4 ms·

While I wasn't a fan of Windows 95/98 per se, there were some fun hacks where you would strip it down to only a few megabytes and run it from a ram disk. And th

by wink 5y ago

While I wasn't a fan of Windows 95/98 per se, there were some fun hacks where you would strip it down to only a few megabytes and run it from a ram disk. And that was serious feat with ram sizes back then. I guess my point is that it was more easily understandable and hackable and it wasn't a 10 GB install if all you need is SOME version of windows to run your games on. Also zero phone home or mandatory/dark patterned Microsoft accounts.

lproven 5y ago
This is true -- I managed to get Win95 running in a 16MB hardware RAMdisk. It was an interesting exercise, but it did work. There was some terrible product I reviewed that allowed you multiple versions of Win9x side-by-side on a PC with gigs of RAM (mid-1990s): it booted DOS, created a big RAMdisk, copied your entire OS into the RAMdrive, switched drive letters, and then your PC ran very fast... But you had to do the special shutdown procedure, or you lost everything. And Win9x tended to crash relatively easily. It was like someone came up with the most dangerous possible way to use lots of RAM to make Win9x go faster. I gave it such a negative review that my editor refused to run it and wrote his own. Never happened before or since.
- wink 5y ago
  hehe, I don't remember all the details - but I just did it after some random tutorial on the internet, and obviously you should have all your "stuff" on some d: partition, but I actually ran it for a while - the only downside was the same as with every 'disk reimagining' program like Norton Ghost, if you wanted to change so much as as your desktop wallpaper and wanted it to stick - do a special boot to 'save changes mode'. But I'm pretty sure a lot of things were handled with some autostart-link to a special batch file on d: :P As I said, it was fun - not sure I would've wanted this kind of stuff for a work machine, yeah.

by wink 5y ago

lproven 5y ago

This is true -- I managed to get Win95 running in a 16MB hardware RAMdisk. It was an interesting exercise, but it did work. There was some terrible product I reviewed that allowed you multiple versions of Win9x side-by-side on a PC with gigs of RAM (mid-1990s): it booted DOS, created a big RAMdisk, copied your entire OS into the RAMdrive, switched drive letters, and then your PC ran very fast... But you had to do the special shutdown procedure, or you lost everything. And Win9x tended to crash relatively easily. It was like someone came up with the most dangerous possible way to use lots of RAM to make Win9x go faster. I gave it such a negative review that my editor refused to run it and wrote his own. Never happened before or since.

wink 5y ago
hehe, I don't remember all the details - but I just did it after some random tutorial on the internet, and obviously you should have all your "stuff" on some d: partition, but I actually ran it for a while - the only downside was the same as with every 'disk reimagining' program like Norton Ghost, if you wanted to change so much as as your desktop wallpaper and wanted it to stick - do a special boot to 'save changes mode'. But I'm pretty sure a lot of things were handled with some autostart-link to a special batch file on d: :P As I said, it was fun - not sure I would've wanted this kind of stuff for a work machine, yeah.