024, regardless of the total number of cylinders. Other file systems easily handle this, but not FAT, nor VFAT (Win95). And no Intel-based PC on this planet can boot from any hard drive partition that sits beyond this limit, regardless of the file system! Disk manager hacks and LBA translation reduce the number of "logical" cylinders, and usually increase the number of "logical" heads to compensate, in order for these lame PCs to boot up from such a hard drive. Since LBA translation is built in to most Intel-based PCs today, use it. Or upgrade your BIOS. Don't use software to accomplish this translation, and don't waste time with other software hacks or "magic" to work around this. One precaution to prevent a virus strike (and other mistakes, like booting off a non-system disk), is to set your BIOS to always boot from drive C: (like C: first, A: second, or C, A) so your disk manager software will always load before anything else does. A very kind representative from Ontrack took the time to clear up the statements I made in this particular FAQ question: 2. If you have a "normal" DOS MBR, and the system gets hit with a boot-sector virus. Oh, yes, the PC boots, but the nasty virus is lurking to do its dirty work with no warning from DOS at all. 3. Now, if you have Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO), the virus over-writes part of the DDO code, and the user cannot boot the PC, but usually gets a warning like "DDO Integrity Error" which means just what it states, something has corrupted the DDO code. In most cases, that "something" is the nasty virus. The user gets a warning, knows something is wrong, and then is able to take the steps to remedy the damage. These two points are the ones I'll ponder here: 2) If the PC can at least boot, you will be able to start your system with some kind of boot disk (Remember the Startup Disk? Did you make one?) and run a DOS version of a virus killer to remove the boot record virus. Win95's quite attentive in this respect; you'll know if you have a boot record virus as soon as the Desktop appears. Oh you could load DDO drivers in config.sys on the boot disk (DM 6.03 includes instructions on how to do this) but you still won't be able to repair the DDO partition table without destroying the rest of the disk (since the virus already destroyed it). The best you could do is back up the data onto another hard disk (At last there's a use for DOSLFNBK; the real mode DOS long filename backup utility) and install the Win95 DOS startup files (SYS x: (x=Target drive)) on it. Regardless of our Ontrack friend's claims, I did not find a utility on the DM disk to repair the DDO partition table without destroying everything afterwards (DDO boot record, FATs, directory tree, etc) 3) I didn't get any warning at all besides "Non-system disk or disk error" on the virus infected DDO drive. If I were a typical reader of this FAQ, meaning, "All I know how to do is hit the Start button, tell me more," this error message would mean nothing more to me than, "my hard disk is toast, please help me fix it." Here's more from our Ontrack rep: Just another tidbit on the off-chance that you are unaware of new BIOS limitations. There are a number of newer LBA BIOS's that have limitations at 2.1GB, 3.27GB as well as 4.2GB. Here again, Ontrack's Disk Manager comes back into play to solve these problems. Uh-huh. Didn't Award fix that with their 4.50G BIOS? Wasn't that released in early 1995? Doesn't standard FAT have a partition size limit of 2 GB? Doesn't FAT32 work with larger disks anyways? * 2.2.5. ...Double/DriveSpace (TM) disk compression? Simply perform your normal installation as per the Upgrade. Win95 comes with 32-bit versions of the DoubleSpace/DriveSpace drivers and they will unload the real mode drivers from memory when Win95 runs. 4.00.950B comes with DriveSpace 3 and the utilities needed to convert existing compressed drives to DriveSpace 3. You should pay attention to the info in FAQ page 11 for more help. * 2.2.6. ...OS/2 (TM) ? (any 2.x or higher version) Microsoft does not support installing Win95 on systems with OS/2, any version. Attempting to install Win95 on a system like this will wipe out any capability of starting OS/2. However, if you use Boot Manager, you can install Win95 in a partition of its own, or in the same partition as MS-DOS. This will isolate Win95 from OS/2. Setup will temporarily disable Boot Manager by making the DOS partition the active partition. To re-enable Boot Manager after installing Win95, run fdisk and make the Boot Manager partition (the little 1 MB partition of type Non-DOS) the active partition again. This also has the advantage of using HPFS file system on the OS/2 boot partition. Of course, installing Win95 on an HPFS partition is not possible. Win95 doesn't have any HPFS file system drivers yet, though I'm hoping for it. * 2.2.7. ...Windows NT (TM) ? Supposedly, Setup will recognize NTLDR.COM and insert itself into the list of OSes to boot from. As long as you have a FAT partition to install Win95 to, this will work. Win95 does not support installation on an NTFS partition either. If you want to triple-boot between DOS, Win95, and NT, MS has some wicked setup procedure that lets you use NTLDR to pick your booting OS (like OS/2's Boot Manager). The details are in the Win95 Resource Kit. WARNING: Do not install Windows NT 4.0 on top of an existing Win95 installation! Likewise don't install Win95 on top of NT. The Registry acts quite differently between these versions. * 2.2.8. ...no hard drive? (diskless station) NOT RECOMMENDED, though it is possible. The big reason is Win95 will use a network drive for its Virtual Memory swap file, which will cause heavy traffic on the file server. Put minimum 16 MB memory on each diskless workstation, to minimize swapping to the server. Also see How to prevent random hard drive access, to further reduce server swapping. To perform a diskless install of Win95, you need a server based install already on the file server. You also need a real mode connection to the network (either on a boot disk, or a virtual floppy on the file server via a boot EPROM on the network card). You merely install all the Win95 files into your home directory, wherever that is. Unfortunately, this only works with real mode network clients; you can't use 32-bit network components on a completely diskless workstation. If you use a boot EPROM, you need to make a virtual boot disk with the Win95 system files (IO.SYS etc) on it. Use whatever utilities come with your network server to do this. Other details are in Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q133349. * 2.2.9. ...notebook computer? You merely install it on the notebook as you would on any other computer. Because of complications with CD-ROM and network support on some notebook computers, I suggest you use the floppy disk version because you don't need to load any fancy drivers, as compared to the CD-ROM version, to get running. Setup will recognize special brands of notebook computers (Toshiba and Zenith for example), and you should change the "Computer Type" if it did not. This lets Setup tune the power management features to work with it. Once you finish, run the PC Card control panel (My Computer / Control Panel / PC Card) to let Win95 install 32-bit PC card support for it. * 2.2.10. How do I copy my Win95 installation to another hard drive? First, don't use xcopy. I'm telling you this up front because too many people out there just can't get this image-copying of Win95 right. Sure, there are utilities for copying the long filenames etc from DOS, but not all of us can handle this. So here's my sure fire way of copying Win95 from one hard drive to another and keeping ALL settings in tact. 1. Hook up your target hard drive and partition it using fdisk or whatever. Let's say it's Drive D: but it could be any drive letter. Use a Primary partition. Don't worry about making it active; we do that later. 2. Run Win95, and right-click on the target drive and hit "Format..." Make sure you turn on "Copy system files" (so it copies the IO.SYS and boot record properly.) Quick or Full format will work; if it's an old drive you might want to use Full format so it can scan the surface of that disk for errors. 3. In any Explorer window, hit View / Options... and turn on "Show all files". This way you'll copy the 20 MB or so of hidden files and Registry, and maintain all their original attributes and long filenames. 4. Copy the Win95 directory's contents first. (This is in case you let Win95 manage virtual memory...) Make a folder on your target with the same name as your Win95 directory. Then select ALL files and folders except for WIN386.SWP if it exists, and drag them to the Win95 folder on the target. (You can hit Edit/Select All to do this quickly, then hold CTRL and click on the WIN386.SWP file to unselect that file.) 5. Now copy the rest of the hard drive. Select ALL files from the Root of the source drive, and unselect IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, Win386.SWP if it exists, and your Win95 directory! Be sure to leave MSDOS.SYS selected! (Don't forget, MSDOS.SYS is really a settings file now!) Then drag them on to your target. 6. When all this copying is done, install your target hard drive into its system, and have a DOS 7.x (Win95 DOS) boot disk handy with fdisk on it. Boot with that floppy, run fdisk, and make the new partition active. Reboot with the copied disk. 7. NOTE: This step may be needed... Copy sys.com from your new \windows\command directory, and msdos.sys from the hard drive's root directory, to your boot disk and type sys c: from your boot disk. Sometimes you need to rebuild the startup io.sys and msdos.sys this way. If necessary, copy back the msdos.sys file. NOTE: I won't post or entertain thoughts on copying a Win95 installation any other way, so stop sending me messages about DOSLFNBK, GHOST, or any other copy utility. You will probably have to perform steps six and seven if you use any of those utilities anyways. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.3. How do I install Windows 95 from... * 2.3.1. ...floppies? For basic systems, and notebooks, this is the best source to install from. Setup will detect all hardware it can, and add protected mode support for it. It does take a while to sit and flip disks, but you will have a clean installation afterwards. This also gives you a good excuse to delete or hide your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT before running Setup. First, boot to DOS, then run Setup on disk 1. If you don't already have DOS on the computer, boot using any DOS disk and prepare the hard drive for a normal DOS installation. The Stand-alone version of Win95 will have a boot disk for this purpose. * 2.3.2. ...CD-ROM drive? (Harder than you think) You need a real mode CD-ROM driver in place to run Setup initially. My favorite method is to prepare a boot disk (or use the boot disk from the non-upgrade version) which loads the CD-ROM drivers, then runs Setup from the CD-ROM.) This way there's no chance of Setup arguing with a CONFIG.SYS file on the target drive. A boot disk only needs these entries in CONFIG.SYS: DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=(your CD-ROM driver) /D:MSCD001 (and whatever parameters it needs) And these lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT: MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /M:4 (and whatever preferences you have) SMARTDRV 2048 2048 I suggest including smartdrv to speed up the first part of installation. Include smartdrv after mscdex so it can cache the CD-ROM accesses. * 2.3.3. ...network server? ("Standard" shared install) Server based installs work like they did back in Win 3.1, but you need to run a different setup program, netsetup, to install the server copy. netsetup comes on the upgrade CD-ROM version in \ADMIN\NETTOOLS\NETSETUP. NOTE: netsetup does not come with the floppies or OEM CD-ROM. And you can't get it from Microsoft's web site, either. You can get it from the Win95 Resource Kit if you don't have it. Perhaps the two best advantages of using netsetup to make a server based install, are 1: you can do shared installs, saving local hard drive space, and 2: you can apply service packs and other components to server installs, which will take effect for server based, and local installs. Service Pack 1 Admin Edition includes a utility to apply the service pack to a server based install. To use netsetup: 1. Install Win95 on one computer as a stand-alone, and install network support for it so you can write to the server drives. 