Old icons from windows 3.11 and 95 still on Windows 7!

By Digitalfox
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lunarworks

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There are plenty of venerable and RELIABLE banking or medical applications that have been designed decades ago and are still happily running today.

When I see my bank account manager, he uses some sort of Borland C++ 3.1 built application on top of a desktop running XP

As I said: Why can he not keep running XP for his legacy apps? It's "reliable" too, and if he's still happy with his reliable decades old apps, that's reason enough to not get rid of XP. Even if his IT department forces him into a new Windows 7 desktop, virtual machines are a readily-available and good solution. (Why Microsoft can't create a seamless VM for legacy apps like Apple did, I don't know.)

Let's take an example: let's remove grpconv.exe: One 20 Kb executable in C:\Windows\System32 and two keys in the registry base (.Grp and MSProgramgroup) to be removed.

I don't know the Windows Team development procedures at Microsoft but my guess is that

* a Change Request must be defined,

* assigned to a Developer by a Product Manager.

* The Developer does his job,

* then ask for a Code Review for the Validation of his changes

* and finally commits the changes to the Windows Source Code to be taken into account by the next build.

* let's not forget that the QA team must validate the changes according to the specifications defined in the Change Request.

All in all, let's say it will take half-a-day for the whole procedure for a 20 KB economy.

I would say that the bang for the buck ratio is abysmally close to 0 and that half-day should be used for something more usefull ...

That sounds like a procedure for a small project, not an organized OS-level project. I'm certain they can streamline the procedure, especially if they have a small team dedicated to hunting down any Win16 bits. Plus, it's not just 20kb we're talking about saving. This is about reducing the overall complexity of the OS. One less bit in there is one less bit that can cause a problem.

You've gotta clear out the garage before something falls on your head, basically.

Funny, the end of the support of Windows 3.1 as an embedded operating system was only one month ago.

I'm talking about the core (current) OS supporting Win3.1 apps, not a specific release of Windows.

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y_notm

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Win3.1 is 16bit, and as far as I know the 64bit edition of Vista/7 doesn't even support anything 16bit anymore... Or am I wrong?

Windows x64 doesn't support 16-bit programs, but Win32s was released for Win3.11 so you can't make a blanket statement that all programs written for Win3.11 are 16 bit.

Grand Master

Calum Veteran

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moricons.dll I would expect expands to "more icons", but is limited to the old DOS 8 character limit.

Thanks. I assumed that. At the time, I was just wondering why they would transfer them to moricons.dll instead of just getting rid of them (and the legacy programs which few people, if anyone, use), but now I understand that they do need to be there for compatibility issues :)

It's a shame they can't ever be updated though, it really does look horrible having those icons throughout Windows, especially when they do not work with "Large Icons" view :(

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Mikee99

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Why Microsoft can't create a seamless VM for legacy apps like Apple did, I don't know.

Apple's Classic VM was not exactly stable and reliable. However, seamless VM's today are reliable and have good enough performance.

It does appear that MS is moving in that direction with support for VHD's... :shiftyninja:

Experienced

Andy1369

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I'm in the party which says that MS should update all icons. I'm a bit compulsive about that.

However, this isn't a perfect world, and MS isn't a perfect company, so to expect that may be overkill. My feeling is that MS may update more icons, but that a few will be left behind. The ones left behind, however, probably will be ones we'll never see unless we actually take the incentive to go to the WINDOWS or SYSTEM32 folders.

I do hope they will finally update the "Pick color" and "Pick font" dialogs (the "pick fonts" dialog can be found in Wordpad).

Grand Master

Xerxes

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Welcome to a PRE BETA! You expect it to be finished?

More like welcome to Windows, every version of Windows has contained "artifacts" from previous Windows versions. I remember the big stink people kicked up when they discovered Win3.11/9x/2k/XP icons in Vista :p it's a fact of life with Windows.

Grand Master

redvamp128

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What I find interesting is that if we actually got rid of all the "CLUTTER" the old Icons would amount to would be a staggering 2 Floppy Disks worth. 1.44 + 1.44 Mb. :yes: So no real gain there and the majority of users do not even see those. I can see however updating certain Icons for the new OS. (the Security Center). But then again -- This is not even in Beta Yet. -- So still an unfinished project. Though I am sure Microsoft has a few builds higher than what we see on this end running that are more polished.-- We should not really be concerned with aesthetics of the OS until RC2. That is when we should start complain about the look of the OS.

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Brandon Live Veteran

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(Why Microsoft can't create a seamless VM for legacy apps like Apple did, I don't know.)

