Windows 95…in less than 5 MB? It’s been done. Based on the work of Richard E. James and redruM69 (who recently boiled down Windows 95 to less than 10 MB, and 5.3MB, respectively), msbetas.net was able to juice it down to just 4.47 MB. In the words of the author, “Okay, over the past couple of days you will have heard plenty of news about the latest Windows 95 in 10mb, created by Richard E. James from over at Wimborne.org. And then, there was redruM69, who managed to get 95 down to 5.35mb. However, what you are about to hear is a world first.
Tonight, I created the world’s first sub-5mb bootable, registry editable, command-promptable, usable version of Windows 95. And what’s more, you can build the system yourself, if you know how.
But if I simply made this claim, you might laugh, you might mock. You might even go “hahaha you lamer”. So I’m not just going to make this claim. I’m going to prove it. Here’s the screenshots (taken with the camera):
——————————————-
Screenshots are included with the article, as is a list of files present in the OS. The article will be updated in the future with the configuration files taken from the OS itself, and possibly an installer.“
…would be nice
Yeah, seems they didn’t include one :S
http://msbetas.net/V6/default.asp?postid=52
Full details there.
sorry about that. fixed.
Talk about taking out all the bloat!
No problem Adam, and thanks for the post
I can’t guess it would be very useful with nothing on there by system files
Heh, now add Internet Explorer and watch it explode :]
And I thought I was doing good with a 60MB install
heh
Anyone trying similar experiments with Win2k/WinXP? Would love to get WinXP down under 1GB
Whats funny about this is that the competition for Windows95 on the Mac side (at the time) was system 7.
System 7 could fit but reduced to its most simply elements so that it fits on a floppy disk!
I hit enter before I could proof my post
What’s funny about this is that the competition for Windows95 on the Mac side (at the time) was system 7.
System 7 could be reduced to its most simple elements so that it fit on a floppy disk!
What’s funny about this is that the competition for Windows95 on the Mac side (at the time) was system 7.
System 7 could be reduced to its most simple elements so that it fit on a floppy disk!
The real deal here is that System 7 was junk. Win95 wasn’t anything special but it did have protected memory for 32-bit applications.
Much more robust and stable OS than System 7.
“The real deal here is that System 7 was junk.”
Compared to Windows 95 it was a masterpiece.
“Win95 Much more robust and stable OS than System 7.”
robust? hardly… More stable?… ABSOLUTELY not.
also system 7 looks pretty rubbish, id rather use CLI for DOS or V20S, neither of which i like.
…still runs on a floppy.
Just thought I’d share.
Actually this would be cool if they did it to Win98se and gave isos away for free on the web.
I once put win3.0 on a 720K floppy.
…still runs on a floppy.
Does that actually boot into a GUI? I can still make a Win95 floppy bootdisk, so that’s not all that impressive.
This news is a testimony to the fact that project managers at Microsoft never really cared about trimming Windows. They never worried about bloatware.
Those guys at MSbetas.net seem engaged in a “slim Windows 95” contest but isn’t it a misguided effort ? Considering that Windows 95/98/Me were crapshoots, no matter how many time you spend on them, they will remain piles of dirt.
As to the idea that Win95 did have protected memory for 32-bit applications, that must be a joke. Robust and stable (even compared to System 7) ? For God’s sake !
Someone still uses win95? I’m sorry,
Ok, now all of Win95 is reduced to this size. Could you have it boot up from a flashROM device, like a lexar JumpDrive, for instance?
What would that require, in addition to the OS?
Just curious.
Mark: That was a major new feature of Win95, as well has pre-emptive multi-tasking for 32bit apps (neither of which MacOS got until OSX).
Anon:
You have to either be incredibly stupid or incredibly ignorant to think that System 7 was better than Win95.
Hell, I’d say OS9 only had a few things better about it than Win95.
The real deal here is that System 7 was junk. Win95 wasn’t anything special but it did have protected memory for 32-bit applications.
Much more robust and stable OS than System 7.
