
From: gordonf@vcn.bc.ca (Gordon Fecyk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.compatibility.win95,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Windows 95 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers Part 14 of 14
Followup-To: comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.win95,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.compatibility.win95
Date: 14 May 1996 01:50:41 GMT
Organization: Vancouver Regional FreeNet
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NNTP-Posting-Host: opus.vcn.bc.ca
Summary: These postings list many questions asked in said newsgroups,
         and answers them as best as I can.  I make references to other
         Web sites and FAQs when appropriate.  Visit the WWW home of
         this FAQ (http://www.intouch.bc.ca/win95) for the appropriate
         links.  This section is the 14th and last one: Miscelaneous
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Xref: news.eunet.fi comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc:144544 comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win95:12798 comp.os.ms-windows.networking.win95:8818 comp.os.ms-windows.apps.compatibility.win95:4342 comp.answers:17457 news.answers:61853

Archive-name: windows/win95/faq/part14
Last-Modified: 1996/04/29
URL: http://www.intouch.bc.ca/win95/faq14.htm

14) Stuff that doesn't belong in the 
other categories (and my own 
personal rantings) 

Why did Microsoft change Windows so much? 
How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) doesn't work? 
How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) works? I thought it wasn't 
supposed to work! 
Why shouldn't I run (this old Windows 3.1 program)? 
Can I run Win95 on my '286 with 2 MB of RAM? (joke) 
Can I run Win95 on my '386-SX with 4 MB of RAM? (a bit of a 
joke, but it does run) 
Why do 32-bit programs seem slower than the original 16-bit 
ones? 
Why didn't Novell/WordPerfect (tm) release a 32-bit version of 
PerfectOffice (tm) yet? 
I want to get a Pentium Pro (tm) system, but isn't it slower running 
Win95 than a Pentium? 
Top ten reasons why Microsoft created Windows 95 
Top ten answers to Microsoft's question: "Where do you want to 
go today?" 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why did Microsoft change Windows so much? 

Let's face it; Microsoft Windows was a lame DOS extender with 
fancy CPU-draining graphics. Even with all the good apps written for 
it, the base was shaky. Too many app writers also hacked and 
patched Windows so much that nothing worked right together. Win95 
turned the lame DOS extender into as much of a full fledged OS as 
possible, without removing DOS altogether. 

The Win95 designers tried to take the best ideas, best patches, best 
hacks, and intergrate them "nicely" into the OS. For example, you can 
have virtual desktops with any video card now. The COM port 
drivers take advantage of new hardware by design. It still uses fancy 
CPU-draining graphics, but it's not just a DOS extender anymore. 

They supposedly got a bunch of "average" people in to rate the OS 
and user interface as it stood. They took suggestions from many 
people of different walks of life, then totally ignored them. 
Supposedly, Win95 is now the OS that anyone can use. Yeah right. 
You have to give them credit for a good effort though. 

Not to mention all the features they pirated from Apple, Xerox, 
Amiga Tech, and IBM, do make it a bit easier to get along with. 

MS also wants to bury DOS for good. I believe this, because of the 
penultimate Designed for Win95 rerquirement: The product must run 
in Windows NT Workstation too. Besides... too many people out 
there are ignoring Win95 in favor of NT. R.I.P. D.O.S. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) doesn't work? 

It probably replaced some core Win95 system file, then Win95 
replaced its version back. This happens with communication programs 
that replace COMM.DRV with their own. 

Win 3.1 video drivers tend to hack USER.EXE and GDI.EXE these 
days, to provide virtual desktops and such nonsense. Printer drivers 
often have their own versions of UNIDRV.DLL or whatever. 

Ask the maker of the hardware if they tested their Win 3.1 driver with 
Win95. If not, they probably have a Win95 driver for you. If no 
Win95 driver, do yourself a favor and dump the hardware for a 
Win95 compatible equivelant. 

Net card drivers for Windows for Workgroups won't work for sure, 
which is too bad, because those things got decent performance. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) works? I thought it wasn't 
supposed to work! 

Then again, "nicely" written drivers that don't replace system 
components will work. Most of these include sound card drivers, 
though Win95 ignores any MIDIMAP.CFG files; it treats single MIDI 
devices as whole patch sets now. You can get MIDI Mapper 
functionality with Multimedia properties/MIDI and select "Custom 
instrument". 