2. Run netsetup from the CD-ROM disk. It will list several tasks you must do to complete the server install. 3. Do the first task: specify the target server and directory you will install the admin copy to. 4. Do the second task: specify the source drive (usually the CD-ROM) and install. It will perform three passes of installs; one for stand-alone installs, one for shared installs, and one for the initial setup files. 5. (optional) Write an installation script. The script editor is rather simple; you use the option menus to turn options on and off, to specify what network components to load, and settings for them. 6. Done. Go to a workstation and run setup from the server to test the install, and any install script you wrote. One dumb thing about netsetup is you have to run it from Windows 95, which means you have to install Win95 once, then run it on that station. It will run in Windows 3.1, but you won't be able to create an installation script until you run it from Win95. NOTE: Installing the OEM CD-ROM version to a server using netsetup does not entirely work! The OEM version includes the MS Internet Explorer from Plus, and the PRECOPY.CAB files contain references to those components. Netsetup will not attempt to install those, which is why MS didn't bother including it with the OEM version. You could find out what files it looks for and manually insert them, but that's a bit of a pain. You'll just have to shell out the $250.00 for the non-upgrade, non-OEM, Win95 CD-ROM. Installing the upgrade version works, but it will ask you for Win 3.1 evidence before it will install. * 2.3.4. ...network server? ("Copy the cabs to a server" quick install) You can install Win95 using its cabinet files from any location, even a network share. This method will not allow for shared installations of diskless installations, but it does let you quickly re-install a dead machine and it takes a lot less server disk space. The same automation tools (batch.exe) also work, but you can't add components to a "cab" installation (using infinst.exe) and automatically install them along with the rest of Win95. These steps are very simple; copy the Win95 CD's \WIN95 directory to a network share, and install your workstations from it. You can create a msbatch.inf using batch.exe or by hand, and copy it to the same directory as the cabinet files, to automate the installation, but you're restricted to components that come with Win95. * 2.3.5. How do I make Setup NOT install things like MSIE, MSN, etc? Quick background... OEM releases of Win95 include some built in components, such as Internet Explorer, Internet Mail and News, MSN, the "Online services", and such. These components are not optional on OEM releases by design. There are legal processes in motion forcing Microsoft to stop this practice, but in the meantime you can use these techniques to skip installing them. Such uses for unbundling may be network installations, troubleshooting Internet setups, preventing, "This may affect Registered Programs" from appearing for no apparent reason, and the like. The CompuClinic folks are credited for assistance here (http://www.compuclinic.com/). Legal Stuff: Until such time that OEMs may unbundle these components, I intended these steps only be used by private users or network admins who use Win95 internally. OEMs and resellers attempting to use these techniques might face legal action from MS for violating their license agreements. Check to see if you're allowed to do this before doing so. ...with that out of the way... 1. Copy your Win95 CD's \WIN95 directory to a convenient place on your hard drive or network server. You'll need as much as 50 MB of disk space. Users with a pre-installed Win95 will find an installable copy already on their hard drive in \WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS ready for editing; you should move this directory somewere else if you plan on erasing your previous Win95 afterwards. 2. From a DOS prompt, change to that directory and use extract to extract setruppp.inf from there. Use the command line "extract setuppp.inf precopy2.cab" NOTE: Strangely enough, you need to boot from a hard drive before you use the extract utility; it kept telling me "disk write protected" when it tried to write the file if I booted from a floppy drive! 3. Edit setuppp.inf to taste using the information below. 4. Edit layout.inf (In the same directory) so that the line containing setuppp.inf reads: setuppp.inf=0,,xxxx (xxxx represents the resulting size of setuppp.inf after your edits, and the Zero indicates to Setup to use the existing copy instead of extracting it from a cabinet file). Also comment-out or remove any .INF entries you commented out or removed in setuppp.inf. 5. Run Setup normally to install your cleaned-up version. These components and coresponding setuppp.inf entries are "Non-optional" in OEM releases and are candidates for removal: OHARE.INF Internet Explorer (All OEM releases) MOS.INF The Microsoft Network (All releases, including the "Setup the Microsoft Network" pieces) ATHENA.INF Internet Mail and News (OSR2 and 2.1) INETMAIL.INF Internet Mail add-on for Windows Messaging (OSR2 and 2.1) MSINFO.INF The "Online Services" installables (OSR2 and 2.1) QUARTZ.INF ActiveMovie (OSR2 and 2.1) My own experience with this editing suggests you keep ActiveMovie however, as it replaces many commented-out components in the original Media Player which will be unusable otherwise. Each of these components, with the exception of The Microsoft Network, are available on your Win95 CD-ROM in the \OTHER directory. Newer versions of MSN are available from PC dealers, cereal boxes (I'm not kidding!), etc for free. The OSR2 FAQ contains other edits you might want to perform, to allow you to install OEM releases on machines that already have an OS, or to manipulate setup further. In addition, you can perform network installations of Win95 with this modified kit. Use batch.exe to build a customized msbatch.inf file; see the Network Server installation steps above. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.4. I'm having problems with... * 2.4.1. ...rebooting after first part of setup On systems with bizarre DOS configurations, you may get a "Windows protection error", or "This VxD conflicts with another driver already loaded". This is because a DOS driver loaded before win.com loaded, and a corresponding protected mode driver can't load. To avoid this, just when the computer reboots for part two of setup, press F8 when you see Starting Windows 95... then select Safe mode command prompt only. From here, delete or rename your config.sys and autoexec.bat files. Then re-boot and proceed with part two normally. You may get this error if you use an unrecognized CD-ROM driver (Usually the case for IDE CD-ROMs attached to PCI IDE adapters), or if you use a DOS network driver and a Win95 net card driver tries to load. The above technique will work around both these cases. If you have to do this, you won't be able to configure a printer or copy any other drivers until you finish Setup. No matter; if it asks you for Win95 files, just cancel, and wait until Setup finishes. * 2.4.2. ...reading disk 2 The disks come in MS's new "DMF" format, which holds nearly 2 MB on a 1.44 MB disk. The first disk is a standard 1.44 MB disk, and Setup loads a driver to read the DMF disks. A DMF disk can get destroyed by a boot record virus, because the virus over-writes the DMF boot record. As a precaution, write-protect the floppies before using them. For some really dumb reason, Microsoft insisted on shipping the disks write-enabled. Setup will also try to write your registration info on disk 2. If you have the disk write protected, you can just hit "Continue" and Setup will continue without writing to the disk. For details, read KB article Q136111. * 2.4.3. ..."Safe" recovery If you re-run Setup on a bad installation of Win95, you will get a prompt to use "Safe Recovery". This will let you either Undo the install, or Redo the install using safer detection techniques. My suggestion is to Undo the install, then use the technique above, regarding Rebooting after first part of setup. Also, try installing on a target drive with no DOS startup files (config.sys). * 2.4.4. ...part two of setup. I can't read drivers from CD-ROM This means Setup didn't load protected mode CD-ROM drivers for your drive, which happens for many reasons. This will only affect your ability to add printer drivers and setting up MS Exchange, both of which you can skip and do later. You should make sure, after finishing Setup, you bug the CD-ROM manufacturer for a Win95 driver. Also check the section on SCSI and IDE CD-ROM support. PCI IDE or PCI SCSI adapters won't kick in until the second re-boot, so such CD-ROMs won't work until then. Just let it finish and it will work. Later on, if you have to use real mode CD-ROM or net card drivers, you can add printers and set up Exchange once you can use the CD-ROM or network again. * 2.4.5. ...part two of setup. I can't read drivers from the network If you installed network support but you didn't get a network log in at the start of part two (so you can access the file server), this means the Win95 network support didn't install correctly. As per the CD-ROM install, you can skip the Exchange and Printer setup until you get the protected mode network support working. PCI net cards won't operate at all until the second re-boot, when the PCI Bus driver kicks in. Just let it finish and your net card will work on the second re-boot. ISA PnP cards react the same way. This could also mean you skipped network support to begin with, or it could not load a network card driver. Again, you can skip the Exchange and Printer setup until you correct this. NOTE: There is a way to work around this minor problem; use a real mode network client (Either netx, vlm, or Workgroup Connection for DOS) to run Setup from, and tell it to use your Existing ODI or NDIS 2 driver. This is the default net card choice if you install from a server-based copy. The second time it re-boots it will read your real mode driver and add the components needed to make it work with 32-bit network software. Finally, after you log in to the server to continue Setup, it will detect your net card and replace the ODI or NDIS 2 support with the appropriate Win95 support. This method of loading network support for PCI and ISA PnP cards can produce some unusual side effects. For example, if you booted from a floppy disk to get on the network, Part 2 of Setup will try to read the NDIS 2 or ODI driver from the floppy disk! If this occurs you will get a "General failure reading Drive A:" error message. When you do, re-insert that disk and hit "Retry" so Setup will continue. Another side effect is Win95 shutting down in the middle of a driver file copy! To prevent this, make sure you erase this line in msbatch.inf on the Server copy: NoPrompt2Boot=1 This line immediately re-boots the computer after the end of all the Setup Part 2 stuff. If you remove it, Setup will prompt you to re-start the computer when it's all finished. You should wait until Win95 detects and installs all other hardware before you press "OK" on this requester. If Win95 asks you to re-start the computer at any other time, tell it NO. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.5. Can I install two separate copies of Win95? The problem with this is there's only one msdos.sys file, which points to only one copy of Windows 95. You could edit msdos.sys (which is just a text file in Win95) to point to either copy, but this is annoying. A better technique is to borrow someone's copy of OS/2 and install Boot Manager, then have two bootable partitions, each with its own copy of Win95. The first technique is great, however, for developers experimenting with their apps, without destroying their primary copy of Win95, and for those without friends using OS/2. 