Yes, but you know what was more robust and stable than both System 7 and Win95? System 6
its what i run on my MacSE, and i love it.
I’ve used both, our high school computer lab at the time was approximately 75% mac 25% PC. (Remember when Apple OWNED the education market?)
As far as the robustness of each is concerned, System 7 didn’t crash often, but when a program locked it up, you were DONE, command-apple-escape or whatever the keystroke was almost never killed the program. Sometimes command-apple-delete (i think that’s the keystroke) would let you “properly” reboot your mac, if you were lucky.
Windows 95 programs probably crashed about twice as often, but were half as likely to take the whole system with them.
You see, no matter what you Apple fanboys want to remember about System 7, technology-wise Windows 95 did have some advantages. Windows 95 had a *small* degree of memory protection, System 7 (and 8 and 9) had NONE. It just so happens that Mac applications of the time period tended to be better written as a general rule.
Also, IIRC Win95 had a builtin TCP/IP stack before System 7 did (my memory tells me TCP/IP was added to the core operating system in System 7.5) and what was the first version of MacOS to include a built-in web browser?
Note, this is just what my memory tells me. It’s been at least 7 or 8 years since I’ve done much with a Mac.
Compared to Windows 95 it was a masterpiece.
Many would disagree.
robust? hardly… More stable?… ABSOLUTELY not.
Take it from someone who was writing software on both the mac and wintel at the time. System 7 was NOTHING compared to Win95. System 7 had a decent interface and that was ALL. The kernel design of System 7 was an anciet POS in every sense of the word. Cooperative tasking junk.
It just so happens that Mac applications of the time period tended to be better written as a general rule.
They had to be well written. The OS was a piece of living garbage that Developers had no choice but to go 110% writing an app. You sure couldn’t trust that the OS would do much for you.
“also system 7 looks pretty rubbish”
Hardly. System 7 was very clean.
“You have to either be incredibly stupid or incredibly ignorant to think that System 7 was better than Win95.”
I am neither of those… but I am right.
“I’d say OS9 only had a few things better about it than Win95.”
Far FAR more than a few.
“As far as the robustness of each is concerned, System 7 didn’t crash often, but when a program locked it up, you were DONE”
This was similar to Win95. The difference was that it happened far less often on system 7.
“Sometimes command-apple-delete (i think that’s the keystroke) would let you “properly” reboot your mac, if you were lucky.”
When you were lucky? That worked 99% of the time.
“Windows 95 programs probably crashed about twice as often, but were half as likely to take the whole system with them.”
Not true. When they crashed… they crashed hard… and brought down the whole system.
“You see, no matter what you Apple fanboys want to remember about System 7”
I haven’t seen one single Apple fanboy on this thread thus far… why are you addressing?
“technology-wise Windows 95 did have some advantages.”
As did system 7.
“Windows 95 had a *small* degree of memory protection, System 7 (and 8 and 9) had NONE.”
That is not true. System 8 received an equally small bit of protected memory.
“It just so happens that Mac applications of the time period tended to be better written as a general rule.”
Better API = better applications
“Also, IIRC Win95 had a builtin TCP/IP stack before System 7 did (my memory tells me TCP/IP was added to the core operating system in System 7.5)”
True.
“and what was the first version of MacOS to include a built-in web browser?”
Early versions of system 7 had cyberdog. (If memory serves me, Apple had a web browser included with the OS before Microsoft did)
“Take it from someone who was writing software on both the mac and wintel at the time. System 7 was NOTHING compared to Win95.”
I was written software for both systems then as well… and disagree with that statement.
“System 7 had a decent interface and that was ALL.”
No, it had a lot more.
“The kernel design of System 7 was an anciet POS in every sense of the word.”
Not ancient… but not as advanced as it could have been either.
“Cooperative tasking junk.”
At the time, there were no desktop OSes that had full preemptive multitasking in them. This was because the processor wasn’t fast enough at the time to distribute processes very well and so at the time, a cooperative multi-tasking system was FAR more efficient than a preemtive one… and it certinly wasn’t “junk”.
