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Why does part of the Windows 98 Setup program look older than the rest? (2020)
- glyphy177 3y ago[dead]
- Dalewyn 3y agoThe Windows 11 installer is basically Windows 7 for the first part too, though this might be changing soon.
- userbinator 3y agoI'm not sure about 2K and before, but starting with XP all of the NT-based Windows use some version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro... for their installer.
- EvanAnderson 3y agoWindows 2000, 2003, and XP still used a lot of the install components from earlier NT versions. Vista was the first incarnation of the "modern" Windows setup that we still use today. PE was built using XP but the XP installer was mostly the NT installer (text mode then Mini-Windows).
- Dalewyn 3y agoAs mentioned already by a sibling commenter, installers for NT4 through XP/2003 were all based off earlier NT installers with text mode and all. WinPE has its roots in NT5.1 (XP), but it was from NT6.0 (Vista) that we got the "modern" installer, and it last saw a UI overhaul during NT6.1 (7). Throughout 8 through 11 so far, the first part of the installer was and is basically Windows 7. The screenshot[1] of WinPE 10.0 on that Wikipedia article showcases the Windows Basic[2] theme in all its glory, including even the Windows 7 and prior Task Manager. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_PE_screenshot.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_PE_screenshot.png [2]: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_Basic https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_Basic
- p_l 3y agoIt's just little changed in theme/resource files, it boots straight to windows 11 for installer. Before Vista, the installer process on NT had three phases: 1. Optional DOS phase to bring minimal NTLDR environment up 2. "Micro" NT without Win32 API that ran only NTAPI (NE format executables et al) applications in the minimal console support (with the characteristic default of white on blue). This would do equivalent of "minimal install" on unices to the target disk, setting up proper HAL.DLL, boot time drivers, and setting up registry hives. 3. GUI installer that booted from hard disk with Win32 subsystem enabled.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- afavour 3y agoInteresting! Makes a lot of sense, too: if you’re offering the ability to upgrade from 3.1 you’re going to need to support it anyway, so why not use it as a setup bootstrap?
- 1970-01-01 3y agoThe peak of mouse-driven GUI was Windows 98. The icon designs, the customization, and the animation is unmatched even today. https://alexmeub.com/old-windows-icons/ https://alexmeub.com/old-windows-icons/
- afavour 3y agoI remember preferring Windows 2000 but can’t remember exactly why. Very similar to 98 but felt more refined somehow.
- mvkel 3y agoFor me it was the top window gradient. I think in win98 it was 256 colors and in windows 2000 it was 16-bit
- estebank 3y agoNT kernel with it's related stability, true-color interface, no XP "fisher price" UI. 2000 was probably the pinnacle of that era's design language. Ironically, XP made it more feasible to use 2000 day to day as drivers for XP worked on the earlier 2000.
- derefr 3y agoRe: XP UI — did you ever try Windows Server 2003?
- EvanAnderson 3y agoServer 2003 was my daily driver on a laptop for a few years. Most XP software ran fine but it had none of the XP visual cruft. Until Windows 7 it was peak Windows for me.
- deepspace 3y agoI ran that rare beast, Windows XP64. It was basically Server2003 x64 with the XP UI. Driver compatibility was terrible, as you might expect, but it could support a vast amount of memory (relative to XP). I used the base O/S only to run VMware Workstation, and then ran small instances of XP, each dedicated to a task like audio, video, etc, on top of that. Along with FreeBSD and various flavors of Linux. That was my daily driver until late 2010. Solid as a rock.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ivanjermakov 3y agoWhy every file name is uppercase? Is there any reason for that convention, perhaps better readability on low res display?
- j16sdiz 3y agoDOS filenames are uppercase. That came from CP/M. In early days, computers just don't do lowercase. When you do case-insensitivty, storing names in uppercase make sense if all older filesystem are uppercase only
- cbsmith 3y agoInterestingly, CP/M's filesystem would actually do lowercase. It's just CPP would uppercase every command entered at the command line before executing it. Not surprisingly, people tended to use uppercase with CP/M.
- cbsmith 3y agoIt's inherited from CP/M. That's also where the 8.3 character limits came from. Interestingly, CP/M's filesystem did support lower case characters, but CP/M's CPP would convert whatever commands you gave it to the upper case before they are executed. DOS's filesystem was case insensitive, but they otherwise followed CP/M's conventions.
- fsckboy 3y agoCP/M copied DEC's operating systems, like RSX-11. They inherited the uppercase from the time when memory was expensive and 6bit ascii would fit more characters into a 36 bit word.
- whartung 3y agoWith MS-BASIC on CP/M, if you saved the file using lowercase, BASIC would not upshift it, and the CPP commands could not act of the resulting files. You’d have to fix it by removing the file within BASIC using the built in command (KILL I think) then saving it in uppercase. Can’t say MS considered it a bug or simply chose to not fix it for backward compatibility. It existed in quite late versions.
