Windows 96 - The new beta
Differences - The Taskbar
Differences - The mouse pointer
1 Installing OSR2 on a machines allready
installed with Windows 95?
2 Hansie's personal Observations of the new
OS! (Also Read Warning!)
3 Where
is the command located that runs scandisk on osr2?
WINDOWS 97 (OSR3) - The Shape of things to come.
Windows 96 - The new beta
Windows 96 is just about upon us and as such it is
time that we began to discus this minor upgrade in this FAQ. There are some
subtle differences between it and Windows 95 and it here that we will be
discussing them. For myself I have allready developed a few pet hates but
we'll see how things pan out.
Differences - The Taskbar
Clicking on the taskbar now not only opens minimised
windows but it also closes them again if you click the programs task bar
icon.
Differences-The mouse pointer
Grrr it activates and select everything that is beneath
the mouse pointer I personally could have done without this crap. Expecially
in Netscape - touch a file in the save as dialogue and there goes the original
file name!!!!
This from Microsoft
Microsoft®
Windows 95®
Market Bulletin, September 1998
OEM Service Release 2
(See hansie's personal observations)
Microsoft Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR 2) is an update to the
Microsoft Windows 95 operating system intended to add support for new and
emerging hardware, and to include various updates to Windows 95 which were
formerly available separately.
Because most of the new functionality in OSR 2 is applicable only to
new hardware devices, OSR 2 will only be available on new PCs shipping later
this year. However, many components of OSR 2 are already, or soon will be
available for download from the Internet (http://www.microsoft.com).
The features of OSR 2 will be later included in the "Memphis"
release of Windows 95, which will enter beta testing in early 1997. The
purpose of this document is to outline the features of Windows 95 OEM Service
Release 2 and to identify which components are available to existing Windows
95 customers.
The following features will be covered in this document:
Features and Delivery Vehicles
| Hardware Support |
| Feature |
Description |
New PC |
Download |
| FAT32 |
Enhancements to the Windows 95 FAT file system designed to
efficiently support large hard disks, up to 2 Terabytes in size. Includes
updates to FDISK, Format, Scandisk, and Defrag disk utilities to support
FAT32 partitions. |
Yes |
No |
| DriveSpace Update |
Windows 95 DriveSpace compression utility now supports compressed
volumes up to 2 GB in size. Note: DriveSpace compression is not supported
on FAT32 volumes. |
Yes |
No |
| Power Management Improvements |
Support for Advanced Power Management (APM) 1.2 BIOS, wake-on-ring
for modems, multi-battery PC's, drive spin down, and powering down of inactive
PCMCIA modems. |
Yes |
No |
| Storage Enhancements |
Support for IDE Bus Mastering, 120M Floptical disk drives,
removable IDE media, Zip drives, and CD Changers. Also adds the SMART predictive
disk failure API's. |
Yes |
No |
| PCMCIA Enhancements |
Adds support for new PC Card 32 (Cardbus) bridges, PCMCIA
cards that operate at 3.3 volts rather than 5 volts, multifunction PCMCIA
network/modem cards, and PCMCIA Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) devices. |
Yes |
No |
| CDFS Enhancements |
Support for ISO 9660 disks up to 4 GB in size, and CD-I format
CD-ROMs |
Yes |
No |
| PCI Bridging/Docking |
Support for PCI devices for use in PCI docking stations |
Yes |
No |
| IRQ Routing |
Support for new PCI interrupt routers. |
Yes |
No |
| Internet and Multimedia |
| Feature |
Description |
New PC |
Download |
| Internet Explorer 3.0 |
Microsoft's hot new Internet browser. Get the most from the
Internet with support for ActiveX, HTML style sheets, frames, Java and more. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Internet Connection Wizard |
A simple, easy to configure connection to worldwide Internet
Service Providers through a centralized service, as well as assistance in
the sign-up process. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Internet Mail and News |
Send and receive email quickly with our new SMTP and POP3
mail client, and subscribe to your favorite newsgroups with our flexible
newsreader. |
Yes |
Yes |
| NetMeeting |
Make telephone calls over the Internet, including data calls
with several people. You can remotely view and control any program, share
a whiteboard, chat, and transfer files. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Personal Web Services |
Allows publishing and hosting of HTML pages over the Internet/intranet. |
Yes |
No |
| DirectX 2.0 (including Direct 3D) |
High-performance 2D and 3D graphics, sound, input, and communications
for great games on virtually any PC. Will also ship with games that require
it. Includes some sound and display driver updates. |
Yes |
Yes |
| ActiveMovie |
Next generation video architecture for Microsoft Windows.