Why is it that you PC fan boys insist on turning any thread which slightly mentions Apple into a Mac Falme-fest.
It’s really pathetic.
> At the time, there were no desktop OSes
> that had full preemptive multitasking in them.
Amiga did.
QNX had a disto out that ran on 1.4mb floppy, and included a tcp/ip stack and a web-browser, and drivers for nic or modem. I tried it, it actaully works.
IMO: System 7 is far supperior to Win95. I am very much a PC guy, I practically never touch Macs anymore. System 7 was more efficent, and more stable.
But, in terms of Hdd space it’s not a fair comparion. Macs keep a lot of the gui stuff in the hardware.
>> At the time, there were no desktop OSes
>> that had full preemptive multitasking in them.
> Amiga did.
As did OS/2. As did NT 3.x.
Macs keep a lot of the gui stuff in the hardware.
Well, kept
FWIW, I used both System 7 and Win95 extensively, and in terms of Getting Stuff Done, the Mac won hands down. Sure, it was barely more than some system services (the Mac ToolBox) riding directly over the hardware, but the fact that most apps were written with more care helped a lot. Win95 was a total pain in the ass getting things to work right, and adding too many programs would make the system unstable. It had some basic memory protection, more so than Sys 7, and pretty much real preemption, but that’s about all it did better. There are still a lot of PC programs out there that are slap-dash operations. Maybe .NET will encourage better products.
remember work is done in the app not the os so if the app crashes it can be just as bad as a system crash
that this boosts all our geekiness factors big time, arguing about dead operating systems. 🙂
Back to arguing about OSs that are still *alive* and *useful*.
I’m wondering how fast it would boot up now? I have older pentium laptop that I would like to try it on. And benchmarks? Thanks
When I found my first programming job in early 1997, I was put to work on a computer running Windows 95b. I was really disappointed at the time because I thought I was going to get a Mac. I owned a PowerMac at the time running one of the later versions of System 7 (I think it was 7.5 at that time).
I quickly grew to like 95, mainly because it only crashed about once a week, and because it let me run multiple programs without much of a slowdown. I could decompress a large file in the background while running a Photoshop filter, also in the background, and keep typing away at full speed in my IDE in the foreground. Real virtual memory was an added bonus. True keyboard navigation for every function was also very nice. I could completely avoid the mouse if I preferred. This was impossible in System 7 without some 3rd party plugin which would bring the machine down.
On 95, if a program went down, 70% of the time the program would crash without bringing the system down. On System 7, this was usually 90% system crash rate and the crashes were daily. On System 7 I’d usually have to sit there, watching the progress bar while Stuffit or Photoshop did its thing. If I dared check my email during a Stuffit decompression or a Photoshop filter procedure, Stuffit / Photoshop would slow to a crawl.
This sort of thing was eye-opening to me after having used a Mac exclusively for the previous seven years and always assuming anything Microsoft was utter crap.
And Apple had no real excuse. In the mid-90’s: Amiga, Linux, and Windows all had true preemptive multitasking with memory protection on the desktop. At the time, Apple’s only technical advantage was its beautiful interface and the ease of using multimedia.
Maybe a distinction should be made between 95a and 95b. 95a was horridly unstable with many badly written programs and drivers. My 95b machine wasn’t bad at all and felt very stable, expecially compared to my System 7 box.
Of course its stability was terrible compared to my OS X, XP, and Linux machines of today but, for the time period, it was really good.
I’ve tried to build this micro95, it works!!!
Btw, there are guys trying to shrink the size of windows xp as well. Look at http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=9283 for more information. LitePC (the company who created 98lite tries to do this as well with their xplite.
I was written software for both systems then as well… and disagree with that statement.
Good for you. I for one did not feel that System 7 was anything good. Not even close. Win95 had it beat hands down when it came to delivering what I needed from an operating system.
No, it had a lot more.
Many would disagree.
Not ancient… but not as advanced as it could have been either.
Quite ancient and poorly written I might add.
At the time, there were no desktop OSes that had full preemptive multitasking in them.
Try OS/2 and Windows NT. Both were preemptive.
This was because the processor wasn’t fast enough at the time to distribute processes very well and so at the time, a cooperative multi-tasking system was FAR more efficient than a preemtive one… and it certinly wasn’t “junk”.
You couldn’t have been doing much more than hobby programming around that time to be this clueless about what was available.
Cooperative systems were and are junk. Its a poor design that can’t be implemented correctly because the design itself is flawed.
Why is it that you PC fan boys insist on turning any thread which slightly mentions Apple into a Mac Falme-fest.
It’s really pathetic.
You know whats really pathetic ? Seeing a post about something like a 4 meg install of Windows 95 and a bunch of idiots pointing out that system 7 fit on a floppy.
WTF does that have to do with anything ? I had old copies of DOS and CP/M that fit on a single floppy. Its totally irrelevant to the topic and yet you guys brought it up.
Then you want to know why PC fans rip you a new one ?
Look at the top of the thread!
“How did apple even come into this ???”
Because MacOS and Win95 were the two major GUI OSs of the time, I s’pose
System boots up from HDD in about 4 seconds; loading the DOS kernel, then copying the Windows dir to a RAMDISK and starting from there takes even less time (amazing, isn’t it), and the system starts from “Starting Windows 95” to a usable desktop in a mere 3 seconds.
Pretty fast, eh?
Oh, and for all those of you who seemed determined to turn this into a Mac vs Windows page, you can all can it. I’m an MS fanboy, and yet I’m buying a Mac. Why? Because System 7 had an elite interface? Fuck no. I’m buying a Mac because a) the iBook has the longest battery life for that price, and b) I want to run OS X because it owns.
Can’t we all just get along and stop bitching about which OS is better than the other? “Better” is a subjective term, and we’re not talking about subjectives here. The point of this article is that this is the SMALLEST Windows 95 distro… Smallest isn’t subjective, it’s pure fact.
Let’s stick the facts please, people.
Anyway, I’m going to sleep so I can wake up fresh and early to start MicroNT tomorrow (yes, a 16mb version of Windows NT).
Windows 95 is nothing but a yoyo. It is up,nope it is down, got global protection fault,…do reboot, registry is corrupt reinstall.
Menuet OS (often covered here) has a gui and fits on a floppy
tomsrtbt (toms.net) is a linux floppy (actually there’s too many linux floppy’s to mention), but it doesn’t have a gui.
Damnsmalllinux.org is a 50MB linux cd with gui I think blackbox.
Does anybody know of a linux floppy that has a gui?
All this talk of Windows 95 is making me nostalgic or nostlagic or something.
Personally I don’t see why this has turned into a Windows VS MacOS battle?? It’s rather silly that it has…
Anyways… I think it’s a great idea!! I’m looking forward to trying it! It would be great for embedded systems.
It’s also great for making old computers usable again. Stripped down Win95 should fly on older hardware! I’d like to setup an old box for some light web browsing and email.
And why do we bother playing with this stuff?? Because we love operating systems! New and old… This is OSnews after all.
I love playing with all operating systems. It’s just plain fun!
I seem to recall Be Inc. making a slim version of BeOS at one time.
Can someone refresh my memory?
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
how can i make my own 5mb Win95 installation? thats the one thing i havent seen yet.
~llama
I love playing with all operating systems. It’s just plain fun!
I fully second that.
What’s the smallest Win98 or Me for modern games? (like with Direct X 8.x) ?
Screw media player, internet xplorer, etc.
THAT WILL ALLOW GAMES TO ACTUALLY INSTALL PROPERLY
I went to the irc-channel where BOFH was and got win.ini, system.ini, registry.reg and a filelist. Then install a clean w95. Remove all files that are not in the filelist, even system.dat, user.dat (and .da0). Replace win.ini and system.ini with the smaller ones. Register registry.reg by running “regedit /c registry.reg”.
Then it’s done.
Since I can’t seem to get to the site, I want to ask a few questions. Does this run win32 apps like could you install netscape4, Office97, or other win95 era apps? Is networking included in the 5MBs or would that need to be installed extra? Is this legal, meaning, can Win95 be modified this way within the restrictions of the EULA? Seems like this could have benefits for some sort of embedded device. Win32 compatability in 5MBs sounds cool.
Regarding MacOS 7. I think that MacOS 6 was cool because it was actually usable running off a floppy, whereas 7 was really more suited to a HDD. Apple really had a huge lead from 1985 to 1994 or so, and they just blew it. They are only now making lost ground with MacOS X. MacOS 7 could be put on a floppy, but, it wasn’t very useful, and would swell well past 5MBs before it became so.
Congratulations msbetas.net for this achievement (sp?),
Skipp
If you can strip Windows that much, doesn’t that invalidate some of the anti-trust case? Wasn’t there a section about “middleware” where Microsoft included too much software so that third parties could not compete because the software could not be take out (by Hardware vendors for example)?
> Does this run win32 apps like could you install netscape4, Office97, or other win95 era apps?
It can, that’s what it’s made for. BOFH works on a 16 MB version that includes Office 95 without cliparts and other bloat.
> Is networking included in the 5MBs or would that need to be installed extra?
To be honest, I don’t know, but probably there are no drivers included. It should be possible to install TCP/IP and a driver for your network adapter.
Btw, you can use the PC speaker driver from Windows 3.1 to get a breeze of sound, it’s only a few kilobytes.
> Is this legal, meaning, can Win95 be modified this way within the restrictions of the EULA?
Yes. The EULA says that you’re not allowed to change binaries, but you only delete some and change INI files. Of course a license for Windows 95 is still required.
“no web site is configured at this address”
Mirror anywhere? I’d like to see this and read the article
http://www.mskf.org/mirrors/slimline/slimline.htm
they got Slashdotted after about 10 mins on that site. As someone over there pointed out, what do you expect of Windows 95….
It does not have networking support. (possible to add?)
It runs win32-applications. But almost all .dlls are removed (even mfc), so to run an application, the size would probably increase.
It does not support sound either. (possible to add?)
We all know that MSBetas is down at the moment, BOFH will be working on that soon, until then, the main discussion is at: http://www.neonerds.net/viewthread.php?tid=377 (requires registration to post) and there’s also an IRC room available: irc.ufnet.org or irc.xbetas.net i think, and the room is #micro95
I can’t see the point in stripping down the OS’es like this, when you can order Microsoft Windows XP Embedded[1] instead. With XP Embedded you can add/remove components as much as you want. Also Microsoft Windows CE.NET is another good choice [2].
And the talk about web-browsers.. Microsoft Research has a web-server (CamWebSIM) running on a GSM SIM-card[3] 😉
I’m more wondering _why_ people do this, then _how_ they do it
ciao!
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/xp/default.asp
[2] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/ce.net/default.asp
[3] http://research.microsoft.com/tools/
whats wrong with msbetas.net site?…. is it down?
I never remember hearing anything about this,but just how big was BeIA?
BeOS in it’s present (R5) incarnation is fairly small,but the main reason for this type of thing(for me at least)would to be to run it on some of the prehistoric junk I have lying around,BeOS just plain flat out refuses to do this,for one it HAS to have at least 32 megs of RAM,and for two it HAS to have at least a Pentium I CPU,so that rules out the 386’s and 486’s I have lying around.
I remember trying out NewDeal OS(a version of GEOS) a few yrs back,and it was small(around 10 or12MB’s I think)and came with plenty of bundled apps,a browser,graphics editor,offuce suite,etc. But it was outrageously expensive for what it was(100 bucks or more,compared to BeOS Pro or a boxed Linux or BSD distro which could be had for less than 50 bucks)and there was virtually no 3rd party apps for it,But it looked every bit as nice as Win95,and ran on some really ancient hardware.I also remember the company selling some refurbished 486 systems with NewDeal installed on them for just slightly more than they were charging for just the OS.
