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Windows 95

Windows 95 (internal version 4.0) is the successor of Windows 3.11 and brings a completely new design of the interface and of the operating system with it. 32-bit applications are supported fully, DOS applications can also virtually be used now in a DOS box, furthermore 16-bits of programs are supported. Windows 95 to ME still needs DOS for the loading up program and for the DOS box. New hardware is comfortably recognized by plug and play, the memory management was developed further considerably.

Important part of Windows 95 is the Registry now, which is responsible for the system behaviour like file assoziation, program parameter, driver software, system configuration and others. The Registry consists of the files system.dat and user.dat, these are located in the Windows directory. The files system.ini and win.ini are less important but are necessary for the system start furthermore. For user profiles one user.dat is placed in each user directory and loaded upon login of the user for the individual user settings.

DOS driver software are no longer necessary in compare to Windows 3.x by now, the driver software model was changed and the hardware is used through virtual device drivers (*.VxD) directly under Windows.

Area of application
- private users
- PC Games
- Office application
- network client

Structure information
- 32-bit operating system, with 16-bit code
- up to 512 mbyte RAM adressable
- file size up to 4 gbyte

System environment
- Minimal hardware requierements: 4 mbyte RAM, 50 mbyte harddisk storage
- Integration of the Internet Explorer 3.0
- supports now FAT32 (since Version B), FAT16, VFAT
- preemptive multitasking for 32-bit programs
- cooperative multitasking for 16-bit programs
- ACPI Power save mode partly supported (except suspend to disk)
- x86 and compatible processors

Features
- plug and play, high number of device drivers
- high compatibility to DOS, Windows 3.x
- high number of software
- no multiprocessing
- low local/network security
- old system architecture (16-bit software compatibility)
- badly scalable

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