Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

In my experience DOS but also all Windows from 1.2 to 95 never experienced crashes. For me it started with Windows 98 (heavily pirated by people) and the horror story was Windows me. My wife told me to do something and as there were versions of Windows 2000 provided for free in magazines, I used one. Windows 2000 was such a relief from Windows me! But there was no USB and other niceties in W2K.

The nightmare started again with Windows XP, then I switched to Ubuntu which was reminiscent of Windows 2000.

A funny thing and proof of solid interfaces in Windows 3.1/3.11 and Windows, is that people were making their own versions by removing/adding components and sometimes even changing their content with hexadecimal editors.

There is still a fandom for old Windows versions out there.

And you could catch viruses literally by hand by looking in kernel files, checking their size, and checking what was loaded in memory.

I remember that time with great pleasure.




Windows 95 itself was relatively stable but the drivers were globally not. Your experience variend depending on the hardware you were running, and the stability of the associated drivers.


Windows 95 stable? Never ran out of GDI handles and had Win95/98 crashing? Yeah right...




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: