Why did Windows 95 setup use three operating systems?

I love that little nugget of info at the end. You could originally run excel standalone without an OS and it came with windows 2.1 bundled

I think it needed DOS … just not the Windows “shell”

Most interesting part of the whole thing for me! The later WinPE environments are some of the most overlooked computer environments out there but they were absolutely everywhere. EPOS, ATMs, digital signage, vending machines.

And of course the subject of so many BSOD photos…

It came bundled with a stripped down version of Windows 2.x - missing the application launcher (in Windows 1.x/2.x known as MS-DOS Executive, replaced by Program Manager and File Manager in Windows 3.x), so it could only be used to run one application (Excel) unless you fiddled with its configuration.

Yes it needed DOS because pre-3.11 Windows versions actually used the DOS kernel for all file access. When 32-bit file access was introduced in WfW 3.11, that was no longer true-but it was an optional feature you could turn off. In all pre-NT Windows versions, Windows is deeply integrated with DOS, even though in 9x/Me that integration is largely for backward compatibility and mostly unused when running 32-bit apps - but still so deeply ingrained into the system that it can’t work without it.

IIRC, Microsoft tried to sell the same stripped down single-app-only Windows version to other vendors, but found few takers. The cut-down Windows 3.x version used by Windows 95 Setup is essentially the 3.x version of the same thing. Digital Research likewise offered a single app version of their GEM GUI to ISVs, and that saw somewhat greater uptake.

Only a thumbnail from the Wikipedia page mentioned in the article was saved to the Internet Archive [1], but it appears the same image was uploaded to Wikia: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/windows/images/3/34/Excel2....

The original description of the file uploaded to Wikipedia read [2]:

Microsoft Excel 2.1 included a run-time version of Windows 2.1

This was a stripped-down version of Windows that had no shell and could run just the four applications shown here in the "Run..." dialog.

The spreadsheets shown are the sample data included with Excel.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090831110358/http://en.wikiped...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20081013141728/http://en.wikiped...

None of that stuff was pre-NT, though. Windows 2.1 was not something you'd want to deploy on an ATM.

>The later WinPE environments are some of the most overlooked computer environments out there but they were absolutely everywhere. EPOS, ATMs, digital signage, vending machines.

Those are probably CE and not PE?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact

or Embed based on CE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_IoT#Embedded_family

The current article[0] says:

> Excel 2.0 was released a month before Windows 2.0, and the installed base of Windows was so low at that point in 1987 that Microsoft had to bundle a runtime version of Windows 1.0 with Excel 2.0.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel

I remember a version of PageMaker also came with Windows. [0]

"Until May 1987, the initial Windows release was bundled with a full version of Windows 1.0.3; after that date, a "Windows-runtime" without task-switching capabilities was included"

I actually thought it was cut-down, but it only had task-switching disabled.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMaker

Unrelated to WinCE, WinPE is the version of the NT kernel that the Windows setup DVD or netboot installer uses, since Vista and higher.

You could probably build a really nice UI atop of it if one were so inclined. To prevent people from doing this as a way to bypass Windows licensing, there is a timer that will cause WinPE to periodically reboot itself if you leave it running.

If there was a BSoD involved, it was probably one of the NT-based Windows Embedded versions (NT 4.0 Embedded, XP Embedded, …).

WinPE is the Windows Preinstallation Environment, used as the basis for Windows installation and recovery, and available for custom builds as an add-on to the Windows ADK[1], but AFAIK not intended or licensed for embedded use.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu...

There is also IoT windows and miniNT used for older NT installs bootstrap

Nope. Windows CE was more in the old school “smartphone” (pre iPhone) and PDA, marketed along with a baseline hardware profile and called Pocket PC. Also used in a number of industrial PDAs (think postal service and warehouse scanners), set top boxes. And then various and sundry embedded devices, but usually these tended to be smaller, often battery form factor and/or headless. While x86 a target more often than not, ARM or MIPS. Windows CE was early on pushed for video games on the Sega Dreamcast and a short lived smart car OS called Auto PC. Signage, ATMs (if they weren’t OS/2), and test equipment more often ran bonafide Windows NT on commodity x86.

Word had that too.

Triton ATMs very prominently ran Windows CE and then Windows Embedded Compact, the RTOS one that was also under Windows Mobile, not “full” Windows NT.

IIRC, the HP Scanner IIcx also came with a copy of Windows 2.something.

(too late to edit, but the autoderp had its own ideas when I very deliberately tapped out "Scanjet" above.)

Actually yes, what I more specifically meant was WinXP Embedded and family.

Of course, it was a related thought

Did Windows 1.0 run without DOS ?

Exactly. Windows PE is used for install and recovery. NOT to run ATMs.

It was probably embedded standard based on NT/XP/7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_IoT#Embedded_Standard

Yes. No way WinPE was used to run ATMs is what I am saying :)

It was probably embedded standard based on NT/XP/7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_IoT#Embedded_Standard

It was probably embedded standard based on NT/XP/7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_IoT#Embedded_Standard

No. No version until NT ran without DOS. Even if you installed Win95 from scratch, DOS was there, bundled.

FWIW lots of ATM happily ran OS/2 1.x.