4.00.950B users can't use FAT32 file system if you install a non-950B version alongside a 950B version. Be careful. * 2.5.1. Can I boot from a floppy disk and then run Win95 from a hard drive? A few people actually asked this... 1. Get Win95 to start normally (off the hard drive!) 2. Make a Win95 DOS boot disk using Add/Remove Programs / Startup Disk or formatting a disk with /S 3. Copy the msdos.sys file from your hard drive to the floppy. This file contains the pointers to your installed copy of Win95; you can edit it as you need to as well. 4. Copy himem.sys, ifshlp.sys, and setver.exe from your Win95 directory to the boot floppy. 5. Try booting from the floppy. The idea is, msdos.sys contains the paths to your installed copy of Win95, which could be on another directory or even another drive. This lets you install it on drive D: for example, but it still needs to boot from A: or C: to bring up the real mode bootstrap (Good ol' DOS). You will need to make one edit on the boot floppy's MSDOS.SYS file though; change "HostWinBootDrv=C" to "HostWinBootDrv=A". ------------------------------ Subject: 2.6. How do I install old DOS and Windows 3.1 on a Win95 system? I do not recommend installing old DOS on a Win95 machine at all. Win95's included MS-DOS 7.0, in Single Mode, can run anything that previous versions of DOS can, including Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups! If you have to run old DOS programs that don't run in DOS sessions in Win95, check out the Running MS-DOS Games page. With that aside, to install the missing utilities that DOS 7.0 blatantly forgot from DOS 6.22: 1. Find the \OLDMSDOS directory on the Win95 CD-ROM in \OTHER\OLDMSDOS. 2. Run the install.bat from that directory, within Win95. 3. When asked to, shut down and re-start your computer. This is because the old DOS programs are really from DOS 6.22, and the batch file SETVER's them to that version of DOS. You'll find other old DOS toys in the directories of \OTHER, including MSD and the Central Point version of MSBACKUP. To install Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups on a system running Win95: 1. Find your original Win 3.1/WFWG disks of course. Silly. 2. Exit to Single mode DOS by Start Menu/Shut Down, and "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode". 3. Make copies of any config.sys or autoexec.bat you have (You shouldn't have these anyway!) 4. Run Setup from your Win 3.1 disk 1 and install normally, into any directory that Win95 isn't in! Like C:\WIN31 5. When Setup finishes, choose the option to Exit to DOS. 6. Make copies of any changes that Win 3.1 Setup made to your config.sys and autoexec.bat, and restore your original versions of these files. You'll need these copies later on! 7. Type exit to go back into Win95. 8. Find win.com in your Win 3.1 installation, right-click on that file, and hit "Properties". 9. Hit the Program tab, hit Advanced, hit "MS-DOS Mode", hit "Specify new MS-DOS Configuration." 10. In the empty spaces below, copy & paste the text from the saved config.sys and autoexec.bat that Win 3.1 Setup modified. CTRL-V works in these text boxes to paste text from the clipboard in. Add a LOCK C: to the end of the special autoexec.bat (for 32-bit disk and file access, if you wish to use it). 11. Modify the resulting text entries so you use the right versions of these files. Finally OK everything. Use Win95 versions (C:\WIN95\.....) of these files: * HIMEM.SYS * EMM386.EXE * SMARTDRV.EXE Use Win 3.1 versions (C:\WIN31\... or C:\WINDOWS\...) of these files (Only relevant to WFWG actually) * IFSHLP.SYS * NET START * MSCDEX (If you share a CD-ROM via WFWG) When you double-click on win.com here, or on its resulting PIF file (Shortcut to MS-DOS program), your computer will restart using this special DOS configuration. When you exit Win 3.1, Win95 will restart. Trust me; this is the absolute best way to get Win 3.1 working on a Win95 machine, if you don't have an older DOS already installed. NOTE: Windows for Workgroups, in particular, will ask you to "Restart Computer" sometimes. This is fine; Win95 won't try to re-start because a line in the special AUTOEXEC.BAT (WIN.COM /EX) won't execute, and your computer will re-start still using the special DOS configuration. The only way to get back into Win95 safely, is to exit Win 3.1 with Program Manager (File/Exit Windows). Also notice, that you'll find files named CONFIG.W40 and AUTOEXEC.W40 in your hard drive. These files are Win95's DOS configuration. Leave them alone! Don't touch them! Win95 copies these back to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT when you finish with Win 3.1. And don't try to install old DOS on a Win95 machine. Just don't. You'll regret it. And don't ask me why. You'll regret hearing why. 4.00.950B users will discover a VERY ANNOYING message when they try to run Win 3.1 under 950B's version of DOS (MS-DOS 7.1): "The version of MS-DOS you are running is incompatible with this version of Windows. Your system had been halted." (grrr... this string is hard-wired into IO.SYS so I think this is a deliberate hack on MS's part) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.7. Why should I make a startup disk? (Why didn't I think of this question? Thanks guys) The startup disk contains a handful of basic utilities you can use to fix your broken Win95 installation, and even uninstall Win95. The traditional DOS utilities for disk management are in there, as are a version of edit, regedit, and the uninstaller. To make a startup disk, answer "YES" to the question about the startup disk. If you skipped this part and want to make up a startup disk, run Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and hit the "Startup Disk" tab. * Notes regarding REGEDIT on the startup disk The version of regedit on the startup disk only lets you import and export Registry pieces (or the whole Registry) to text files you can edit using good ol' edit. To build an editable copy of the Registry, change to your Win95 directory and type: REGEDIT /E REGBCKUP.REG This will export the two Registry files to a text file with said name. Copy this text file to a separate floppy disk (it'll exceed 1 MB easily) and edit it as you feel necessary. To completely re-create a Registry from this backup text file, from your Win95 directory type this: REGEDIT /C REGBCKUP.REG Regedit can also import and export portions of the Registry. Outside of Win95, type regedit without parameters for a list of extra options. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.8. Top ten installation mistakes 10. Hitting the "exit" button on the 13th disk 9. Lending your install disks to a friend, after you let Setup write your name to Disk 2 8. Installing on your station at work, without letting your M.I.S. manager know (He'll find out though...) 7. Installing on top of Windows 3.1 without enabling Uninstall 6. Installing from a unsupported CD-ROM drive or network 5. Installing on a system that doesn't work with 32-bit disk & file access in WFWG 3.11 4. Restoring a backup of old Windows on top of your new Win95 install (real dumb) 3. Not doing a backup of old Windows before installing 2. Leaving the floppies write-enabled while installing 1. Installing from a BOOTLEG CD-ROM (Watch it: They're showing up now. Buy the original and save yourself the troubles!) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.9. Things to try before re-installing Oh No! You installed some 16-bit program and it over-wrote too many Win95 system files! You need to re-install... or some other disaster makes you think you need to re-install. Not. Win95 has a pretty good defense mechanism against 16-bit programs that replace system files, and other disasters. All key system files have a backup copy in \WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP (or wherever you installed Win95). Most cases, Win95 will detect that system files got over-written and it'll offer to copy Win95 versions back. Let it do so! This includes any winsock.dll files (You should use Win95's dial up networking anyway, not Win 3.1 dialers like Trumpet). If it doesn't do that, you can always copy them back yourself. Go into "Safe mode command prompt only" (Press F8 on "Starting Windows 95..." then select said option), then: XCOPY C:\WIN95\SYSTEM\SYSBCKUP\*.* C:\WIN95\SYSTEM from the DOS prompt. Also, try editing system.ini. Inspect the [386Enh] section for any additional device=xxxxx.386 drivers. On a clean Win95 install, you shouldn't have ANY of these files. This goes double for any "vshare.386" files that show up; Win95 has a built-in device=*vshare driver. Removing old Win 3.1 386 Enhanced drivers will clear up many problems. If you get a "Registry corrupted" error of some kind, inspect your hard drive for errors. On the requester that tells you to "Restore from backup and Restart", press CTRL-ESC to bring up the Win95 task manager, and run scandskw.exe from there to check the drive for errors. Scandskw does a better job of scanning Win95 drives, and it handles long filename problems better than scandisk does at the DOS prompt. Once it finishes, you can hit that button to restore the Registry and re-start. However, if you continue to get this kind of error, start investigating your hard drive system. You might be over-driving your HD at Mode 4 when it's not designed for it, for example. Or maybe the drive's just on its last legs and dying. Do a back up as soon as you can! This Registry stuff is actually a good reason to use User Profiles. Each user will have their own copy of the second half of the Registry; the user.dat file. If the master user.dat gets ruined and you need to completely re-install, you can bring back your program settings for your 32-bit programs just by logging in as one of the users. Your hardware (system.dat) config is still toast, but you can rebuild that easy enough just by re-running the "Add new hardware" control panel. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.10. Things to do before re-installing to ensure good re-installation OK, the above techniques didn't work and you have to re-install. Here's what to do to make re-installing work best: Plan to re-install from DOS, not from within Windows or Win95. This way it'll assume a fresh installation. From the DOS prompt outside of Win95, change to your Win95 directory, and type this: ATTRIB -H -S -R *.DAT This will unhide the Registry files system.dat and user.dat. Then delete them. That's right, delete them. A corrupted Registry will cause no end of trouble until it's killed dead. If you have user profiles you can restore user.dat easily enough. If you were smart enough to make up a Registry backup with the startup disk, you can try re-building it after you delete the system.dat and user.dat, if you're sure that the backup is a good copy. Still outside of Win95, change to your Win95 directory and type: REGEDIT /C REGBCKUP.REG This will kill the current Registry files and re-build them from the .REG text file. If necessary, specify the disk path in the filename, after all, that .REG file will easily exceed 1 MB, and you probably copied it to a separate disk. If you didn't make a Registry backup, you'll have to re-install your 32-bit apps and settings, but that's safer than trying to use a corrupted Registry. Remove all the DOS drivers and TSRs you can, so it won't hinder Win95's Setup. If you have the CD-ROM version, only have the DOS CD driver, himem.sys, and mscdex loaded. Edit the remaining system.ini to remove all foreign drivers from the [386Enh] section. A clean system.ini's [386Enh] section will look exactly like this: [386Enh] ebios=*ebios device=*vshare device=*dynapage device=*vcd device=*vpd device=*int13 display=*vdd,*vflatd mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd ; the mouse driver may vary, but shouldn't be .386 woafont=dosapp.fon keyboard=*vkd device=*enable PagingDrive=C: ; this may vary depending on where you put it MinPagingFileSize=32768 ; these will vary depending on your swap file MaxPagingFileSize=32768 ; Or they may be even missing, that's OK You might also have a device=*vpowerd if you have power management on your system. Don't forget: All of Win95's drivers really sit in the Registry, not here. The best bit of advice I can offer, regarding disaster recovery, is use the Backup program which comes with Win95, or use any backup program designed for Win95, to do a Full System Backup. This kind of backup will copy The Registry to tape as well as the hidden and system files. When you complete the re-install, restoring this tape will restore all your original settings. All of them. