Would Windows 3.11 install on a P4 3Ghz w/1gb ram?

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AlienRobotBoy

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I'm reformatting and have an unopened Windows 3.11 box I got from work a few years back. Out of crazy boredomness i'm thinking about installing these fresh 31/2 floppies in my P4 box. What kind of errors should i look forward to? Will it even boot?

P4 3Ghz
1gb DDR 400
128 Radeon 9800pro
Sony DVD
Sony DVD-RW
3com NIC
 
Well you'll have no working video driver, DVD support, and probably no nic support.

Windows default display driver may work.
 
Post pics of the system with a shot of the monitor with Windows3.1 on the screen fully visible. I wanna see this!
 
Interesting. I'd see no reason it wouldn't work. I highly doubt you will get any type of sound or nice visuals out of it though, or internet, or much of anything. But hey, thats what Windows 3.1 was anyways :)

In any case, why not just install your normal OS, and just use VMWare to tinker with 3.1?
 
No plug and play support and no USB support. You would need individual drivers specifically for Windows 3.11 for any special features. Setting up a sound card in DOS is quite possibly the funnest thing in existence.

The good part is that even though you would be limited to VESA (video) and Sound-Blaster compatible type emulation. Today cards are so much more powerful, they would probably blow away old Matrox and Voodoo cards from back then that actually had specific drivers.

Personally I found WIndows 3 to be completey useless back then. I think I used Wordperfect and that was about it.


Oh, one more thing...did Windows 3.11 recognize FAT32? You may be limited to certain size partitions...but not sure.
 
Before you go and try to install Win 3.1, you will need to install a version of DOS first. I would think you would need DOS 5 at the minimum. If you don't have that to begin with, you are SOL before you start. Remember, Win 3.1 was really nothing more than a glorified menu program that ran on top of DOS.

 
SmokeRngs said:
Before you go and try to install Win 3.1, you will need to install a version of DOS first. I would think you would need DOS 5 at the minimum. If you don't have that to begin with, you are SOL before you start. Remember, Win 3.1 was really nothing more than a glorified menu program that ran on top of DOS.

Click to expand...

Hell ya. Best Program Windows 3.1 had: Battle Chess. And that's all I ever used it for. Other than that, it was DOS 6.X all the way.
 
You couldnt install any drivers what so ever because the drivers do not support windows 3.1 (the video card drivers etc etc) plus it would be slow wouldnt it cause it cant access 1gb of ram cause it dosnt know what it is (like Xp can access alot cause of the driver updates) I dont see how it would work basicly Windows 3.1 dosnt know the hardware to ru n it.

:confused: :confused: :
 
Just go down to the Salvation Army and buy an old 386 that has it on for $5.
 
I just recently installed it on a PIII 1 Ghz laptop, and it ran okay. As mentioned, driver support was non-existent, but it ran okay.
 
You may have more luck and a more pleasurable experience running it from a virtual PC. That should almost eliminate any hassles with having to use fat 16 or fat 32. I would think it would reduce the driver hassles too. The virtual PC should emulate your basic Intel box.
 
I tried it a few months back, downloaded 3.11 off of MSDN and tried to load it on a 3 ghz and it just didnt work.. go figure. :p
 
Well isn't there a Ghz limit on 98 (like 5ghz or something), so I guess there is one on 3.1 also, unless it is/was removed.
 
DragonNOA1 said:
Well isn't there a Ghz limit on 98 (like 5ghz or something), so I guess there is one on 3.1 also, unless it is/was removed.
Click to expand...

The only thing I can remember about that was with shutdowns. I believe that Windows would not wait long enough to shut down when speeds got to a certain point. What this would do is not allow the hard drives enough time to get the data in the buffer written to the hard drive before the system was powered down.

I don't think it happened in every instance and there was a fix for this if I remember correctly.

 
i did do a full install on a 450mhz p2 a while back and i had all the drivers for everything, it was rea;;y fast and i was loving ie 5.5 on it... i kinda miss the speed really im not kidding it booted up in about 3 seconds and that 64mb of ram made it blaze.
 
well dos installed without any problems but floppy 3 for win 3.11 came up with an emm386 error and wouldn't continue.

The install was incredibly quick up until that point - took less than 10 minutes. I installed win98 after that and, holy shit, done in less than 15 minutes! - bunch of missing drivers and it only recognized 512mb of ram for some reason but it was smoking fast!
 
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