These classes of Win 3.1 drivers could work smoothly with Win95, if 
you install them from Add New Hardware/Have Disk: 

Sound card (Including the PC Speaker driver) 
Printer (Except those that replace core system files or install dumb 
"Printing Systems") 
DOS CD-ROM (Don't forget MSCDEX if you have to use these) 
Net card (NDIS 2 and ODI drivers work with NDIS 3.1 
protocols and clients) 
Media Control (MCI) drivers and video CODECs 

Notice I wrote "Drivers". Don't install whole programs if they come 
with the drivers if you can avoid it; use Add New Hardware and have 
it point to the disk with the OEMSETUP.INF file. 

All other classes of Win 3.1 drivers you should avoid completely! 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why shouldn't I run (this old Windows 3.1 program)? 

Avoid running these classes of Win 3.1 apps in Win95 for these 
reasons: 

Communication (Tend to replace Win95 COMM.DRV and defeat 
TAPI) 
Printing Systems (Waste of memory) 
Virus checkers (Can mis-interpret 32-bit components) 
Disk utilities (Particularly un-deleters and such that rely on real 
mode disk access) 
Back up programs (No long filename support) 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Can I run Win95 on my '286 with 2 MB of RAM? (joke) 

Oh sure you can. Just get one of those Cyrix 486 processors for '286 
system boards (hah hah) 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Can I run Win95 on my '386-SX with 4 MB of RAM? (a bit of a 
joke, but it does run) 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why do 32-bit programs seem slower than the original 16-bit 
ones? 

Microsoft's excuse to this is app writers are just learning how to write 
Win32 programs. This is probably right; you can't just take a C 
program optimized for Win 3.1 and throw a compiler switch. You 
have to make Win32 calls, switch your DOS calls to Win32 disk 
calls, use built in libraries and requesters instead of the home-made 
ones, and trim off the extra memory you'd allocate just to 
over-compensate. There's a lot of bad programming practice out 
there. I personally believe that all the ex-Amiga coders out there will 
take to Win95 the easiest, because we already know how to write 
tight code. 

Another good excuse is that programmers don't trust the OS and try 
to access hardware directly. Wrong. This not only forces a lot of 
excess bulk in the code, it has to fight with the OS to get to the 
hardware. Some really un-trusting software houses (like _Novell_) 
will even include their own whole subsystems into the OS, rather than 
use what's already there. Bad move. Result: 4 MB network clients 
(compressed) compared to oh, 200 KB. 

Yet another excuse? Intel. The Pentium and '486 class processors 
were really optimized for 16-bit code. As much as Intel and Microsoft 
wanted to push programmers into using the extended instruction set of 
32-bit processors, the programmers had a 16-bit OS to contend with, 
except for a privelaged few coding for NetWare, OS/2, or NT. (OK 
maybe some UNIX people too) Hence the Pentium Pro's optimization 
towards 32-bit code. Of course all the cheap clone processors had to 
be fast running 16-bit code too. 

The new companies coming out tend to write cleaner and faster code 
that use the OS. Check out the shareware on www.windows95.com 
or any major FTP site. The old established firms will take a long time 
to switch over. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why didn't Novell/WordPerfect (tm) release a 32-bit version of 
PerfectOffice (tm) yet? 

They're working on it, but it's like learning to ride a bicycle over again. 

WordPerfect corp has a history of re-writing everything from scratch. 
WordPerfect 6.1 hardly used any built in calls in Win 3.1; they don't 
use the Common Dialog for file operations (which is why Norton's 
LFN enabler for Win95 doesn't work in it), they don't use Win 3.1 
print functions (causing screwups if you leave EMF spooling enabled 
sometimes), and it becomes a monster in the process, with two 
patches so far for working in Win95. 

I'm quite sure that Corel's happily re-writing everything from scratch 
again, bypassing the built in functions in Win95 in favor of their own, 
after their major purchase of WordPerfect Corp from Novell. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to get a Pentium Pro (tm) system, but isn't it slower 
running Win95 than a Pentium? 

I don't have the details on this, but the noise out there suggests a 
Pentium Pro runs 16 bit code slower than a Pentium does. Intel's 
optimized the 'Pro for 32-bit code, just like Microsoft's pushing 32-bit 
apps for the "Designed for Win95" logo. This is another sign that these 
two giants are trying to kill DOS. 