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.11. Top ten re-installation mistakes 10. Inserting the 13th disk before reading the "Things to try before re-installing" section 9. Restoring your old Windows 3.1 backup on top of your re-installed Win95 (again? Shame on you) 8. Not reading the Installation part of the FAQ over again before re-installing 7. Forgetting to uncompress your DriveSpace drive before reinstalling (It's best to make a separate compressed volume, and keep your Win95 directory OFF it) 6. Forgetting to erase the corrupt Registry before re-installing 5. Using that BOOTLEG CD-ROM to re-install from (Didn't you learn the first time?) 4. Re-installing the Win 3.1 program that made you re-install Win95 3. Forgetting to remove old garbage from system.ini, config.sys, autoexec.bat 2. Ignoring the Installation part of the FAQ, which might've prevented the need to re-install 1. Not backing up your system after you re-installed Win95 ------------------------------ Subject: 2.12. Things to try before giving up You can read the Re-Installation part of this FAQ, which covers some ways of fixing problems without re-installing, and which covers some tips to make a good re-installation. Failing that, try again from scratch, with an empty system (Meaning back-up your system first, then delete everything and try again), using the techniques in the Installation part of this FAQ. Completely kill everything, even, if necessary, doing a low-level format from your BIOS setup. Yes I know that you aren't supposed to re-low-level-format IDE and SCSI hard drives, but it does work in a pinch. Failing that, check with the hardware makers for Win95 versions of drivers, etc, and look in the MS Knowledge Base, and see about trading your hardware for Win95 compatible types. Don't waste your time with unsupported hardware. Check out the Hardware Compatibility List which contains a lot of out-dated crap, but they did sort it by manufacturer nicely for you. Also check with your software makers and tell them to get their BUTTS in gear, and make Win95 compliant versions of their software, or to fix their Win 3.1 software to make it work. (Soapbox mode on) Microsoft didn't spend a whole year and a half of beta testing, just to be ignored (Soapbox mode off) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.13. How do I uninstall Windows 95 from... * 2.13.1. ...installation on top of my old Windows 3.x? If you enabled the uninstall feature back in Setup, go to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, and remove Windows 95. This will restore your original Windows config files, your original DOS config files, and the original partition table and boot record of the target drive. If you didn't enable uninstall, you'll have to trash your Win95 directory using the technique below, and re-install Win 3.1 fresh. * 2.13.2. ...installation on separate directory or drive? There's no fancy uninstaller for this kind of installation. However, you can just: DELTREE C:\WIN95 (or wherever) and that'll work. To do this, get your DOS setup disks and boot from the first disk. Then, exit that setup program to a DOS prompt. From here you type: SYS C: DELTREE C:\WIN95 (or wherever) DELTREE C:\PROGRA~1 (The old "Program files" directory) COPY C:\AUTOEXEC.DOS C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT COPY C:\CONFIG.DOS C:\CONFIG.SYS then re-boot. You can then run Windows 3.1 File Manager, with "Show Hidden/System Files" turned on, to hunt for other files you don't recognize. * 2.13.3. ...a computer with DriveSpace 3 (TM) disk compression? If you installed DriveSpace 3 from MS Plus and you chose to uninstall Win95, you can still access DriveSpace 3 drives, as it keeps the real mode component drvspace.bin there. DOS will recognize this version and load it. Of course, it'll eat 100 KB of conventional memory, so you had better back up your compressed drive and re-partition it, to kill DriveSpace 3 completely. Otherwise, the techniques above for removing Win95 will work just fine. * 2.13.4. ...a server based install? The techniques above will work for a server based install, just make sure you get your right version of DOS and your old DOS network drivers back when you do it. It's also a lot less to delete. * 2.13.5. ...a diskless workstation? You'll need to change back to your DOS boot disk or DOS virtual boot disk, then just clean out Win95 from your home directory. If you installed on top of a Win 3.1 diskless install, you're better off re-installing Win 3.1 fresh. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.14. Top ten UN-installation mistakes 10. Reading the Things to try before giving up section after Uninstalling 9. Reading the Re-Installation section of the FAQ after uninstalling 8. Forgetting to convert the important Microsoft Word 7 document, when uninstalling 7. Forgetting that your database was written in Microsoft Access 95 when uninstalling 6. Forgetting to try restoring that backup you made before uninstalling 5. Calling Microsoft tech support after uninstalling (Think they'll help you now?) 4. Uninstalling, then realizing that your software vendor isn't selling Win 3.1 stuff anymore 3. Having a friend or technician discover a virus after you thought Win95 caused all your troubles, and after you uninstalled 2. Uninstalling because the program you need to use the most doesn't work (The program's broken, not the OS) 1. Buying Win95 in the first place, if you uninstalled for keeps Subject: 3. Basic Win95 usage * 3.1. ...vs Windows 3.x * 3.2. ...vs MS-DOS (tm) * 3.3. What is this "Explorer" thing? * 3.4. How do I... + 3.4.1. ...find my old Win 3.x programs? + 3.4.2. ...make a program read a file I click on? + 3.4.3. ...change what program opens what kind of file? o 3.4.3.1. How can I add or remove file extensions from a file type? + 3.4.4. ...run Windows 3.x programs? (including Windows games) o 3.4.4.1. How do I run Win 3.1 after installing Win95? o 3.4.4.2. How do I install Win 3.1 fresh in a Win95 system? + 3.4.5. ...run MS-DOS apps? + 3.4.6. ...run MS-DOS utilities? (Xtree (tm), Norton Utilities (tm), etc) + 3.4.7. ...run MS-DOS games? + 3.4.8. ...format or copy disks? + 3.4.9. ...search for files? + 3.4.10. ...add my own items to the Start Menu? o 3.4.10.1. The Desktop, Start Menu, and shortcuts + 3.4.11. ...change my display resolution? + 3.4.12. ...change my display driver? + 3.4.13. ...disable the "Full window drag" feature of MS Plus? * 3.5. Some MS-DOS utilities are missing. Where can I get them? * 3.6. Should I buy these new fancy utilities for Win95? + 3.6.1. ...Norton Navigator (tm) ? + 3.6.2. ...un-installers? + 3.6.3. ...anti-virus programs? + 3.6.4. ...Microsoft Plus (tm) ? + 3.6.5. ...RAM compression programs? + 3.6.6. ...crash-proofing utilities? * 3.7. Top ten mistakes running Windows 3.x programs * 3.8. Top ten mistakes running MS-DOS programs and games ------------------------------ Subject: 3.1. Basic Win95 usage vs Windows 3.x Win95 sports the cool new Explorer Desktop, in an attempt to be more Mac-like. Try to forget what you know about Program Manager, File Manager, Print Manager, etc because very little of it applies! Win 3.1 programs will run like they used to; the window might look a bit different, and there might be some extra buttons on the border, but they will work otherwise. Get used to using your right mouse button. On an Amiga, the right button was a "menu" button which brought up a hidden menu. On OS/2, it brings up menus for each object you click on. On Win95, it acts like the OS/2 right-click except it pretty much works on anything; window title bars, the Start Menu, any kind of icon, properties sheets, whatever. Win 3.1 programs run in a single process under Win95, cooperatively multitasking as they always did since Windows/386. This means one Win 3.1 app can suspend the entire Win 3.1 session. In fact, one Win 3.1 app can suspend all of Win95! This is purely for compatibility. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.2. Basic Win95 usage vs MS-DOS (TM) Microsoft kept DOS for compatibility and nothing else. Win95 includes MS-DOS 7.0, which under Win95, is a multitasking DOS. DOS programs run in protected sessions like Win95 programs do, and the system pre-emptively task-switches between Win32 sessions, DOS sessions, and the single Win 3.1 session. COMMAND.COM is now a multitasking command prompt. Win95 can unload it on command, unless a DOS program is running from it. Some Win32 character-based programs can run from here if they don't depend on Windows NT features. Outside of Win95 though, COMMAND.COM, and the rest of DOS, is just DOS. The biggest difference between old DOS and DOS 7.0, is it does not allow direct disk writes, to prevent long filename corruption and virus infection. Effectively, if a program tries to write to the disk directly while outside of Win95, you will get an evil message telling you to restart your computer. Normally this is good, but some "good" programs (like Windows 3.1 running 32-bit disk access, which DOES work in DOS 7.0 by the way) need to access the disk directly. If you can trust such programs, type: LOCK C: (or whatever drive letter) before running the program. Notice, however, that lock c: only works outside of Win95 (like when you "Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode" for example), and within Win95, no direct writes are allowed under any circumstance. Some DOS TSRs no longer supported under Explorer are print and subst (though subst seems to work in 32-bit mode once you finish installing Win95). As a general rule, don't run any DOS TSRs that fiddle with the disk handler or require direct access to hardware. 4.00.950B users will notice their DOS apps will report their DOS version as MS-DOS 7.10. This version of DOS supports FAT32 file systems. The "32" refers to the number of bits the File Allocation Table supports, and as such it can support smaller cluster sizes on larger (> 1 GB) drives. FAT32 file systems will not work with DOS utilities designed for older versions of DOS. DOS 7.10's scandisk does fix serious problems, and Win95 Defrag still does a great job of unfragmenting FAT32 drives. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.3. What is this "Explorer" thing? Like I wrote above, it's Win95's new default shell. Explorer actually has two big parts and several little ones. The two biggest parts you will see right away are the Desktop and the Taskbar. I won't go into details, because Microsoft has lots of basic stuff about these two devices. I will go into details on the little pieces, however. Microsoft combined the functionality of many utilities (including File Manager, Control Panel, Print Manager, Remote Access, Windows Setup, PIF editor) into it. Control Panel is pretty obvious and works much the way it did back in Win 3.1. The others were completely renamed and re-worked, and it'll just take some "Exploring" (pun intended) to learn them. Running explorer.exe with Explorer running will merely open a File Manager style window, with directory trees and split displays. "Exploring" directories like this is great for power users who need to find something fast. Right-click on any folder or drive and select "Explore" to begin "Exploring" from that point. You aren't running multiple processes of Explorer; you're merely opening another Explorer window separate from the Desktop. Print Manager got replaced by the Printers folder in "My Computer". You create and maintain printers here, though there is a shortcut to it from Control Panel, for compatibility. When you create printers here you may use Win 3.1 printer drivers (though I don't recommend this) or Win95 drivers. Microsoft claims NT drivers will install here as well, but I couldn't get any of the NT drivers working. Remote Access gets replaced by Dial-up Networking, which is now a general network connection through modems. Dial-up Networking covers regular RAS connections, Internet connections, and connections to NetWare Connect servers for remote NetWare log ins. Dial-up Networking also supports null modems and parallel port cables with Direct Cable Connection. Windows Setup is kinda scattered all over the place, but you'll find the main components in the Control Panel's Add New Hardware, Add/Remove Programs, and System panels. PIF files are now "Shortcuts to MS-DOS Programs", and you bring up a DOS program's properties to edit its PIF file. Check out How to run DOS programs in Win95 for details. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.4. How do I... * 3.4.1. ...find my old Win 3.x programs? Win95 Setup copied all your group files (.GRP) from Program Manager into a directory called (what else), "Start Menu". It copied the icon groups into little directories which you can view by pressing the Start button, and selecting "Programs". One notable exception to this, is Setup eliminated the "Main" program group entirely. It'll remove icons that no longer apply (like File Manager). If a program installer just copied a .GRP file to the hard disk, rather than add the icons through the Windows APIs like it's supposed to, you can add that group to the Start Menu by finding the .GRP file itself, and opening it (double-clicking it). If programs also try to change progman.ini, which contains the group listings, Win95 will move them to the Start Menu the next time you restart. * 3.4.2. ...make a program open a file I click on? Explorer lets you browse your hard drive and click on documents, as well as programs. This works exactly like clicking on documents in File Manager; simply double-click on the document to launch its associated app. If you click on a file with an extension it doesn't recognize, Explorer offers up a list of programs and lets you choose which one you want. You can also give a descriptive name to the file type (such as "Doom data file" for .WAD files). You may further edit the file type with the View/Options... menu in any Explorer window and selecting the "File Types" tab. * 3.4.3. ...change what program opens what kind of file? To edit file types, select the View menu and Options… in any Explorer window. Hit the "File types" tab and you can edit, add, or delete known file types. Some file types are hidden from this display (such as "System File") to keep you from hurting them. I'll tell you how to find them later. You can do much more than Open a document. Some document types have more options than Open if you right-click on them. For example, .BAT files have an "Edit" command which brings up Notepad. To add this functionality to your own documents, go back to the "File types" tab and find the file type you want to add this to, and hit Edit. You can then Add an action, such as "Edit", which launches a separate program and opens that file. This worked great for me; I have an "Edit" option added to all my HTML documents which launches MS-Word, an extra "Edit as Text" option to use Notepad instead, so I can remove the extra crap that Internet Assistant put in, and "Open" launches Mosaic to view the document. You can also use the File Types tab to disable CD Audio auto-play (by turning off "play" as its default action), hide or show extensions for particular file types, enable or disable QuickView (provided you installed QuickView in Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup), and remove file types completely. * 3.4.3.1. How can I add or remove filename extensions from a file type? This is not immediately simple, but you can accomplish this two ways: 1. Run winfile.exe (File Manager) and use its Associate... menu to add extensions to an already existing file type. The file types in File Manager corespond with the file types you see in Explorer. I recommend this method. 2. Edit the Registry using regedit. You'll find all the filename extensions in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT along with the matching file types. Simply add a new key with the extension as its name (such as ".HTM") and change that key's (default) value so it contains the same name as the other extension's default value (such as "NetscapeHypertext"). You may also add a second String value named "Content Type" to specify a MIME type for this filename extension. In both cases, when you exit the respective program, press F5 to cause Explorer to refresh its display. All files with the new extension will change icons and properties to match the file type you assigned it. This also works in NT 4.0, but you will need to restart your computer to effect the change. * 3.4.4. ...run Windows 3.x programs? (including Windows games) If there's an icon in the Start Menu, you can run it from there. When you install apps in Win95 that create icons the "proper" way, Explorer will build up entries in the Start Menu. You can also find the executable itself by browsing the hard drive, then opening it. Self-installing archives, such as Win95 Service Pack 1, are one kind of Windows program you'll need to run by browsing and opening. If you don't see your old program group on the Start Menu, or if a program just copied a group file (.GRP) to the hard disk, just find the .GRP file it installed and Open it. This runs a converter that builds Shortcuts for the Start menu. Windows programs will even run from a DOS session under Win95. Type the name of the executable like you would for any DOS program. You can open documents from the DOS session with the start command (just like the Start Menu "Run" command). START MyDocument.doc will run Microsoft Word, and load MyDocument.doc into memory. A handful of Win 3.1 and Win 3.0 programs won't recognize that you have a newer version of Windows, and report an error like, "This program requires Windows 3.1 or better". Well, you have a "Setver" kind of workaround for such programs in Win95; the [Compatibility] section of win.ini. For example, to install Outpost 1.0 on Win95, you can edit win.ini so "INSTALL=00020000" instead of 00040000; that number is a Windows version reporting number. This will make INSTALL.EXE think it's running in Win 3.1. Later on, if the main program acts the same way, you can add entries to win.ini with that version ID that matches Win 3.1. A handful of entries exist already, for known programs. NOTE: Win95 will restore any changes you make to programs called INSTALL or SETUP in the [compatibility] section of win.ini. When you make your changes, do them from sysedit, and not from any other file editor, then run your installer. Win95 instantly changes the entry back to 00040000 after the program finishes installing. There's a cute utility for real dumb Win 3.1 programs; mkcompat.exe, in your Win95 directory. Run this program to turn on compatibility switches to make dumb programs work. This is a last resort, and I'd rather you insist the program's publisher fix it. * 3.4.4.1. ...install and run Windows 3.1 on a system now running Win95? If you installed Win95 in a separate directory (You smart person you), you can do a very cute trick: Hit Start/Shut Down... and "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode". This will take you straight to a DOS prompt. From here, change to your Win 3.1 directory and just type win. This little trick works because Win95 DOS (DOS 7.0) already loaded the necessary himem.sys XMS driver, which is all Win 3.1 really needs to load. Performance will be poor, because there's no disk caching active at this time, and no fancy network stuff will probably work either, because you aren't using Win 3.1's version of IFSHLP. To get these working, check out the tricks used to run MS-DOS games and prepare special PIF files for, what MS calls, "Single mode MS-DOS". Be sure to include the Win 3.1 versions of ifshlp.sys, mscdex, and net start, and Win95 versions of other base drivers such as emm386. Also include lock c: to let 32-bit disk and file access work. * 3.4.4.2. How do I install Win 3.1 fresh in a Win95 system? First, Shut Down, and Re-start the computer in MS-DOS mode. If you have a config.sys or autoexec.bat file (Which you don't need really), copy these to a safe place. Next, insert your Win 3.1 setup disk 1 and run setup.exe from it. This performs a normal Win 3.1 or WFWG 3.11 install. When prompted for your Windows directory location, be EXTRA CAREFUL to use a different directory name than your Win95 installation!!!!!! Next, let Win 3.1 Setup proceed as normally. When it finishes, copy any changed config.sys and autoexec.bat it made up and save them with different file names, and restore the previous versions of these files. Next, return to Win95 by typing exit. Look for win.com in the Win 3.1 directory you installed it in, and right-click on it. Select "Properties". Then use the same techniques I mentioned above for setting up a special PIF file for Single Mode DOS. This way, you can specify a proper Win 3.1 startup sequence and avoid polluting your Win95 configuration. You can also use Win 3.1 versions of ifshlp, net, and mscdex as required. Now, when you launch this version of win.com from Win95, it will re-start your computer using that special configuration. When you exit Win 3.1, Win95 re-starts. * 3.4.5. ...run MS-DOS apps? You can either run a DOS session by hitting Start/Programs/MS-DOS Prompt and run the DOS program from there, or open it from Explorer. If it's a DOS program, Win95 will start a DOS session and load the program into it. NOTE: If you launch a DOS program from Explorer, it will create a PIF file for it (Also called a "Shortcut to MS-DOS Program"). If it can't write to the directory where the program resides, it will write the PIF file to %windir%\pif\. If you want to avoid making four hundred PIF files, run the MS-DOS Prompt first, then run the program within that session. It will use the program properties built into the default PIF (dosprmpt.pif) instead of making one. * 3.4.6. ...run MS-DOS utilities? (Xtree (TM), Norton Utilities (TM), etc) Like any other MS-DOS program, but avoid utilities that do direct disk writes, like DOS versions of SpeedDisk, Norton Disk Doctor, DiskEdit, etc as these won't work in DOS sessions, because Win95 won't let you perform direct disk writes in a DOS session. If you have to run utilities that access the disk directly (like sector editors), you must exit to DOS (Restart computer in MS-DOS mode) and lock the hard drive you will edit (lock c:). This will allow the direct disk access to work. Utilities to avoid include DOS versions of ScanDisk, Defrag, and all their cousins. Win95 comes with Windows version of these utilities that work with long filenames etc, and Peter Norton has Win95 versions of his utilities, too. 4.00.950B users should be extra careful not to use any utilities designed for previous DOS versions. Period. I don't know enough about FAT32 file systems to know what works and what doesn't, so I can't make any suggestions here. * 3.4.7. ...run MS-DOS games? I go into a whole whack of detail on this subject, but to make life real simple, run your games in DOS sessions under Win95, like you would any DOS application. A handful of useful Properties settings to turn on include, "Protected" (Memory tab), "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows" (Program tab/Advanced), "Full Screen" (Display), and "Always Suspend" (Misc). DOS games can work with protected mode CD-ROM, sound, and network drivers easily. All the real mode hooks are there. Basically, you don't need to load any DOS drivers for anything to make a game run. This includes CD-ROM games as these are looking for mscdex hooks to play CD Audio, and these exist in DOS sessions. One user reported that some DOS based Audio CD players won't work, but this is because they're trying to directly access a real mode CD-ROM driver rather than mscdex. The solution was to use a generic CD Audio player that used mscdex instead For more details, jump to the Running MS-DOS Games section. * 3.4.8. ...format and copy disks? Right-click on the floppy drive in "My Computer" and select "Format". To copy disks, right-click on the drive and select "Copy..." Don't forget that right mouse button. NOTE: Win95's smart enough to stop you from copying the new DMF disks (1.8 MB or whatever) and keep you from copying the commercial software that comes on it. So don't ask me how to pirate these disks. * 3.4.9. ...search for files? Explorer has a nifty file find tool built in. Right-click on where you want to start searching and select "Find…". You could also hit Start Menu/Find. You can search your entire computer (including floppy drives and net drives), or a single drive for a file. Type in the filename (or part of the filename) and hit Find. Wildcards (*, ?) are permitted but not required. Don't forget you're dealing with long filenames now, so keep spaces and other non-standard characters in mind. Use filenames in quotes (such as "Long file name for my document.doc") if they have spaces. You can search text within files, search for files with certain dates, certain sizes, even search for computers on a network. To do this, hit the Advanced tab and enter the text you're searching for. You can combine the properties of all three tabs to narrow your search and reduce searching time. * 3.4.10. ...add my own items to the Start Menu? The Start Menu's filled with shortcut files. The easiest way to add an item is to drag an icon on top of the Start button. This creates a shortcut in the root of the Start Menu. If you're a bit more selective on where you want to put the shortcut, right-click on any open Taskbar space and hit Properties. Select "Start Menu Programs" and you can add or remove items. The Shortcut Wizard helps you find the item you want to make a shortcut to. For the ultimate control over the Start Menu, right-click on the Start button and hit Open or Explore, and the drag shortcuts and folders around at will. * 3.4.10.1. The Desktop, Start Menu, and shortcuts The Desktop and Start Menu are directories on your hard drive, filled with .LNK files, or Shortcuts. They may also have regular files in them, but Start Menu items have to be .LNK or .PIF files. If you right-click on the Start button, you can Open the Start Menu like any other disk directory and move stuff around. NOTE on .LNK, .PIF, and .URL files: Win95 hides these extensions always, regardless of your "Hide all extensions" settings. If you want to change such an extension you'll need to do so from a DOS prompt. * 3.4.11. ...change my display resolution? Right-click on any empty Desktop space and select "Properties". You can change the wallpaper, screen saver, appearance of windows, and display mode. If you change display resolution without changing the colour depth, Win95 will re-size the desktop and ask you if it's OK to use it. If you change the display's colour depth (like 8-bit to 16-bit for example) Win95 will restart. Many advanced display drivers (such as ATI's DirectX Drivers) will add extra tabs to this properties sheet. Take advantage of them. Still others (like Diamond's S3 drivers) will let you change display depth (number of colours) without rebooting. Unlike Win 3.1 drivers however, these utilities use hooks in Win95 set aside by Microsoft for this purpose. Get a proper Win95 display driver to take advantage without damaging your system. * 3.4.12. ...change my display driver? In Display Properties, select the settings tab. Hit the "Change Display Type" button. This will let you change the video driver and monitor driver. * 3.4.13. ...disable the "Full window drag" feature of MS Plus? Microsoft Plus' "Display Enhancements" are a bit of a processor hog. You can turn off the Full Window Drag by hitting the "Plus" tab in Display Properties, and just turning it off. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.5. Some MS-DOS utilities are missing. Where can I get them? You might be looking for qbasic or some other item from DOS 6 missing here. These are available on the CD-ROM version. They're in \other\oldmsdos\, and you'll find a batch file that will copy them to your %windir%\command\ directory. After a reboot they'll be available. You need to reboot because these are direct copies of DOS 6.22 programs, and the batch file SETVER's them to that version. If you installed Win95 on top of old DOS, your DOS directory will still be in your path, and you can run the old DOS utilities without having to install them from the CD-ROM. Setup already added them to the SETVER table. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.6. Should I buy these new fancy utilities for Win95? * 3.6.1. ...Norton Navigator (TM) ? If you used Norton Desktop you'll instantly miss FileAssist and those cool toys. I suppose it's OK, but a system running Navigator requires more RAM than Win95's Explorer does by itself. Expect additional disk swapping after installing this. New users should just try Explorer for a while first. There's no real point to buying a shell extension when you don't know how to use the default shell. After all, why would Microsoft spend so much time developing this interface, only to have you buy enhancements for it? Such shell extenders are really for power users only. * 3.6.2. ...uninstallers? A must-have, if you run many old Win 3.1 programs. Make sure you obtain a Designed for Windows 95 version; Win 3.1 uninstallers don't recognize the Registry, where Win95 stores most of its configuration info. Be very careful of installing Win95 programs with such an uninstaller active. Designed for Win95 apps include their own uninstaller, and if you use the utility's uninstaller instead of the program's own, the uninstaller can remove more than it's supposed to. It could also remove less. CleanSweep 95 (TM), for example, warns you to this effect. Heed that warning! The publishers of uninstallers are preying on the fear of new Win95 users that they HAVE to use a "professional uninstaller" for even Designed for 95 apps. Get serious. If a program can't uninstall itself it doesn't deserve the logo. Complain to them, or to Microsoft, who awarded the logo rights to them. * 3.6.3. ...anti-virus programs? Again, Designed for Windows 95 is the key. Otherwise, run the anti-virus software outside of Win95. * 3.6.4. ...Microsoft Plus (TM) ? Also a must-have, if you have a fast machine. System Agent makes up most of the purchase price by itself, running maintenance programs like ScanDisk and Defrag unattended. The other cool stuff that comes with it are for power users only, though its web browser will get you started on The Internet with minimal fuss. Later on you can install Netscape Navigator or MS Internet Explorer 2.0, or even NCSA Mosaic like me, to replace this cheap web browser. 4.00.950B users should turn off the DriveSpace 3 and Internet Tools from MS Plus's setup, because the 950B versions are newer (MSIE 3.0 and DriveSpace 3). * 3.6.5. ...RAM compression programs? Yeah right. Build Washboard Abs in three weeks. "I was a 98 pound weakling until I installed SoftRAM 95." RAM compression only works when there's a defined API for accessing data RAM, as there is a defined API for accessing disks, and there is no such thing in Win95. At least, there's no way to regulate how the program accesses any RAM it allocates. Save yourself the hundreds of dollars of invested time and buy more RAM instead. These programs were great for Win 3.1, where they fixed inadequacies in the operating system. Win95 has considerably more horsepower by itself, but it thrives on a 16 MB system for running the big mainstream apps. MS Works 4.0, however, will run on an 8 MB system effortlessly. Try the techniques in Swap file & caching theory to speed up the system and run more programs. If you really need the power to run 100 programs at once, buy a big computer and install Windows NT, which will run all the Win95 apps anyway. Then you'll have no resource limitations, no swap file limitations, in fact, no DOS limitations. * 3.6.6. ...crash-proofing utilities? Fear mongering fuels the sales of utilities that promise to keep your system crash-proof. Here's my own analysys of some of their claims: 1. "Stops programs from crashing so you can save your work." OK, I can buy this one. Only trouble is, what state is your work in during mid-crash? 2. "Warns you in advance of HD failures." So can ScanDisk if you run it daily (Buy MS Plus for 1/2 the price of some of these utilities and get a lot more!) 3. "Takes the risk out of adding new programs and cards." So does the Designed for Windows 95 logo. Speaking of which, how many of these crash-proofing utilities bear the logo? I can count them without any fingers. :-) 4. "Your personal 24-hour a day expert." Just read this FAQ and others. I can also refute a lot of these claims with two words: "Broken Computer." If your computer is in such a state that it's constantly crashing, your HD's failing, and you can't add new cards or software, it's probably broken. A visit to your service centre with warranty slip in hand will probably cost a lot less than one of these packages. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.7. Top ten mistakes running Windows 3.x programs 10. Installing a Win 3.1 uninstaller 9. Installing a Win 3.1 communications program (replacing Win95 COMM.DRV) 8. Installing a Win 3.1 utility pack 7. USING a Win 3.1 utility pack 6. Installing a Win 3.1 app that replaces core system files 5. Installing a Win 3.1 backup program, especially since Win95 backup programs are here for FREE 4. Installing Norton Desktop for Win 3.1 and expecting it to work 3. Installing a RAM compression program for Win95 2. Installing a RAM compression program for Win 3.1 1. USING a RAM compression program for Win 3.1 ------------------------------ Subject: 3.8. Top ten mistakes running MS-DOS programs and games 10. Loading ctmmsys.sys (SB16 driver) in Win95 because a game manual said to do it 9. Loading mscdex.exe in Win95 because a game manual said to do it 8. Making a boot disk before realizing how .PIF files work, because a game manual said to do it (I think you get it by now) 7. Installing QEMM 8.0 (or any version) just because you can't get one game to work 6. Adding emm386.exe to config.sys before learning how PIF files work 5. Letting a "techie" friend add emm386.exe (or any other real mode driver) 4. Letting a "techie" friend make your game work before he reads this FAQ 3. Running Norton SpeedDisk 6.0 and forgetting you have long filenames now! 2. Making a boot disk for a game before seeing the "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows" switch, or before specifying a special DOS config for that program 1. Running Win95 with a host of DOS drivers and memory managers. (Get Win95 drivers for your stuff and make Win95 perform like Win95!) Subject: 4. Making your hardware work * 4.1. Device Manager basics * 4.2. Does Plug & Play work on systems without a Plug & Play BIOS? * 4.3. How do I make this card work... + 4.3.1. ...sound card o 4.3.1.1. Sound Blaster (tm), SB Pro, SB16, AWE32 (tm) o 4.3.1.2. Sound Blaster 16 Plug & Play o 4.3.1.3. Clone sound cards listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.1.4. Clone sound cards that need DOS drivers to run o 4.3.1.5. sound card NOT listed with Windows 95 + 4.3.2. ...network card o 4.3.2.1. card listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.2.2. card NOT listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.2.3. Using old ODI drivers with Win95 o 4.3.2.4. Using old NDIS2 drivers with Win95 o 4.3.2.5. Using some DMA network cards on machines with more than 16 MB + 4.3.3. ...scanner card + 4.3.4. ...caching IDE or caching SCSI card + 4.3.5. More on setting DMA properties to make old cards work * 4.4. How do I make this drive work... + 4.4.1. ...CD-ROM drives o 4.4.1.1. Using DOS drivers (Avoid at all