Over the past few years, we have heard a lot of stories about Windows' history, such as the reasons behind its fragmented GUI strategy, how the Windows 95 CD packed a lot of fun stuff, details about a cool trick that helped PCs restart faster, and a lot more. Now, a Microsoft veteran has shared some interesting details about Windows 95.
According to Windows engineer Raymond Chen, installers would include copies of redistributable components of Windows 95 that were required to make the software work. Microsoft's guidance regarding this process was that an installer should check if a system component exists in Windows 95 and only introduce it if the OS does not contain it or has an older version.
However, naturally, some developers didn't follow these mandates, and ended up replacing existing system components regardless of their version number. This resulted in older system components being present on Windows 95, which caused chaos for other software that relied on those components.
Microsoft eventually worked around this by maintaining a C:\Windows\SYSBCKUP directory. This contained copies of components that were commonly overwritten by installers. The way this worked was that after an installer completed its process, Windows 95 would effectively check the system's "new" component versions against those present in SYSBCKUP. If the installer had added an old version, it would get quietly replaced by the one present in SYSBCKUP, but if it was indeed a newer version, the replacement copy in SYSBCKUP would get updated.
Chen explains that while this was a fairly primitive approach, it was better than the initial rudimentary attempt which simply blocked installers from overwriting system component files. In that case, installers would simply fail and even begin showing error messages to users, which usually couldn't be handled by regular consumers. Similarly, an implementation that wrote to a dummy file didn't work in practice either because installers would often perform a checksum to ensure that the system component in Windows was the correct one, and threw an error when it wasn't. As such, the SYSBCKUP approach was ideal in reaching a balance between reliability and flexibility.
Windows archeology. I love it.
Can I just say, the logo used here surely isn't a real official Windows logo, and it sh!ts me that it keeps showing up!
It always, at least from all official documentation I've seen, had an initial black "tail" closing off the four pane window. So two of those red squares and two of those blue squares should be black.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...s_95_logo_with_wordmark.svg
Also, the shape of the tail bits is slightly off.
It appears to be from the Windows 95 Beta. https://www.avid.wiki/Windows_95
Ah. Good old Windows versions. Please post such articles regularly.
This is classic nostalgia talking. Windows 95 was very unstable and buggy when compared to any modern version of Windows, yet people will swear that 11 is pure trash while at the same time referring to ancient versions with dearly love. I know it isn't exactly what you're doing here, but I'm just saying.
Windows 95 wasn't messing updates every couple of weeks at least. Now (for several days) I have a blue flashbang on the login screen if I tap PIN input field with a finger to bring up the keyboard - you can't make this shіt up, it's ridiculous.
At least the same update added an option to pause Windows Updates for 5 weeks, which I'll do immediately after they fix "blue background" issue on the login screen.
If you think that's bad, you didn't use Windows 95 back then. The Windows 11 issues you have right now, that's nothing compared to the flimsiness of Windows 9x back in the day. ANYTHING could mess the system up, literally ANYTHING.
I've used every version of Windows starting from 95 (even ME - with a good amount of registry edits it was better than 98). Back then I had to do something wrong to mess it up, now I just wake up and hope that my SSD, printer, or graphics card will still be working as they did yesterday (hope there was no Windows Update).
I'm using Windows 11 since the day it launched and I've had ZERO issues, on multiple machines, to this day, and I install every Patch Tuesday, every month. I guess our experiences are vastly different.
I just can't believe you think that Windows 9x was more stable than 11, I'm sorry, that's objectively impossible on a system where everything ran wild with the highest privileges and virtually no limits, all the time.
But was a great improvements, even more for not knowledgeable users, over Windows 3.1.
As for, IMO arbitrarily, comparison with Windows 11 the point is that, again, W95 was a progression over what was previously available, W11 is a regression.
Nostalgia plays a part but I think it also has to do with the fact that technical flaws (and Win95 had plenty) may be easier to forgive than deliberate encrappification, which is what Windows 11 suffers mostly from.
Not that MS wasn't a ruthless for profit corporation back then too, it's just most apparent now when Windows is seems little more than a vehicle to push AI and their cloud products down our throats and the neglect it's harder to overlook.
Have you missed all the news about broken updates one after another for the last several months? I wasn't impacted by all of them but was by some. Windows 11 is the first Windows where I want to turn off updates.
No, I didn't miss them, I just haven't had them, and I'm not alone. I'm not saying they aren't real, but they're far from widespread. Tons of people use Windows 11 just fine every day. So yes, our experiences are vastly different.
Besides, Windows is used by so many people that even a tiny fraction of affected people make it to the news and have a huge shocking impact.
This later evolved to System File Checker in Windows 98, System File Protection in Windows 2000/XP and Windows Resource Protection in Windows Vista and later.
Btw this Redmond Chen can fix a thing or two about Windows 11 shell instead of writing Windows 95 posts since he is such an incredibly talented and senior person at Microsoft.
About RC, I just woder why it's still working at Microsoft...
Being apple to and being allowed to are often different things. I've know a lot of people with the ability and idea to do great things that were blocked by management and internal politics.
He can probably do both!
Yeah I remember this being documented at the time.
I'm actually surprised we are reporting this over 30 years since the product was released.
Did people not know how this worked at the time?
I did
App developers were lazy and stupid back then, just like they are now.