Happy 18th Birthday, Windows 95!

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Boy! If this doesn’t make a person feel old, nothing will. If you are old enough to remember the days of using Windows 3.xx and then all of a sudden, with the release of Windows 95, everything changed forever in the world of personal computing. Happy 18th birthday Windows 95!! :cool:
 
I have fond memories of windows 95. We did not own a computer till before 98 came out but I had used plenty of windows 95 computers. I recall all the games it had, like Ski Free and Chip's Challenge. I think it was a Microsoft addon pack that most vendors installed by default. Bowep I think it was called, part of MIcrosoft Plus I think?
 
I was at a midnight release event at a store that eventually became a Fry's (wasn't my idea). Huge improvement but Windows still sucked until Windows NT 4.0.
 
I still have my Windows 95 OSR CD.. labled "with USB Support" which looks like this..

95C_OSR_2.5.1.JPG


Windows 95 came on 13 floppies, 7 more than Windows 3.1. But you also needed the DOS floppies as well to load Win3.1 up that weren't needed for Win95.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I have fond memories of windows 95. We did not own a computer till before 98 came out but I had used plenty of windows 95 computers. I recall all the games it had, like Ski Free and Chip's Challenge. I think it was a Microsoft addon pack that most vendors installed by default. Bowep I think it was called, part of MIcrosoft Plus I think?
Click to expand...

Microsoft Best of Entertainment (Bowep was the Directory) :D

Tetris, Pipedream, Jezzball, so many hours lost. I was playing it on Win 3.1 on my old 386 that I had to *Gasp* Share with the family. :D
 
Showbiz said:
Microsoft Best of Entertainment (Bowep was the Directory) :D

Tetris, Pipedream, Jezzball, so many hours lost. I was playing it on Win 3.1 on my old 386 that I had to *Gasp* Share with the family. :D
Click to expand...

I have a sudden urge to play those games now, I'm sure I can probably find them online. :D
 
In those days I was still a loyal Macintosh user, and remember laughing at all the 'new' and 'innovative' features.

I also remember getting a call that night to rescue a couple friends who's car wouldn't start after they got their midnight copies.

4 years later I switched to PC's and haven't looked back since. :eek:
 
if you haven't modified your later model W's Startup Wav to the W's 95 Startup Wav, you're doing it wrong
 
Ahhh, had it on 1.6 GB HDD thinking how on earth will I ever fill that baby up.
 
Bought my copy of Win 95 with a 4x Creative Labs CD-ROM drive. A dramatic improvement over the 1x off-label drive I had at the time that was flaky as hell.

I guess I would've been ten at the time. Fuck, man. Ten!
 
Okay. I was never really a "Friends" watcher (check that, I've NEVER watched "Friends"). And that video was so painful to watch I had to turn it off.
 
I still have a machine, an old Celeron machine, that I booted up last week that runs 95. I can't believe it still works and am afraid to really touch it, if I break it at this point its not getting fixed LOL. God it was weird playing with it.
 
I had a Packard Bell 486SX 33mhz with 4mb of ram, a 120mb HDD, parallel zip drive, and a 1x Sony cd-rom running Win 3.11. I was so sad that Windows 95 would not complete installation (after loading a billion floppies) stating (if I remember correctly) not having enough memory :mad:. Those were the days...
 
I remember the Microsoft ad push in Toronto, I was working the Exhibition as a food court slave and got a good view of the huge Win95 banner they unfurled down the side of the CN Tower. I was 19 then, that was literally a lifetime ago.
 
Boy does time fly. I was in the USAF for 9 years at that point. I had an AST 486DX 33. I think I also had 4MB of RAM, CD ROM drive, etc. I don't recall the HDD size, but I do remember that it came with 2MB of RAM and I spent BIG money to get another 2MB stick of RAM.
 
I was but a wee lad when I first saw files fly from one file folder to the other during install, and later during a copy/move. Install was from multiple floppies, of course.

Magical.

Nowadays I don't mind using Windows 8.1 at all but it does signal the end of the Windows 9x (desktop) era. I rather use OS X as a desktop but that too is coming to an end as well.

Steve Ballmer quit and Steve Jobs died... truly the end of the PC era has arrived. Windows 3.1/9x NEVAR FORGET!
 
I was one of the poor souls working contract at Microsoft supporting the general public for Windows 95 and Plus! on release day.

Supporting the BETA for a month first was a breeze. Then came the general public who ignored and clicked past every warning imaginable that told them exactly what was going to happen if they didn't pay attention to take care of what was flagged first...intermixed with the occasional question of what music artist was in the videos on the install CD.

I'll never forget the bug I opened after a guy typed a ridiculous value into the font size option that affected the start button that would only go to 75 point font using the scroll buttons, but would take up to 999 when typed.

The Start button took up the whole screen, even in safe mode. Took 45 minutes to fix using nothing but keyboard strokes on a screen where the guy couldn't see the results of anything we were doing, until it was fixed. Those were the days...
 
Wow, I watched the first half of their "cyber sitcom" with Friends stars and was amazed by this Start button and how it seems to be the hub of all the interactions. Where did that amazing feature go ? /snark
 
Terminus said:
Nowadays I don't mind using Windows 8.1 at all but it does signal the end of the Windows 9x (desktop) era. I rather use OS X as a desktop but that too is coming to an end as well.
Click to expand...

I don't see the end of the desktop coming in our lifetimes, there's simply too much need and demand for it. That said the desktop is in decline and is being replaced very quickly by tablet and touch experiences for many average users. I could see Windows 9 coming in variants that don't have a desktop and are purely Metro. That probably what Windows RT will evolve into.
 
Chas said:
Okay. I was never really a "Friends" watcher (check that, I've NEVER watched "Friends"). And that video was so painful to watch I had to turn it off.
Click to expand...
Remember when Jobs said that Microsoft had no taste? That was in 1996.

If anyone was surprised by that comment, they really shouldn't have been.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't see the end of the desktop coming in our lifetimes, there's simply too much need and demand for it. That said the desktop is in decline and is being replaced very quickly by tablet and touch experiences for many average users. I could see Windows 9 coming in variants that don't have a desktop and are purely Metro. That probably what Windows RT will evolve into.
Click to expand...

People seem to completely forget the buisness world... we need PC's, period.
 
Did I really just watch that video? I have literally lost brain cells watching that for 9+ minutes of my life.
 
I remember installing Windows 95 and pretending to read through the EULA because my parents were watching me.
 
Good thread...great memories, even though I came close to BSOD-induced suicide many, many times.
 
I'm glad this video, unlike the original, could be stopped without pulling the power plug.

Why the hell would a company put an obscenely long mandatory you just installed our software (again) video....?
 
MrGuvernment said:
People seem to completely forget the buisness world... we need PC's, period.
Click to expand...

Microsoft seems to have completely forgotten the business world. I don't know of any workplace that's seriously considering moving to Windows 8. At my workplace we're finally getting rid of XP and switching to - you guessed it - Windows 7. People have actually come up to the IT helpdesk and personally thanked us for not choosing Windows 8 :eek:

Windows 8 is simply not meant for productivity. It's meant for consumption. The strange thing is that Microsoft is/was primarily an enterprise/business oriented company.
 
Still have 2 Win95 CD disc version unopened here, along with the floppy disk drive option for those that didn't own a 8x CD ROM back then. :D
 
:D The start sound of Windows 95 still gives me a warm feeling. :cool:

I remember having to make a boot disc, modify autoexec.bat and config.sys for gaming in DOS. Oh, my 13" Packard Bell Monitor!

For Windows 95, you still needed to know your way around DOS. Man, computing was so much fun back then.
 
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