Now there’s a thought, somebody should grab up a bunch of old PI or PII boxes(at an auction or something) that are BeOS compatable(they would have to also have sound & modem) slap a stand-alone version of BeOS5PE on them,and sell them for a reasonable price (<$200)Now THAT would be a Green PC to be proud of, seeing as how there are thousands of 3rd party apps available for BeOS on BeBits and BeShare!
> I can’t see the point in stripping down the OS’es like this,
> when you can order Microsoft Windows XP Embedded[1] instead.
You can’t use XP Embedded as a general purpose computer. The license doesn’t allow it. You also cannot just buy a runtime license. You need to buy the developer kit, and that costs about $1000.
I can put boogers on a floppy, and am about as interested in doing so as I am about using Win95.
If system 7 had been the materpiece it was supposed to be Win95 would never have gone anywhere.
My Dad is a “Apple only” user, system 7 is the OS he never used
Because it’s possible. Almost everyone has the hardware and software to strip down win95 (or xp?). It’s just a question about how.
[1] XP embedded costs a lot of money.
[2] WinCE is not x86.
[3] Not x86 either.
1) Yeah.. that’s a showstopper.
2) Windows CE does support x86 [1]
3) um.. that was just to point out that I don’t think it’s that big deal to have a web-browser running on a win95 box 🙂
With regards to the XP Embedded license: If you cut down win95 to 5mb.. what are you wanting to do with it? Cut down MS Office 4.5 to 10mb and write documents etc.?
I’ll guess the answer (normally!) would be to use it in places like media-system for a car, coffe-machine controlsystem etc… and for such use you can also get an XP Embedded license.
Maybe Microsoft should sell some mini-version of XP Embedded/CE.NET where you could only create one image from it 🙂
But have fun with what you’re doing 🙂
since the msbetas.net domain got slashdotted
the provider of that free account pulled the plug.
see:
http://www.wimborne.org/richard/shrinkingwindows/
his mentioning of having a mirror is a hoax. sad.
meanwhile there is this new record reported on that page:
Chris ([email protected]), from Oregon, USA has managed to get Win95 down below 4Mb.
for the OS-news editor:
those person is called
Richard L. James
but not
Richard E. James
period.
Indeed- WinCE supports x86 quite fine. As part of the SDK, you can get it from Microsoft for free. This is not in the device emulator that you run under WinNT/2k/XP, but something you boot straight into using a floppy, or using a spceial bootloader you can call from a DOS session. Heck, even that is all x86 code- the WinCE emulator for Windows is more akin to VMWare- it runs x86 WinCE code rather than emulating ARM, MIPS, or SHx instruction sets. The OS’d WinCE also ran in Bochs, I never tried it in VMware though.
It supported all of the hardware on the machined I tried it on, my old work PC (micron celeron/500). It boots incredibly quickly- but then again, it boots up in no time on a 66 MHz MIPS machine. My network, sound and video cards were supported, and I was able to browse the net using IE.
Hell, if I had a PC, I would run WinCE. But I’m weird; the only things I need are a decent web browser and a place to run Squeak. WinCE is a good platform for doing this- it’s a helluva lot more straight forward to setup for this sort of operation than Linux is. Granted, I could do a full install of Linux and run Squeak on it, but WinCE came pre-trimmed and runs in almost no RAM, especially compared to Linux+X11+Mozilla, but even the supposed “embedded” solution is still heavy- Linux+Qtopia+Konquerer. (although it’d be nice to have a x86/Qtopia Opera!) The Linux solution wouldn’t be so bad if I could run PicoGUI or something along those lines instead- but to my knowledge, there isn’t any decent browser (Moz, Opera, Konq)
In any case, that was a big post just to be saying “Yeah, WinCE supports x86.”
my disclaimer:
And no, I’m not a Windoze fanboi!@$! Retards. Most people would probably think I was a Linux/Apple fanboy (!@$!) if they saw my equipment. So please, none of that shit in reply to my post. I long gave up using Linux for its own sake- even when it was not the right tool for the job; and similarily, I’ve long abandoned avoid MS at all costs to look cool for dweebs on Slashduh or OSNews (not as bad here!).