How do you think Win9x and DOS programs run on Windows XP/Vista/7? They run in a seamless VM! It's so seamless you didn't even know it was there :)

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Digitalfox

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How do you think Win9x and DOS programs run on Windows XP/Vista/7? They run in a seamless VM! It's so seamless you didn't even know it was there :)

I always guessed it was something like that.. :)

But why not put all the 9x legacy stuff on a single file that is used by the seamless VM?

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EnzoFX

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I hope they update the look of Win7 quite a bit before release, I'm kinda thinking they will, seeing as they work on the superficial stuff late in development.

Regarding the icons, I think they're all terrible TBH. Both Vista and whatever Win7 has now.

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Brandon Live Veteran

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I always guessed it was something like that.. :)

But why not put all the 9x legacy stuff on a single file that is used by the seamless VM?

Well not everything runs a full VM (DOS / 16-bit apps do), and they all have access to the real file system. Doing more work on that compatibility layer just isn't worth the effort... it works, and eventually it'll be removed. Heck, on 64-bit versions of Windows the 16-bit support has been removed.

But my understanding is that things like progman.exe and whatever are generally there for apps that check for their existence, often in their setup programs and such. I'm sure at some point more stuff will be cut out that isn't needed, but it's very hard to prove that something is safe to remove without breaking all sorts of in-house business applications, scripts, etc.

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Quillz

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I hope they update the look of Win7 quite a bit before release, I'm kinda thinking they will, seeing as they work on the superficial stuff late in development.

Regarding the icons, I think they're all terrible TBH. Both Vista and whatever Win7 has now.

Then go design better ones and then share them with all of us.

Grand Master

hdood

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I always guessed it was something like that.. :)

But why not put all the 9x legacy stuff on a single file that is used by the seamless VM?

There are actually thousands of modern programs that use legacy APIs (even ones only intended for 16-bit compatibility). Sometimes because it's how the programmer is used to doing it, and sometimes because it's the first result he found on some random internet search. There's no clear separation between what is legacy stuff and what is current, and every possible part of the system is used and abused in some way by software out there.

And also, it's easy to say that people who need older programs should just keep running Windows 95 or XP or whatever, but those operating systems eventually become unsupported by both Microsoft and hardware manufacturers. What do you do when the computer breaks? There are also a lot of people who want to run their older programs and, say, a recent version of Office side-by-side on the same machine.

They could of course find modern software to switch to, but that means time and money spent on retraining and moving legacy data over (if even possible). In a worst case scenario, the problems and lost productivity from doing so could mean bankruptcy.

Microsoft wants to cater for these customers as much as possible.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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That sounds like a procedure for a small project, not an organized OS-level project. I'm certain they can streamline the procedure, especially if they have a small team dedicated to hunting down any Win16 bits.

Wait, you think things go faster in larger projects? You're obviously not very familiar with how software development works :) And a team dedicated to "hunting down Win16 bits" sounds like a terrible waste.

Plus, it's not just 20kb we're talking about saving. This is about reducing the overall complexity of the OS. One less bit in there is one less bit that can cause a problem.

Err, depositing a stub file like grpconv.exe in the system directory doesn't add to OS complexity in any way.

not exactly a big deal but it wouldn't take long to update them. even if it was just so it a) looked nicer, b) provided a consistent look, c) was a little bit more "perfect" overall.

You're missing the point. Nobody will ever see them. Why give a pretty icon to an application that nobody will ever see?

Enthusiast

Chocolate Afghan

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I'm not sure three or four icons you will practically never see is a huge deal. Should they be updated? Yes, but it's really nothing to throw a fit over. That last comment is just plain silly. OS's aren't rewritten from the ground up :rolleyes:

I think it is a symptom of a larger problem - Microsoft unwilling to clear the crap off Windows.

All of the above shouldn't exist; when it doubt - tear it out.

Grand Master

Quillz

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I think it is a symptom of a larger problem - Microsoft unwilling to clear the crap off Windows.

All of the above shouldn't exist; when it doubt - tear it out.

But Microsoft isn't in doubt. Have you even read this topic? All those old icons and whatnot are not "crap." They are there so that old legacy programs continue to work on Windows. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't just cut off support for old programs totally just because they feel like it. When you have millions and millions of customers, you have to expect that not everyone will upgrade to the latest and greatest right away.

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Chocolate Afghan

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But Microsoft isn't in doubt. Have you even read this topic? All those old icons and whatnot are not "crap." They are there so that old legacy programs continue to work on Windows. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't just cut off support for old programs totally just because they feel like it. When you have millions and millions of customers, you have to expect that not everyone will upgrade to the latest and greatest right away.

I find it funny that the biggest customers, aka businesses, always seem to have money for big and lofty money wasters like 'retreats' and 'team building' but the money is distinctively missing when it comes to maintaining the IT infrastructure.

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