costs!) + 4.4.2. …Flash PC card or hardcard for a notebook computer? + 4.4.3. ...tape drives o 4.4.3.1. SCSI tape drives o 4.4.3.2. Non-SCSI tape drives (Floppy, parport, FC-20, whatever) + 4.4.4. ...removable drive * 4.5. How do I make this input device work... + 4.5.1. ...un-listed mouse o 4.5.1.1. How can I use the middle mouse button on Logitech (or similar) mice? + 4.5.2. ...graphics tablet + 4.5.3. ...MIDI keyboard * 4.6. How do I fix hardware conflicts? * 4.7. How do I get a list of what card is using what IRQ? (or whatever) + 4.7.1. Help with devices that use IRQ 2 or IRQ 9 * 4.8. How do I tell Win95 about cards it doesn't have drivers for? * 4.9. Using "Safe Mode" to fix hardware problems * 4.10. Basic ISA Plug & Play theory (Don't bother if you don't like details) * 4.11. Basic PCI Plug & Play theory (Don't bother also) * 4.12. Other PnP theory (SCSI, monitors, printers, PCMCIA, etc) * 4.13. Top ten hardware mistakes ------------------------------ Subject: 4.1. Device Manager basics Right-clicking on "My Computer" and selecting "Properties" brings up a properties sheet for the whole computer, including all hardware. You find the hardware info on the Device Manager tab. Device Manager is Hardware Central on Win95. Because PC hardware is an absolute pain to configure, Win95 tries to show you how your hardware's set up here. To get the settings for a particular piece of hardware, find it in the Device Manager and double-click on it. Hit the "resources" tab to get the list of its settings. Normally you can't modify settings for a particular device, but some drivers let you make changes. Still other drivers will let you make changes that take immediate effect when you hit "OK", without re-starting the computer. Not all devices show up here, however. Only hardware devices with Win95 drivers will appear here. Devices with Win 3.1 drivers, pure software devices (like video codecs or PC speaker sound drivers), and DOS real mode drivers will not show up here. If you use such drivers, Device Manager cannot avoid hardware conflicts. Get Win95 drivers for your stuff, or dump your hardware in favor of devices with Win95 support. Save yourself the headaches. Or just check out How to reserve resources if you just have to use the old stuff. Also, "The Meteor" (http://www.powerup.com.au/~meteor/) took some time to write up a PC hardware FAQ that answers many more questions than this page does. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.2. Does Plug & Play work on systems without a Plug & Play BIOS? Yes it does, amazingly. Win95 will assume the role of PnP manager if your system does not have a PnP BIOS. This is actually advantageous, because BIOS authors haven't gotten the idea down pat yet. Early Award BIOSes, for example, don't work with SB16 PnP boards, or boards with Crystal's CS4232 sound chipset, because these devices have multiple resource needs that these BIOSes can't handle. Other bugs include locating PnP network boards on top of Joystick ports. Whose BIOS does work, then? If you have a board with Intel's Triton chipset, visit www.mrbios.com. Try to get a non-PnP BIOS for your MB if you have troubles. Phoenix and Intel worked pretty close together to straighten it out. AMI's pretty good with modern boards. For Award, get a newer BIOS from your PC's manufacturer. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.3. How do I make this card work... * 4.3.1. ...sound card * 4.3.1.1. Sound Blaster (TM), SB Pro, SB16, AWE32 (TM) Simple. Plug it in and load Win95 drivers, or run Add New Hardware. One thing Win95's really good at finding is original Creative Labs hardware. To make DOS games run in DOS sessions, you might need to change the card's settings to "traditional" settings: I/O port 220-22F, I/O port 388-38B, IRQ 5, DMA 1, DMA 5. Win95 tends to allocate odd resources to SB16s. To avoid this, make sure those resources are available, including freeing them in your BIOS setup if you have such an option. A stock SB16's "Basic Configuration 6" exposes all the SB16's on board hardware, including both DMA channels, the OPL3 synth port, and the MIDI port. * 4.3.1.2. Sound Blaster 16 Plug & Play Plug & Pray is more like it. The PnP manager will have problems configuring this card if its "preferred resources" aren't available. Try to free up the standard I/O, Interrupt, and DMA values a Sound Blaster normally uses: A220, I5, D1, H5 (DMA 5). If you use an Award BIOS be sure to set those resources as "No/ICU" or otherwise available for use. You can hand-edit the resource settings from Device Manager if necessary. Non PnP systems will work with the SB16 PnP card, because Win95 will allocate resources the card can actually use. Whatever you do, do not install Creative's PnP Manager software on a Win95 system. That DOS/Win 3.1 PnP Manager is for systems running good ol' DOS. You will need the DOS PnP Manager for setting up Single Mode DOS programs, where you specify a new DOS configuration for the game, however. Try not to let the PnP manager installer add anything to your Windows directory; you can specify this when you install the PnP Manager by changing the Windows directory choice to "None". NOTE: Creative's newest PnP sound cards come with a whole slew of sound utilities that replicate many of Win95's built-in programs! This is a waste of disk space. For example, you try to use Creative's CD player, you insert an Audio CD, and Win95's CD Player auto-runs. * 4.3.1.3. Clone sound cards listed with Windows 95 Microsoft included quite a list of weird chipsets in Win95's sound support, and most of the Windows Sound System clones offer Sound Blaster emulation in DOS sessions! The list currently includes: * Thunder Boards * Media Vision (Pro Audio Spectrum) * Windows Sound System (Analog Devices 1448 and Compaq (TM) Business Audio) * ESS 688 and 488 * 4.3.1.4. Clone sound cards that need DOS drivers to run Only SB16 class cards actually need "DOS drivers" to operate, or at least, they're the only ones that actually stay resident when you load them. Other cards (Mozart class cards for example) will work with Win95's SB Pro drivers, or Windows Sound System drivers But if you have a card that won't work with SB drivers, or it supposedly requires DOS drivers, here's what to do. I'll use Oak Mozart class cards as an example, as this works perfectly with Mozart cards: 1. Install the card software, and be sure NOT to install Windows support for the card. Just to be sure, back up SYSTEM.INI before installing the software. 2. Reboot the computer, but hit F8 on "Starting Windows 95..." and select "Command Prompt Only". This runs through your normal DOS startup without actually running Win95. 3. Type MEM /C, and compare this module listing with the files in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT that the sound software modified. Do any of the resulting files remain resident? In the case of Mozart class cards, they will not remain resident. If the sound software modified SYSTEM.INI, restore it with the backup you made. 4. If no files remain resident, reboot and let Win95 run. Then install drivers for the SB Pro, or Windows Sound System, depending on what the card emulates. Re-boot and see if sound works. Here's what's happening: The DOS "drivers" load and initialize the sound card. Once this initialization is done, it will operate like a regular SB or WSS card, and you can use Win95 drivers for SB or WSS. This technique also works for CD-ROM support; if you let the sound card "driver" initialize the card, then install Win95 support for whatever CD-ROM card it emulates, it will work without having to load DOS CD-ROM drivers for it. DirectX and 4.00.950B users will want to use this capability, because your sound card manufacturer might've not made DirectSound drivers for that card yet. OPTi's 82C9xx cards for example, DO have Win95 drivers, but don't support DirectSound yet. Using their SNDINIT program, alongside a Sound Blaster Pro DirectSound driver, works around this problem rather nicely. * 4.3.1.5. Sound card NOT listed with Windows 95 Cards not listed with Win95 will 90% work with Microsoft's SB Pro or Windows Sound System drivers. WSS cards will even work with DOS games in DOS sessions, if you enable Sound Blaster emulation. Still other cards, like Crystal's CS4232, do SB emulation in hardware, at the same time as WSS. See the previous section on using initialization "drivers", which will let you use Win95's SB Pro or WSS drivers with your unlisted sound card. * 4.3.2. ...network card? Win95 introduces a new version of Network Device Interface Spec (NDIS) 3.1. NDIS 3.1 allows for PnP events, such as activating network clients when you insert a PCMCIA card. Win95 comes with quite a handful of NDIS 3.1 drivers for many cards, and I'll cover them first. I also go into a whole mess of network stuff in another section. * 4.3.2.1. Net card listed with Windows 95 If a card is listed in Win95's built in driver list, it has an NDIS 3.1 driver. Most of the time, Add New Hardware will detect it and install a driver for it. If not, you can manually add the driver from the list. On occasion, Win95 will goof on its first resource choices, but as it tells you, you can immediately run Device Manager to correct it. Most of the supplied drivers include a DOS (NDIS 2) driver as well as the NDIS 3.1 driver. This driver lets you run the card in Single Mode DOS by typing net start redir or net start nwredir from a DOS prompt. * 4.3.2.2. Net card NOT listed with Windows 95 Of course, no hardware maker should be in the DOS box business these days without Win95 drivers. Check with them first. Otherwise, Win95 will use NDIS 2.0 or ODI drivers if you're stuck. Both options sit below. * 4.3.2.3. Using old ODI drivers with Win95 Life stinks sometimes; too many card makers believe only Novell does PC networks. Ahh well. Real mode ODI drivers will work with Win95 protected mode protocols and drivers, as Novell designed ODI to work with NDIS protocols and clients. You need three real mode TSRs to use a network card with an ODI driver: LSL.COM (Comes with the net card) The net card driver itself (Referred to as an MLID) ODIHLP.EXE (Comes with Win95) You also need to install the "Existing ODI driver" using Add New Hardware, or Network control panel. Adding the "Existing ODI Driver" will install odihlp.exe, needed to link the real mode ODI drivers with NDIS 3.1. Finally, you need to write a net.cfg file for the ODI support. NDIS on top of ODI only works with Ethernet and Token-Ring (If you know of others please tell me!) ArcNet will not work in this configuration, but Win95 comes with a generic ArcNet driver for NDIS 3.1. You also need to specify all the frame types your adapter type can handle, for example: link driver 3c5x9 frame ethernet_802.2 frame ethernet_802.3 frame ethernet_snap frame ethernet_ii Some NDIS protocols require the weird frame types. In particular, TCP/IP requires ETHERNET_II. Copy this net.cfg to the same directory where you keep lsl.com and the net card driver itself (Stick them in your Win95 directory for convenience). * 4.3.2.4. Using old NDIS2 drivers with Win95 Like ODI support, Win95 will use real mode NDIS 2.0 drivers as well, but this eats significant amounts of conventional memory; even more than ODI drivers use! To use an NDIS 2.0 driver, you use Add New Hardware as before, and tell it where to find the NDIS 2 driver. You can configure the card like any other NDIS 3.1 card, but Win95 will add this line to autoexec.bat: net start This will load the DOS protocol manager and the xxxxx.dos net card driver into conventional memory. When win.com loads, it will load the NDIS 2 protected mode helper and start the network. NDIS 2 driver info will appear in The Registry, and should also appear in protocol.ini for compatibility. You can hand-edit protocol.ini as you normally would for NDIS 2 drivers, and Win95 will apply these changes the next time it re-starts. Some NDIS 2 drivers exist in \drivers\netcard on the Win95 CD-ROM, so check there if you don't see your card listed. Also check out Microsoft's Win95 driver library. * 4.3.2.5. Using some DMA net cards on