- CommieBobDole 3y agoThere's a whole list of weird Windows UI remnants from previous versions on github: https://github.com/Lentern/windows-11-inconsistencies https://github.com/Lentern/windows-11-inconsistencies
- userbinator 3y ago...also known as "the good parts".
- romanovcode 3y ago> The fact that there are still remnants that go all the way back to Windows 1.0 is baffling. It's crazy how lazy Microsoft has gotten when it comes to updating these features. It seems like the older they get, the less likely Microsoft is to actually update them. I don't get it. Why being so overly critical? Why should they update the ODBC.exe or dxdiag.exe, or even regedit.exe? They serve their purpose and work just fine.
- kgeist 3y agoRaymond Chen mentioned that some programs peek into the internals of old dialogs (a sort of automation) and so they left a lot of old stuff intact to avoid breaking such programs.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y agoAgreed. Change for the sake of change reeks of resume-driven development.
- grzeshru 3y agoNew Old Thing goes in-depth about the windows under windows.
- ranger_danger 3y agoVery underrated blog and an even more underrated book.
- grishka 3y agoHe wrote a book?
- bigstrat2003 3y agoHe sure did. It's a mixture of stories (some of which are on his blog, some not) and fairly detailed example programs highlighting various parts of Windows.
- justsomehnguy 3y agoIn 2006. https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/dp/0321440307 https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/...
- KaiMagnus 3y agoDo you have any recommendations? I assume this is the one you’re talking about https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ I was curious, went to the end (page 699!) and it’s pretty interesting. But obviously it’s hard to find the important ones.
- timetraveller26 3y agoWindows XP installation process seemed something similar. I remember I was blown away the first time I installed from an ubuntu live cd.
- kccqzy 3y agoI was blown away when I installed Ubuntu via Wubi. (It wasn't my first time installing Ubuntu, and my first time was much more traditional.)
- o11c 3y agoI installed from a couple of graphical CDs around 2008 (... how did I even burn that first CD?) ... then shortly after that Linux finally made full-resolution TTYs work by default and I used text mode thereafter. Usually via `mini.iso` (since I install rarely, start with a small base system, and like not starting with out-of-date packages). I'm trying not to have a panic attack that "Windows 98" unambiguously counts as retrocomputing now though.
- pjerem 3y ago> I'm trying not to have a panic attack that "Windows 98" unambiguously counts as retrocomputing now though. Oh you can totally go up to Windows XP for this denomination. Some would argue you may even go to 7. Windows 10 is 9-10 years old and nobody ever cared or will ever be nostalgic about Windows 8 which is 12 years old so it’s not unreasonable to consider anything before that, "Retro".
- danirod 3y ago> Some would argue you may even go to 7. This is highly subjective, but I'd consider Windows 7 as retro at this point. As of 2024, Windows 7 is 14 years old. Windows 95, for instance, was already 14 years old the year when Windows 7 was released (2009). And Windows 95 was already seen as "retro" by that time.
- adrianmsmith 3y ago
- 090rf 3y ago[dead]
- koyote 3y agoI used to only own 'upgrade' versions of Windows (cheaper). Whenever I had to reinstall Windows (which was frequent back in Win98 days), I had to first install DOS from floppy, then Win 3.11 from floppy, then a CD-ROM driver, then Win95 from CD until I could finally install Win98. (at one point I acquired a non-upgrade version of Win95 but it came on 20+ floppies, so the installation was not really much faster). The end-result was a Win98 installation with a lot of old software lying around as the 'upgrade' installers did not always remove all of the existing items.
- cameronh90 3y agoMy main desktop had the same installation of Windows for 15 years, from Vista in 2007 right the way through to 10 in 2023, having upgraded through every intermediate version. I only finally did a fresh reinstall for 11. I would copy the hard drive contents from one drive to the next each time I bought a new drive, and ultimately that installation survived three complete hardware refreshes and countless interim component upgrades. Needless to say, there was a LOT of cruft hanging about by the end. From ancient components from old versions of Visual Studio to drivers for early 2000s era scanners. Most of it still ran too, testament to Microsoft’s backwards compatibility.
- chungy 3y agoI know, it's probably a bit late now, but you can clean install from the upgrade media. The setup program merely asks you to insert the installation floppy or CD into the computer to verify that you actually own an older qualifying operating system. To clean-install Windows 98 using the Upgrade version, it would accept either 3.1x or 95 installation media. After the verification, it'll proceed to work exactly like the fully-purchased product version, no cruft from an older OS (since the older OS was never installed in the first place). I know they continued doing this at least up until Windows Vista and 7. Helpful especially since Windows 2000 was a qualifying operating system for Vista upgrade, but a direct upgrade wasn't possible from 2000; it could directly upgrade from XP, though. Windows 7 would restrict the qualifying OSes to XP and Vista, and only allow direct upgrades from Vista. (Never tried newer versions of Windows, can't say what 8/10/11 do, but I have little reason to believe the practice has changed.)