Yes, the 'Pro will run Win95's 16 bit components slower than a 
Pentium can. According to KB article Q122869, these components 
use 16-bit code: 

Disk utilities (Scandisk, Defrag, DriveSpace 2) 
Games (The built in time-wasters, even Freecell is a 16-bit version 
here) 
Win 3.1 compatibility stubs (like KRNL386, USER, GDI, all the 
.DRV files) 
Win 3.1 components (WinChat, SYSEDIT, Program Manager, 
File Manager, WinVer) 
The Win95 tour 
DOS programs and COMMAND.COM, and the start up code 
which uses DOS 

If you use only Win32 programs, you won't touch the 16-bit code 
once Win95 is up. If you avoid DOS programs you won't use DOS 
for any hardware access. 

Yes it's slower than a Pentium for old crap, but it's faster than a 
Pentium for the new crap. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Top ten reasons why Microsoft created Windows 95 

(I can use some jokes here) 

10) Microsoft had too many programmers doing nothing 

9) Bill Gates had a vision from God 

8) "Mac on PC! Mac on PC!" 

7) Bill Gates wanted to celebrate their latest court victory over Apple 
with a bang 

6) To sell more NT servers 

5) To sell more NT workstations (Hence the Designed for Win95 
requirements) 

4) MS couldn't buy the source code to the Amiga OS (Though I bet 
they tried real hard) 

3) OS/2 flopped, NT originally flopped, maybe third time lucky? 

2) To bring PCs and users up to speed 

1) To kill DOS dead 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Top ten answers to Microsoft's question: "Where do you want 
to go today?" 

10) Work. 

9) Hell. 

8) The Win95NetBugs page to see where else Microsoft screwed up. 

7) www.windows95.com for cool Win95 shareware 

6) Disneyland. (tm) 

5) The MS Knowledge Base because Win95 tech support's too busy 

4) netwire.novell.com to get Client32 (I don't know why...) 

3) Redmond, Washington, to asassinate William H. Gates. 

2) The Jones's. They have a Mac. 

1) Home. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rantings from yours truly: 

Back in 1985 I went ga-ga over the newly released Amiga by 
Commodore. All this cool hardware that was light-years beyond the 
faintest hopes of DOS box users with their 8-bit XTs and 16-bit '286 
machines. The first true 32-bit system (Ok so it used a 16-bit 68000, 
but that 68000 was designed for 32-bit operation from day one, and 
the software was ALL 32-bit). I still have an Amiga with all the latest 
hardware and enjoy the old stuff (which still runs) and the new stuff I 
download from Aminet every other day. 

Now ten years later the DOS box industry finally catches up (while 
Commodore slept for ten years and eventually went bankrupt) and 
Microsoft, the un-disputed industry leader, releases their answer. Of 
course they had to keep ten years of 8-bit compatibility (and DOS 
boxes will suck forever because of this) but the excitement was there; 
one I haven't felt really since 1985. Ok it was there for about two 
months with OS/2 2.0 but if you're visiting this page chances are you 
aren't using OS/2. I feel the excitement when I find a cool piece of 
shareware or some new software that really takes advantage. 

So it was a lame story, OK? But for the first time here's a computer 
system that is Mainstream and also Cool. Probably my next system 
will run NT when everyone writes cool 32-bit software, but until then 
Win95's here, and it's my job to support my boss's customers who 
use it. 

Hence the FAQ. I read too many stupid and lame questions on the 
newsgroups, and the same people insist on running CorelSCSI or 
some other old DOS crap because their hardware sucks without it. 
Well guess what? Your hardware just sucks even WITH CorelSCSI 
or whatever the old DOS software is. Replace it and get Win95 
compatible stuff. That's the answer I keep telling everyone on the 
newsgroups, and I know it works because In-Line's customers do 
that and everything works. I also figure that if the stupid questions get 
answered quickly, In-Line's customers can call with more intelligent 
questions, which will usually take longer, and earn us more, and won't 
bore us to tears. 

I hope everyone out there reading this FAQ are as excited about this 
new stuff as I am. Despite all the hype, hoopla, and bullsh*t, this is 
finally going to turn Personal Computers upside-down. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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