4 ms·

Why did Windows 95 use blue screen error messages instead of hard error messages

30 points by Tomte 2y ago

alliao 2y ago
what I'd really like is some comparison between all OSs in handling these and maybe we'd have new OS some day? I remember the scintillating days of OS/2 Warp/BeOS/linux distros and everything called itself windows killer. I feel like an old man shouting at cloud but I swear Windows used to be slow and then got pretty snappy around windows2000 and nowadays I feel like it's back to win98 days in terms of latency/response
- theandrewbailey 2y ago
  Depends on the hardware used to run it. Windows 98 on a Pentium 2 or 3 with 64+ MB RAM is quite snappy.
nxobject 2y ago
Wow – my mind was blown as someone who was always told that "Win9x is MS-DOS with a graphical shell", with how in Windows 9x "enhanced"/32-bit mode, there's actually a general-purpose "microkernel"/VMM that handles core facilities and context switching between Windows and MS-DOS. I was always under the impression that Win9x was just a hack, but it seems there was eventually a more robust architecture.
- kagevf 2y ago
  > "Win9x is MS-DOS with a graphical shell" I think if you replaced “Win9x” with Windows 3.1 - or earlier - it would be true.
PaulHoule 2y ago
… sounds like this is why Win 95 seemed to crash all the time.
- plorkyeran 2y ago
  As time has gone on I have become increasingly impressed by the fact that Windows 9x worked at all. There’s so many of these things that sound like they should individually cause the system to be crashing constantly, and yet somehow they got it to mostly work.
  - thelastparadise 2y ago
    > There’s so many of these things that sound like they should individually cause the system to be crashing constantly, and yet somehow they got it to mostly work. You just described all of humanity.
jmkni 2y ago
I knew before I clicked this that it would be a Raymond Chen article
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bubblesnort 2y ago
If you enter C:\PROGRA~1 during setup, you end up with Program Files being the only folder in the C: drive.
- alliao 2y ago
  where were you in 1994

30 points by Tomte 2y ago

what I'd really like is some comparison between all OSs in handling these and maybe we'd have new OS some day? I remember the scintillating days of OS/2 Warp/BeOS/linux distros and everything called itself windows killer. I feel like an old man shouting at cloud but I swear Windows used to be slow and then got pretty snappy around windows2000 and nowadays I feel like it's back to win98 days in terms of latency/response

theandrewbailey 2y ago
Depends on the hardware used to run it. Windows 98 on a Pentium 2 or 3 with 64+ MB RAM is quite snappy.

nxobject 2y ago

Wow – my mind was blown as someone who was always told that "Win9x is MS-DOS with a graphical shell", with how in Windows 9x "enhanced"/32-bit mode, there's actually a general-purpose "microkernel"/VMM that handles core facilities and context switching between Windows and MS-DOS. I was always under the impression that Win9x was just a hack, but it seems there was eventually a more robust architecture.

kagevf 2y ago
> "Win9x is MS-DOS with a graphical shell" I think if you replaced “Win9x” with Windows 3.1 - or earlier - it would be true.

PaulHoule 2y ago

… sounds like this is why Win 95 seemed to crash all the time.

plorkyeran 2y ago
As time has gone on I have become increasingly impressed by the fact that Windows 9x worked at all. There’s so many of these things that sound like they should individually cause the system to be crashing constantly, and yet somehow they got it to mostly work.
- thelastparadise 2y ago
  > There’s so many of these things that sound like they should individually cause the system to be crashing constantly, and yet somehow they got it to mostly work. You just described all of humanity.

jmkni 2y ago

I knew before I clicked this that it would be a Raymond Chen article

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bubblesnort 2y ago

If you enter C:\PROGRA~1 during setup, you end up with Program Files being the only folder in the C: drive.

alliao 2y ago
where were you in 1994