Delivers high quality and performance playback of video, including QuickTime
and MPEG-1 formats. |
Yes |
Yes |
| OpenGL |
Support libraries for OpenGL graphics standard, plus some
cool screen savers. |
Yes |
Available Soon |
| Intel MMX Support |
Support for third parties to build software that exploits
the Intel Pentium Multimedia Extensions (MMX) for fast audio and video support
on the next generation of Intel Pentium processor. |
Yes |
No |
| Networking and Communications |
| Feature |
Description |
New PC |
Download |
| Dial-up Networking Improvements |
User interface enhancements, support for scripting, and hands-free
dial-up. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Voice Modem Support |
Support for VoiceView and AT+V modems to allow switched voice
and data transmission to occur, and to allow the modem to answer voice calls. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Service for NetWare Directory Services |
Full client support for Novell NetWare 4.x, including NetWare
Directory Services. |
Yes |
Yes |
| 32-bit DLC |
32 bit support for the Data Link Control protocol for SNA
host connectivity. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Infrared Support |
Support for Infrared Data Association (IrDA) 2.0 compliant
devices - includes Infrared LAN connectivity. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Desktop Management |
Support for Desktop Management Interface (DMI) 1.1 - allows
a desktop management application to monitor devices on the PC. |
Yes |
Available Soon |
| NDIS 4.0 |
Adds support for new NDIS 4.0 network interface card drivers. |
Yes |
No |
| Additional Features
|
| Feature |
Description |
New PC |
Download |
| Display enhancements |
Support for dynamically changing screen resolution and color
depth. Adapter refresh rate can also be set with most newer display driver
chipsets. |
Yes |
Available Soon |
| Wang Imaging for Windows 95 |
View image data from a variety of different file formats,
including JPG, XIF, TIFF, BMP and FAX. Scan and annotate images with built-in
TWAIN scanner support and Imaging applet. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Fonts |
Support for HP LaserJet 4 grayscale fonts. |
Yes |
Available Soon |
| MSN 1.3 |
The latest version of the MSN client, which features performance
improvements. |
Yes |
Yes. Available from The Microsoft Network. |
| Fixes/updates |
Various Windows 95 updates including: updated OLE components,
enhanced Windows Messaging client with improved performance, and fixes to
Microsoft Fax. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Automatic Scandisk on boot |
In situations where the PC was not shut down normally, Scandisk
will automatically run at the next reboot in order to check for damaged
files. |
Yes |
No |
| Online Services Folder |
Client software for America Online 3.0, CompuServe 3.0, CompuServe
WOW!, and AT&T Worldnet. |
Yes |
No |
© 1998 Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows NT and Win32 are registered trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation.
Other product and company names mentioned herin may be the trademarks of
their respective owners.
0996 |
|
1 Installing OSR2
on a machines allready installed with Windows 95?
Can I upgrade my extisting installation of Windows95
to OSR2 with the OSR2 disk?
The arguments......
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1998 13:15:57 -0800
From: Sean Erwin <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: APPS: oemsr2 installation problem
No. If you attempt
to upgrade from an earlier version of Windows95, it will give an error message
and not let you proceed. You can only install OSR2 on top of DOS, Windows
3.1/WFW, or OS/2(?).
Okay, but there's gotta be a way to fool it into
upgrading from an earlier version of Windows95!!!!
According to various sources, renaming the file "WIN.COM"
in the C:\WINDOWS directory will do this. Rename the file, then proceed
with the upgrade. Warning: I haven't yet confirmed that this will work.
Do not attempt this unless you are comfortable mucking around with system
files.
