Window's 95 Frequently Asked Questions Return to Win95NET What is Windows 95? Windows 95 is Microsoft's new 32 bit Pre-emptive multitasking operating system. For a more detailed description, click here. When will I be able to buy Windows 95? Windows 95 is now available for purchase, World wide. How much does Windows 95 cost? The upgrade which requires Windows 3.x, WFW, Windows NT, or OS/2 will have a street price $89.95. The full product, which does not require an existing operating system, will have a retail price of under $200. The Plus! Pack add-on will have a retail price of $39.99. What is the difference between the upgrade and the full version? Other than price, there is no difference. The upgrade simply has an extra routine in the setup program which checks your hard drive for Win 3.x, WFW, NT, or OS/2 to see if you qualify for the upgrade. If you are installing to a empty hard drive, you can use disk 1 of a qualifying product to prove your eligibility. Is there any difference between the diskette and CD release? Other than a few extra multimedia samples and accessories on the CD, the two are basically identical. If you bought the disk version, you can download the extras included on the CD free, by clicking here. After all this Windows bashing I've been seeing in the media, should I even bother installing it? YES! Don't listen to the media, they are expecting a perfect product from Microsoft and their not going to get it. Nothing is perfect and neither is Windows 95, but it is an excellent product, moving well beyond my expectations. Now that Windows 95 has been released, what will happen to OS/2? OS/2 will never die, but will also never be able to compete with Win 95, mainly because of the lack of software for OS/2. How much RAM is required to run Windows 95? The absolute minimum is 4 MB, and despite what you may have heard, Windows 95 will run happily with only 4 megs, but it is recommended you have at least 8. You will notice a major boost in performance with 16 Megs of RAM. Will Windows 95 run on my 286? No, Windows 95 is a 32 bit os and requires a 32 bit processor. You will need a 386 based computer to run Win 95. Will Windows 95 work on my 386DX based system with 4MB of RAM? Yes. I have loaded pre-release copies of Win95 on such a machine and it runs Win 3.x 16 bit apps only slightly slower than they run natively. Although Win95 runs a lot better than OS/2 Warp with 4 MB RAM, it is recommended that you have at least 8 megs if you plan on doing any heavy multitasking. How much disk space will I need to install Win 95? Typical installations take 50-55 MB of hard disk space, for a full install you will need 80 MB. The bare minimum is 20 Megs. Will Windows 95 run all my old 16 bit apps? Yes, Windows 95 is fully backward compatible with Windows 3.1 and so you should have no problems running most of your Win 3.x applications. I just went out and bought Win95, and I'm having trouble getting it installed. The tech support lines are always busy, is there any other way to get support? If your question isn't answered in this FAQ, try the various windows newsgroups or try #Windows95 in IRC where there are always many people to answer your questions. Also, you can post a message to the Win95-NET Message Board When installing Windows 95, should I start fresh, installing Windows 95 in its own directory or should I install it over my existing windows? I would recommend installing over your existing windows, but you can do it either way. Keep in mind however, if you install Windows 95 in a new directory you will have to reinstall most of your existing windows programs which have stored needed files in your windows directory(ini files, DLL's, etc.). But if you don't mind doing this, Win95 will probably run more efficiently if you install fresh. How can I learn the basics of Windows 95? Click on the Start button and go to Help, if you installed it, you will find an on-line users guide. If you didn't, go to Settings-Control Panel-Add New Programs and click on the Windows Setup tab, you can the choose the on-line manual from the list and install it. Ok, I've got Win95 installed but it's not performing as well as I had hoped. Is there anything I can do to increase performance? Windows 95 is pretty much self optimizing, so there isn't much you can do short of buying more memory. First of all open the Control Panel, and double-click on the System icon. Once the System applet is opened, click on the performance tab and Win95 will give you suggestions on what you can do to increase performance. Also try defragmenting your hard drive(s) using the included defragmentation utility(Programs-Accessories-System Tools). This will greatly increase disk performance. When I go to the System applet in the Control Panel it tells me I have less RAM then I really have. Why does it do this? This is because you are loading 16 bit drivers in your config.sys and autoexec.bat which is probably not necessary because Win95 includes 32 bit drivers for most everything. You can delete you config.sys and autoexec.bat unless you have a special video driver or something which must be loaded. The only other program you might want to load in your config.sys/autoexec.bat would be doskey. DO NOT load smartdrv! It will slow down your system and use up valuable memory, Windows 95 includes a disk caching utility built in to the operating system, so smartdrv is not necessary. I want to connect to the Internet using Win95's built in TCP/IP Stack and I cant connect properly. Any suggestions? This is a to complex a subject to explain in this FAQ but there are several other pages explaing this. Try Configuring TCP/IP in Windows 95 by Barry Barr, The Windows 95 TCP/IP Setup HOW-TO/FAQ by Xima and WINHUQ by Steve Jenkins. Why can't I run 32 Bit Winsock clients with Trumpet winsock on Windows 95? Isn't Windows 95 a 32 bit operating system? You can't run 32 bit clients with a 16 bit TCP/IP stack(such as Trumpet Winsock). You must either use the TCP/IP stack included with Win95 or a different 32 bit stack. Does Windows 95 come with any Internet clients? Yes it comes with a 32 bit FTP client, Telnet client, ping client, and a route tracer. These can be found in your windows directory as FTP.EXE, TELNET.EXE, PING.EXE, and TRACERT.EXE respectively. How do I get Win 95 to boot up to DOS by default? Change the line BootGUI=1 in your msdos.sys file to BootGUI=0 How do I change the icon of "My Computer"? Open the Registry(REGEDIT.EXE in your \WINDOWS directory) and search (Edit/Find) for My Computer. Once you find it, open subkey Default Icon and modify its vaule to read, file, N, where file is the complete path of the icon (ico, dll, or exe) and N is the icon number (Remember, the first icon is 0, not 1). Why can't I get the Volume Control utility included with Win95 to work with my sound card? You have to install one of the sound drivers included with Windows 95 or a Win95 specific driver for your sound card. The Sound Blaster driver included with Win95 should work fine with SB compatibles. To install the driver go to Control Panel-Add New Hardware and answer no when it asks you if you want to auto-detect hardware, then go to Creative Labs-Sound Blaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have any questions that haven't been answered here, please tell me. I would like to make this FAQ as complete as possible. Also please send me any comments, suggestions, credit card numbers, etc.