- rl3 3y agoWindows Millennium Edition was much flashier, although I particularly liked the blue background and white text.
- p0w3n3d 3y agoI was trying to hold ME back for as long as possible, and I managed to almost skip it. It was only hiding DOS (but still based on DOS) and not introducing much of a performance improvements (if any, maybe only on boot). Meanwhile I played a lot of DOS games (still) that were unplayable from windows (like Pinball Fantasies)
- hypercube33 3y agoWindows Me wasn't so bad on the right (read: supported) since it's some freak between Windows NT and dos. Really interesting the history of the NT and Win9x teams kind of stealing code for UX and drivers back and forth
- p0w3n3d 3y agoWould love to hear more. I remember ME looking so shiny, but in the end had some childhood age problems
- orthoxerox 3y agoWindows ME had the best boot floppy. I kept it around until 2007 or so, until booting from USB sticks became reliable enough and reinstalling Windows was no longer strongly recommended every time you upgraded your system.
- nerdo 3y agoOntogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
- raldi 3y agoYes — we do the same thing!
- qingcharles 3y agoWhat is the official name of this minimal Windows 3 system? I know it used to have a name. It was used for other purposes too, but I can't for the life of me remember what.
- ngomez 3y agoAre you thinking of the Windows 3.00 Working Model? https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_3.00_Working_Model https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_3.00_Working_Model
- qingcharles 3y agoI'd not seen that one before, but I could have done with that version on my twin floppy 286 as it was a pain to run 3.1 on it.
- pndy 3y agoPretty sure you have Windows Preinstallation Environment, WinPE in mind but it arrived with XP - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro... On Windows 200 and XP you could install additional recovery console - which in later version has become a default addition to the system
- qingcharles 3y agoAh, this was what I was thinking of, thank you. WinPE.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoIt was used when you wanted to compress the system drive (C:) with DriveSpace. it would reboot into something that looked like Windows 3.1 and do the compression. Just a single window with a progress bar and a cancel button, but the button and the title bar gave it away. I'm assuming it was loaded entirely into ram so it could safely meddle with the system partition. I always wondered if there was a way to boot into a working 3.1 environment as that stuff had to live somewhere in your install.
- vbezhenar 3y agoComments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Chenmunka May 26, 2020 at 16:59 chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/... : Page not found This is really wrong. I wanted to read that discussion.
- Shog9 3y agoHere you go: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/108509/2020/5/26 https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/108509/2020/5/26 For some reason, you'll need to be logged into Stack Exchange to view that. Screen-grab: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aalu.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aalu.jpg
- gommm 3y agoI'm logged in and the link doesn't work. So, thanks for the screengrab! I'm always a bit annoyed by people cleaning comments like this to move it to chat when stack exchange chat is so bad and somehow always has messed up timestamps.
- vargr616 3y agoYou probably need the amount of reputation needed to view deleted posts and answers/comments. (last i've checked it was 10k)
- kapitanjakc 3y agoI was somehow able to change my mouse processing animation to red running horse. That was the highlight of my year and I showed it to all my schoolmates.
- M95D 3y agoYou probably still can. In Win10 there is still control panel / mouse / cursors / browse button.
- dailykoder 3y agoI am pretty sure this is possible on Arch Linux, too!
- gapan 3y agoYou run Arch BTW.
- schnable 3y agoI am so tired of clicking through cookie acknowledgements on every freakin StackExchange subdomain. Somebody please make it stop.
- beAbU 3y agoU-block origin with the annoyances filters switched on? I live in the EU and only about 1/10 sites have a banner that show up for me.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoConsent-o-matic is great for the sites which still show banners despite filtering. I even have it installed on firefox for android, where it's more useful . https://consentomatic.au.dk/ https://consentomatic.au.dk/
- aAaaArrRgH 3y agoAnd it officially registers your opt-out, if you care about that sort of thing.
- coldpie 3y agoInstalling ad & annoyance blockers is good. Another approach is to nuke "sticky" elements with a simple bookmarklet. It also removes a bunch of other useless crap from modern websites, like those lame floating headers & footers. I wrote about it here: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2024/01/20/take-back-your-web-browser-screen-space-with-kill-sticky/ https://www.smokingonabike.com/2024/01/20/take-back-your-web...
- grishka 3y agoWelcome back! If you found this question useful, don't forget to vote both the question and the answers up. Cookie notices are at least easy to get rid of, there exist various adblocker filter lists specifically for that. That popup though...
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- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anacrolix 3y agoSE/SO has been a tire fire since 2014.