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1998 11:03:02 -0600
From: Nathan Schuler <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: APPS: oemsr2 installation problem
If the version 95b I have could not
be used as an upgrade to my win95a, how could I install a new version 95b
on my system? And can I keep and use my old win95a
since I have installed many programs on it and re-install takes much time.
My system has two SCSI harddrives-1GB(Win95a boot, single partition) and
another 2GB(two partition:one is VFAT and other is NTFS), and DriveSpace3
is used.
Win95b is an entirely new OS and can not be installed
on top of anything else. ??? To get it install you need to FDISK your
boot drive. As for all your programs, you need to do a back of your disk.
I would just backup all your data files and just restore everything else
from the install disks. Since I noticed that you have NT, you might want
to create a 10MB primary partition on your boot drive and have it formatted
in FAT16 or FAT12 so you can still have multi-boot capability. I you have
any other questions, feel free to ask.
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1998 11:03:02 -0600
From: Hans Klarenbeek <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: APPS: oemsr2 installation problem
I will be giving this a shot sometime real soon....
I figure the most sensible thing to change would be the registry so that
U/Grading to NT4.0 will be possible... will keep you posted.... Done!! See below
The Truth...... Method 1
Date: Sunday, 15 Dec 1998 18:45:02 -0600
From: Hans Klarenbeek <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: APPS: oemsr2 installation problem
Well I decided to give it a shot this week and well
I certainly didn't have much fun (but then it was time clean the system
anyway)
Procedure:- Copied
OSR2 to the Hard-Drive. Renamed win.com to win.xxx and started the installer
from DOS
Results:- All went
very well in fact right up to the point where it said now installing software
for any plug and play devices you may have and BOOM! - The machine locked
up and refused to work under any circumstances other than safe mode.....
I disabled Qemm but that wasn't it either - after some cursing and swearing
I nuked both C: and D: partition (where the apps lived) and started from
scratch.... No problem.... This is NOT TO say YOU will experience the
same problems but be forewarned!!!!! (I have a fairly non-standard system
with SCSI everything)
The Truth...... Method 2
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 10:05:39 -0600
From: Chip May <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: I would like to include method II of ugrading OSR2 to theWIN95-L FAQ
Installing OSR2 (95B) over 95, 95A..
Hope you have loads of disk space...
1) Make a temp directory on a hard
drive - call it Win95.
2) Copy the Win95 directory from the
CD to the new directory on your hard drive. From here, we work with the
files on your hard drive.
3) Extract from PRECOPY2.CAB the file
called SETUPPP.INF. Note: MS has a CAB file extraction tool available as
a PowerToy on their WEB site.
4) Open LAYOUT.INF in a text editor.
Search for "SETUPPP.INF". You should find: setuppp.inf=2,,4550
- Change the 2 to a 0 to read:
- setuppp.inf=0,,4550
- Save the changes..
- This prevents the installation from extracting SETUPPP.INF
from the CAB file and use the file we extracted instead.
5) Open SETUPPP.INF in a text editor.
Search for "ProductType". You should find: ProductType=9
- Change 9 to 2 to read: ProductType=2
- Save the changes...
- This apparently tells setup that this is an upgrade.
6) Run SETUP from Windows95 off your
hard drive.
- Possible workaround with tight
disk space (untested):
- Copy all but the win95_xx.cabs, wowkit (20M), cs3kit
(5M). The latter two are files for CompuServe. Should need only about 12M
this way.
- When setup looks for the first win95_xx.cab, hopefully
you can point it to your CD (\win95 directory) instead.
Note:
This does NOT create any FAT32 partitions. Use Partition Magic or do a full
backup of your new installation - from a 95B boot diskette with FDISK, FORMAT,
and SYS - FDISK your drive, FORMAT the drive, then SYS the drive. Now do
a full recover of the backup.
Note2: Other
stuff:
After ProductType=x, add the line: UPI=24396-XXX-XXXXXXX
When I used the procedure, I had added the UPI= line.
This lets you use your old CD KEY.
