One thing is PC hardware back then was often complete crap. You could run diagnostics and get a lot of memory and disk errors, but Windows 95 still ran "okay".

One thing is PC hardware back then was often complete crap. You could run diagnostics and get a lot of memory and disk errors, but Windows 95 still ran "okay". It was definitely a lot more stable if you spent the money on good stuff. Part of it was low expectations too. The half-life for Windows 3.1 crashes was about 4 hours. If your computer stayed up all day, that was considered a massive improvement. It took people a long time to discover the "49 day bug" that was in both Windows and OS/2.