machines with more than 16 MB memory Some token-ring cards and maybe a few Ethernet cards need to use an ISA DMA channel to off-load CPU time. If your computer has more than 16 MB memory, it can hang the computer, because Win95 will attempt to DMA into memory that the net card can't reach. ISA slots only have 24 address lines (to access 16 MB). To make these cards work, run Device Manager and find the "Direct Memory Access Controller" driver in System Devices. In its settings, turn on "Allow DMA into first 16 MB only". This switch will also work for other DMA devices in case the driver doesn't already account for this. * 4.3.3. ...scanner card? If you own an HP scanner you're in luck; HP designed Win95 versions of their TWAIN scanner interface software. Download it from http://www.hp.com/. HP's TWAIN currently depends on Advanced SCSI Programming Interface, so you need a Win95 driver for your SCSI host adapter to use it. Non-SCSI scanners can work with the Win 3.1 software provided for it, but try to avoid loading real mode scanner drivers just to make your cheap hand scanner work. Don't waste your time. It may be possible to find a Win95 TWAIN driver for your non-SCSI scanner; ask the manufacturer. Check out Epson's home page (http://www.epson.com) for Win95 versions of TWAIN for their Action Scanner and ES series scanners. These support their SCSI and Parallel Port scanners. Again you'll need a Win95 driver for your SCSI card, as Epson's TWAIN requires ASPI as well. 4.00.950B users can take advantage of the Imaging components that come with it. These components include "thunk" layers between 16-bit scanners and 32-bit apps, and a simple image editor that uses your scanner. * 4.3.4. ...caching IDE or caching SCSI card? Promise Technology (http://www.promise.com/techsupp.html) has Win95 versions of its Caching IDE host adapter drivers, so be sure to grab them. Tekram (http://www.tekram.com/drivers/) will also have drivers for its IDE caching adapter, but the SCSI caching adapter should work with Adaptec 1540 drivers if they didn't get around to writing Win95 SCSI drivers yet. Most of the time, the standard IDE drivers will work with caching IDE cards, though they won't take advantage of the card's cache. If you do manage to get a Win95 caching IDE driver, try to set Win95's own cache to bare minimum (384 KB) so you make good use of your controller's cache instead. Edit your system.ini's [vcache] section: [vcache] maxfilecache=384 Then it will almost solely rely on the controller's cache and free up valuable memory for your programs. * 4.3.5. More on setting DMA properties to make old cards work While Win95 will honor settings you make in system.ini for things like DMABufferSize, I tend to prefer keeping system.ini clean to ease troubleshooting. In Device Manager, find the "Direct Memory Access Controller" in System Devices. Here you may specify the DMA buffer size and wether or not Win95 will allow DMA above the 16 MB memory area. This switch is for hardware that uses ISA DMA to directly access memory, but prevents the device from trying to DMA into memory above 16 MB (the limit of the 24 address lines on the ISA bus). This switch will not affect VESA or PCI Bus Master devices, as they don't require ISA DMA channels. NOTE: A Win95 driver for an ISA DMA device should be smart enough not to try to DMA into memory above 16 MB by design. For example, SCSI drivers written by Adaptec and sound card drivers will allocate buffers below 16 MB regardless of how you set these switches. As a result you shouldn't have to mess with them. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.4. How do I make this drive work... * 4.4.1. CD-ROM drives I know of three classes of CD-ROM devices in Win95: IDE: These work off standard IDE adapters if you have Win95 drivers for the IDE cards. Just plug and play, like you're supposed to. No fancy CD-ROM controller drivers. And yes, you CAN use an IDE CD-ROM and hard drive on the same cable, and still get 32-bit access on both devices. The IDE miniport driver takes care of the gory details. CD-ROM drives alone on a secondary adapter must be a Master drive; ATAPI spec demands there be a Master device on each IDE adapter to work properly. Grab Microsoft's IOS.VXD Update (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/iosupd.exe) if you're having trouble playing videos etc off an IDE CD-ROM. SCSI: Win95 works best with SCSI-II CD-ROM drives, regardless of your host adapter type. Just get Win95 drivers for the SCSI card and let ASPI find it. CD-ROM Jukeboxes even work quite well, though some SCSI-I jukeboxes will have troubles. Otherwise, PnP works well here, too. SCSI is the way to go for many such devices in the same computer. There's an update for some CD-ROM Jukeboxes (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/cdchnger.exe) available if you have troubles. Proprietary: These include the Mitsumi, Sony CDU-3xx, Matsushita (Panasonic/AT) interfaces. These require a CD-ROM miniport driver specially designed for the card and the drive combination you have! For example: You can't use a TEAC CD-ROM with a SB Pro CD-ROM card driver; you have to use a TEAC driver designed for the SB Pro card and TEAC drive. Proprietary interfaces include those built into sound cards; most of the time they emulate one of these three proprietary CD-ROM cards, and you can use a Win95 driver. * 4.4.1.1. Using DOS CD-ROM drivers (Avoid at all costs!) You only need to use a DOS CD-ROM driver if you exit Win95. This includes the "Restart Computer in DOS mode" option, where you can't play a game in a DOS session under Win95. Look here in FAQ page 12 for details on how to do this properly. If you find you need a DOS CD-ROM driver to use the drive in Win95, then the drive's broken. See the dealer or manufacturer to get it fixed or get a Win95 driver for it. I find that real mode CD-ROM drivers in Win95 are very unreliable. * 4.4.2. ...Flash PC card or hardcard for a notebook computer? To make the Flash card work, just insert it! Provided you installed Win95 drivers for your notebook's PC card slots, it will mount it and assign a drive letter to it. To make Win95 support PC cards in protected mode, run the PC Card control panel. The first time you run this, it offers to install 32-bit support. Let it do so! It will also remove any real mode and Win 3.1 drivers it recognizes, but for weird PC card software you might need to do some trimming afterwards. Just hide or delete your DOS startup files, and trim off any unusual entries in system.ini. File system notes: PC card users told be about some third-party Flash file systems that require DOS PC card drivers to use. I'd just say, don't waste your time with these non-standard file systems and use good ol' FAT. * 4.4.3. tape drives Microsoft's backup program only works with cheap tape devices, like the floppy port and parallel port tape drives. If you have one of these then just use the built in backup program. For other kinds of drives, see below. * 4.4.3.1. SCSI tape drives Colorado Memory Systems, who wrote the MS Backup for Win95, was kind enough to release a version that works with more tape devices. Download Colorado Backup and install it, for a Win95 tape drive subsystem that supports SCSI tape drives. Get excellent speed and reliability with this software and SCSI tape drives. Adaptec includes tape backup software with EZ-SCSI 4.0. It is a veritable clone of HP's Colorado Backup for Win95. * 4.4.3.2. Non-SCSI tape drives (Floppy, parport, FC-20, whatever) If you own a Colorado non-SCSI tape drive, Download Colorado Backup 1.51. Version 1.51 also handles TRAVAN parallel port drives and floppy based drives attached to an FC-10 or FC-20 controller card. Non-Colorado customers should ask their manufacturer for Win95 versions of their software. For example: Arcada (http://www.arcada.com/ds-win95.htm) supports Conner floppy-based tape drives. The reason behind this is Colorado's tape drivers will FIND non-Colorado drives, but the backup program will blatantly ignore them. Ahh... what do you want for free? Conner also has a basic Win 3.1 version of Backup EXEC patched to support Win95 long filenames and Registry back-ups; check with your tape drive dealer for a free update. Microsoft's built in back-up program works with old cheap QIC-40 and QIC-80 class devices attached to a floppy port or parallel port, and you won't really get a performance boost with third-party software here anyway. * 4.4.4. ...removable drive? SCSI is your best, and in some cases, your only choice for removable drives. Just get a good Win95 compatible SCSI adapter and you can pick & choose between many optical, SyQuest, floptical, whatever... drives. The SCSI driver will find and mount any such devices it finds, though some disks require partitioning. You can't partition removable disks using FDISK, but Adaptec released their EZ-SCSI software for Win95, which includes a removable disk partitioner. EZ-SCSI 4.0 will work on pretty much any SCSI adapter, because Win95 has ASPI support built in. Non-Adaptec owners can buy it. Adaptec's WFDISK (Windows disk partitioner) for Win 3.1 will work too, as it uses ASPI. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.5. How do I make this input device work... * 4.5.1. ...unlisted mouse? Use the Standard mouse driver. Win95 has three standard drivers for three different mouse ports; serial, PS/2, and Bus. The Bus Mouse driver will work with mice plugged into an ATI Graphics Ultra card. Since no one designs mice for something other than these three connectors, you're probably better off getting a replacement mouse if it doesn't work with Win95. For $10.00 you can find a good serial mouse. * 4.5.1.1. How can I use the middle mouse button on Logitech (or similar) mice? Win95 supports the third button as long as the mouse driver does. Use Logitech's latest mouse driver (7.1) for Win95 to enable third mouse button support. However, the applications need to LOOK for it. Currently, the only Win95 app that uses the middle button is DOOM95 by id Software. * 4.5.2. ...graphics tablet? Both SummaGraphics (http://www.summagraphics.com/ftpinfo/ftpinfo.html) and CalComp (http://www.calcomp.se/ftp-e.htm) have Win95 versions of the WINTAB interface, for their tablets. For other tablets you should see about switching them to emulate a Summa or CalComp tablet, or check with your manufacturer. As more pointing device makers write Windows NT support, Win95 support will increase. Many tablets work alongside of mice; when you move the mouse, motion is relative, and when you move the tablet motion is absolute, depending on the range of tablet you calibrated your screen to. * 4.5.3. ...MIDI keyboard? Load a Win95 driver for your MIDI interface, and use the same Win 3.1 software you used before, to record your MIDI keystrokes and other events. Win95's Sound Blaster drivers support MIDI through the joystick port, and MPU 401 compatible cards will work with the MPU 401 driver. Microsoft also included an MT-32 driver. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.6. How do I fix hardware conflicts? Device Manager is your best tool for resolving conflicts. To run Device Manager, right-click on "My computer" and hit "Properties", then hit the Device Manager tab. Any device that failed to start will have a (!) identifier with it, indicating some kind of failure. Bringing up properties for that device will go into the details. If your card causes a hardware conflict, you can adjust its settings with the Resources tab. If your card uses jumpers, you will need to power off the computer and adjust them, before the device will work. If it is a software configurable device, adjusting the resources may allow the device to start up without having to re-start the computer. Sound cards often react like this. You might have a resource conflict with a real-mode driver, or a Win 3.1 driver. These you can't resolve using Device Manager, but you can tell Device Manager to reserve resources for such devices. Double-click on "Computer" in Device Manager, and you can view all resources in use, or reserve resources for non-Win95 drivers.