More experiments:
| ProductType=1: |
Upgrades without asking
for CD KEY (serial number) |
| ProductType=2: |
I used this - the same
as on my original Win95 upgrade. |
| ProductType=3: |
Wants a floppy install
- doesn't work. |
| ProductType=4: |
Fails - Error - previous
ops system installed. |
| ProductType=5: |
Works - asks for CD KEY,
but won't take mine - can "ignore" |
| ProductType=6 |
Works OK |
| ProductType=7: |
Fails - Error - previous
op system |
| ProductType=8: |
Fails - Error - previous
op system |
I assume no liability for this routine. Proceed at
your own risk.
Also see the Windows 95 OSR2 MiniFAQ
Date: Sunday, 15 Dec 1998 19:05:03 -0600
From: Hans Klarenbeek <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: APPS: oemsr2 installation problem
2 Hansie's personal Observations of the new OS!
Notes On Changes to Win 95 OSR 2
On boot failure
or Non proper (alt-F4) shutdown scandisk is automatically executed..
Quicktime movies
are now playable by Win 95 out of the box.
Recognised Monitor
(Optiquest V775 in my case - video card must support) as part of plug and
play.
TimeZone animation
has gone as per NT4.0 - Display Properties has altered to reflect the Millenium's
setting (using generic
Joystick Control
Panel now supports a multitude of sticks and controllers...
(Aussies) Netcomm
/ Banksia / Telstra Modems are now also listed in the Modem control panel
Execom Modems
(Australia) are also listed and a 59.6 modem is listed here.
The Microsoft
Intellimouse is NOT listed
The Internet
Wizard now has provision for I/Net service providers .... Also when connected
the connection indicator shows
- throughput and total downloads..... it also minimises
to the system tray...
Quickres is now
built into the OS and activated by Control Panels / Display / Settings /
SHOW SETTINGS ON TASKBAR!!
Animated icon in ScanDisk.
Also this from Adam Sharp
Date: Sunday, 15 Dec 1998 13:43:02 -0600
From: Adam Sharp [SMTP:[email protected]]
Subject: APPS: oemsr2 WARNING!!!
OSR 2 uses the new Windows Driver Model (WDM) in which
Win95 and NT 4 share the same drivers. The good news is that Microsoft included
a boatload of drivers on the MSDN copy of OSR 2. The bad news is that if
a driver you need was not included, or you need to add hardware after you
install OSR, you can't. I learnt this the hard way - I installed OSR 2 on
my laptop after Fdisking with FAT32 and a week after I installed it, decided
to start using my Xircom 10/100 PC Card. But the OSR copy I have doesn't
include the driver for it, and Xircom can't (or won't) help me. Guess I'll
have to wait until the release...
OSR2 appears to be a closer bridge to NT 4.0 ( now
I wonder whether the registry is like NT4.0?) Essentially this means that
some new drivers may be needed for some stuff (NT 4.0 drivers should in
theory work...) Hansie. It
was pointed out to me recently that OSR2 is not quite there yet but OSR3
will be....
3 Where is the command located that runs
scandisk on osr2?
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 16:51:31 -0400
From: Roy Lehrer <[email protected]>
Subject: Where is the command located that runs scandisk on osr2?
On Wed, 9 Apr 1997 14:16:15 -0500, "Keith A. Henderson"
Win.com is what actually starts the scandisk program, however it can
be controlled from your MSDOS.SYS file by adding the AutoScan=x
parameter to the [Options] section. These is no such line by default
it must be added to change from the default option.
The values for x are 0, 1 or 2. A value of 0 totaly disables the
scandisk check. A value of 1 is the default that displays a message
awaiting your response and after about 1 minute continues with the
scandisk if you do not respond. A value is 2 eliminates the prompt
message and automatically runs scandisk. Keep in mind that how
scandisk operates is still dependent on the settings in your
scandisk.ini file (this file located in windows/command is filled with
comments telling you how to custimize scandisk operation).
Roy
[email protected]
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herin. This document respects all owners of their repected trademarks and
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Copyright Notice ©
Windows95 (Win95-L) FAQ COPYRIGHT © 1998-7 by Hans Klarenbeek
All Rights Reserved by the author,
Hans Klarenbeek
Windows95 (Win95-L) FAQ © 1998-7
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