Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'
- Reference: 1649332810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/04/07/windows_3_1_30/
- Source link:
Windows 3.1 was more than a user interface refresh of the preceding Windows 3.0. Arriving on April 6, 1992, and still on MS-DOS, the operating environment brought forth support for TrueType fonts, introduced the Windows Registry and dropped support for older silicon. Windows 3.1 insisted on 80286 or above, finally sticking a knife in the heart of the Real Mode that was still supported in Windows 3.0.
As well as a visual update (although nothing compared to what was coming a few short years later with Windows 95) multimedia support was improved and Microsoft introduced a concept called The Registry.
[1]
The Windows Registry was (and remains) a database of settings hidden within the environment, ostensibly intended to replace or complement the .INI configuration files scattered throughout the environment both by Windows and applications targeting the platform. It is a handy database, but one that has become considerably more complex in the intervening 30 years.
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Windows 3.1 also [4]increased the maximum memory available : when running in 386 enhanced mode, the limit was a mighty 256MB, up from the weedy 16MB of Windows 3.0 (although care needed to be take with the version of the HIMEM.SYS driver.
[5]Saved by the Bill: What if... Microsoft had killed Windows 95?
[6]How Windows NTFS finally made it into Linux
[7]The ghosts of Microsoft SQL Server past, present, and yet to come: The Reg chats to Azure Data man Rohan Kumar
[8]Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation
The requirement to run in Standard or 386 Enhanced Mode also made things a good deal more stable, although the elephant-on-a-traffic cone nature of Windows perching on DOS meant there remained plenty of opportunities for sudden crashes.
Windows 3.1 sold very well, with an appealing user interface and consumer-friendly multimedia features. It did, however, have a relatively short life. Networking shortcomings would be at least partially addressed by a quick-fire succession of Windows for Workgroups releases, taking the version number to 3.11 by 1993 and also dropping Standard Mode. Windows 95 turned up shortly after, finally merging MS-DOS and Windows (after a fashion).
And then there was Windows NT 3.1, released in 1993 and looking for all the world like Windows 3.1 on the surface, but with an entirely different architecture lurking underneath.
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Support for Window 3.1 ended more than 20 years ago, but its influence continues to be felt today, even if the stacks of floppy disks used to install it are long gone. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yk8KswJw9LpLFLvWqhWmUQAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yk8KswJw9LpLFLvWqhWmUQAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20150518111050/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/84388
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/windows_95/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/13/how_ntfs_finally_made_it/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/28/sql_server/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/06/windows_10_for_workstations/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yk8KswJw9LpLFLvWqhWmUQAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
@heyrick
Don't forget his other commanding officers. Major Problem and Kernel Panic.
All dealt with by Corporal Punishment.
GFP
general protection fault...
Pros: you could zip a bare install of Windows up. Test your installation. Zap C:\WINDOWS Rinse and repeat
Cons: the registry.
Sorry.
"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." -- Winston Churchill
(Attributed to him, anyway. Seems to be some doubt as to whether it was actually his comment. )
Used to copy the contents of the floppies into a separate folder and run setup from there - when installing, or something had gone wrong and needed reinstalling.
Also help when installing graphic drivers - when it will ask for a numbered disk. Depending on whether you had the 5.25" or the 3.5" floppy version, you ended up putting them all through and hoped it found the right file.....
Registry, ugh
I did have a problem with the windows registry very recently. After installing Nim (programming language) and Geany, messing around with "open with default application", somehow, windows decided that ALL .exe files should be opened with Geany. It was the weirdest thing to ever happen, I couldn't run any programs by double clicking the icon or their shortcuts, so no Firefox, Chrome, Blender or Windows Explorer!
However, files with associated programs still opened them, so while I couldn't start a browser from its own shortcut, opening a desktop web link would fire it. I did come across a registry fix script, which now I keep in a bunch of separate backups, just in case this happens again.
Re: Registry, ugh
That's not really a registry problem, though. That's an Explorer bug. With any luck, someone at Microsoft is reading this and can enter it into their bug tracker. (Since I don't have hours to waste crafting a "simplest possible test case" and opening a ticket on an expensive support account that I don't have, I'm unable to do it myself.)
Happy Birthday!
Those were lovely days, I was always happy buying a new version and playing with the updates ... look at it these days and an update back then just helped pay the programmers developing the code without giving away all my information. It was so nice easy to just load a floppy disk and update the system, and the updates were relatively bug free.
If You Ask Me
The old Windows Program Manager is still a superior UI compared to this desktop thing we have now. Just add something akin to the taskbar and you've got an interface that could work reasonably well for touch as well as mouse/keyboard. Decades before Windows 8, Microsoft already had everything they needed, but insisted on trying to reinvent the wheel, and we all know how well that went over.
Re: If You Ask Me
' trying to reinvent the wheel'
I think someone has an axle to grind.
Re: If You Ask Me
Maybe I have flour to mill! You ever think of that!?
Win 3.1 allowed us/me to group programmes according to function. Not to have a trillion icons all over the desktop. Not to have them in an alphabetical ("Start") list according to whatever obscure and unhelpful name the publisher decided to give them (or worse in a folder created by the publisher under their even more obscure company name).
That simple, sensible option survived to Windows 7. Then they started trying to prevent it, making it more and more complicated to do. Just about possible still in 10.
What happened after 7 strikes me as part of a company lunacy that seeks to make Windows as unrelated to what users want to do with their own machines as possible.
And they still haven fixed the bug that means you have to edit the registry and add a ,s to the path if you want to use custom recycle bin icons. What the ,s tells Windows, who knows. Why it needs to be part of the path to the icon that Windows is already able to use, just not change to beggars understanding.
Ah.....the right to innovate......
Xerox Parc
Tim Patterson (MS-DOS)
Stac Electronics
Lattice C
Dave Fulton (Foxbase)
Robert Gaskins (Powerpoint)
....
....and so on!!!
So.....OTHER people do the innovation.....and M$ comes along with a suitcase full of folding green!!!
....maybe M$ actually mean the right to innovate with cash?
Time sink
*bummer* How did this article not mention the true time overhead of windows 3.1.... It came with Chips Challenge, if you were fortunate enough to have the entertainment pack, oh the hours wasted!
Re: Chips Challenge
I pulled all the level codes off for my lad in 2002 when they ran it at his primary school.
All of a sudden he had mates a go-go.
I once removed enough guff from the installation to have it boot off a 3.5" floppy. Admittedly you needed a lot of patience and there wasn't much room on the floppy for anything else :)
" [...] even if the stacks of floppy disks used to install it are long gone."
I suspect I still have a set somewhere. IIRC it was W95 that required a lot more floppies.
A colleague has an autistic nephew* that has a fascination with old OS's. Managed to find a website where you can download them
* I'm a horder - subtle difference....
Does any body know if the Paris Air Traffic Control ever updated? IIRC reading an article a few years ago that they were still running on Win3.1
Ah, my good friend General Protection Failure. I know him well.