3 ms·

What 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 re

What 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 ago
Are 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 ago
  I'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 ago
Pretty 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 ago
  Ah, this was what I was thinking of, thank you. WinPE.
iforgotpassword 3y ago
It 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.
- exe34 3y ago
  I remember until win98, you could run a program called fileman or something that looked like a win3.1 file browser. That was my idea of retro back then..
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Ask and ye shall receive: https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile File Manager, or winfile.exe, was the predecessor to Explorer's file management aspects. You can use it on Windows 10 and 11 (and all the others) if you want to. Program Manager, or progman.exe, was the predecessor shell to Explorer. It was included with Windows through Windows XP SP1 before finally being stubbed in SP2 and removed altogether in Vista. You can probably grab the binary from XP SP1 and run it in newer Windows versions, though.
    - exe34 3y ago
      Might have to see if it works on wine. The screenshot has the horrible aero window frame though.
      - fredoralive 3y ago
        It's a multiple documents interface program (where one main window contains subwindows), a UI style out of fashion since the early days of Windows 95 (IIRC it was Office 97 that switched Office apps from MDI to multiple main windows for example). For some reason Microsoft hasn't updated the theming for them since Windows Vista, probably because it's such a niche thing. Even on Vista / 7, they're stuck as Aero Basic windows, rather than the actually glass ones. The Windows Forms editor in Visual Studio also using those window borders, which shows how much MS cares about that compared to XAML dialect of the week. The Aero Basic theme is particularly horrible though, I do wonder if that particularly unpleasant shade of cyan for the borders was picked to punish those who didn't activate Windows, or were to poor to afford Home Premium. In the end it's one of those weird forgotten things, like the Windows 3.x colour picker dialogue that still lurks in a few places like Wordpad (although MS are "solving" that).
Dwedit 3y ago
Seems to be "Mini.cab"? Don't know if there are any other names for it.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  There was a sort of PE called MiniNT I think that was a dos like Windows NT but I don't recall if it was used for any setup of Windows as it's been a few decades. Ouch that hurt to write.
  - Dwedit 3y ago
    Is that like the recovery console of Windows 2000/XP? Not Windows PE GUI with a command prompt window, but a fullscreen text-mode environment.
fredoralive 3y ago
BetaWiki claims it's based on Modular Windows[1], as also used on the infamous Tandy VIS. Haven't a clue if it's true, and Modular Windows was used for basically nothing, MS seemed to just give up and move onto embedded version of NT fairly quickly. [1] https://betawiki.net/wiki/Modular_Windows https://betawiki.net/wiki/Modular_Windows

What 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 ago

Are 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 ago
I'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 ago

Pretty 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 ago
Ah, this was what I was thinking of, thank you. WinPE.

iforgotpassword 3y ago

It 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.

exe34 3y ago
I remember until win98, you could run a program called fileman or something that looked like a win3.1 file browser. That was my idea of retro back then..
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Ask and ye shall receive: https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile File Manager, or winfile.exe, was the predecessor to Explorer's file management aspects. You can use it on Windows 10 and 11 (and all the others) if you want to. Program Manager, or progman.exe, was the predecessor shell to Explorer. It was included with Windows through Windows XP SP1 before finally being stubbed in SP2 and removed altogether in Vista. You can probably grab the binary from XP SP1 and run it in newer Windows versions, though.
  - exe34 3y ago
    Might have to see if it works on wine. The screenshot has the horrible aero window frame though.
    - fredoralive 3y ago
      It's a multiple documents interface program (where one main window contains subwindows), a UI style out of fashion since the early days of Windows 95 (IIRC it was Office 97 that switched Office apps from MDI to multiple main windows for example). For some reason Microsoft hasn't updated the theming for them since Windows Vista, probably because it's such a niche thing. Even on Vista / 7, they're stuck as Aero Basic windows, rather than the actually glass ones. The Windows Forms editor in Visual Studio also using those window borders, which shows how much MS cares about that compared to XAML dialect of the week. The Aero Basic theme is particularly horrible though, I do wonder if that particularly unpleasant shade of cyan for the borders was picked to punish those who didn't activate Windows, or were to poor to afford Home Premium. In the end it's one of those weird forgotten things, like the Windows 3.x colour picker dialogue that still lurks in a few places like Wordpad (although MS are "solving" that).

Dwedit 3y ago

Seems to be "Mini.cab"? Don't know if there are any other names for it.

hypercube33 3y ago
There was a sort of PE called MiniNT I think that was a dos like Windows NT but I don't recall if it was used for any setup of Windows as it's been a few decades. Ouch that hurt to write.
- Dwedit 3y ago
  Is that like the recovery console of Windows 2000/XP? Not Windows PE GUI with a command prompt window, but a fullscreen text-mode environment.

fredoralive 3y ago

BetaWiki claims it's based on Modular Windows[1], as also used on the infamous Tandy VIS. Haven't a clue if it's true, and Modular Windows was used for basically nothing, MS seemed to just give up and move onto embedded version of NT fairly quickly. [1] https://betawiki.net/wiki/Modular_Windows https://betawiki.net/wiki/Modular_Windows