
FAQs in Focus    \|/    by Ed Ellers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~           Technical Editor

"Frequently Asked Questions on upgrading to Windows 95"

                        MAKING WINDOWS 95 WORK


   Now that Microsoft has (finally!) started making Windows 95 packages 
to sell, here are a number of hints and tips we've collected while 
testing Win95 over the past few months. There are many other ones from 
Microsoft in a file called TIPS.TXT that you'll find in your Windows 
directory after you install Windows 95.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> I only have 4 megabytes (4MB) of RAM. Will Windows 95 really work 
properly?

<A> Yes -- under the right circumstances. If you have a fast 386 (33 or 
40MHz) PC, or a 486 system, and a reasonably fast IDE or SCSI hard disk, 
you'll get the same performance you would with Windows for Workgroups 
(meaning faster disk access than Windows 3.1). This doesn't mean that 
every program will run well -- many of the latest Windows applications 
really need 6 to 8MB to work adequately -- just that Windows 95 won't 
make matters worse. There will be a fair amount of disk swapping, so a 
slower MFM, RLL or ESDI hard disk will really bog things down; a slower 
processor would as well, so if you have an old system you might now have 
an excuse to trade up.

   The one exception to the 4MB rule is the Exchange e-mail "client" 
that comes with Windows 95 (and is used heavily as a base for the 
Microsoft Network access software). Exchange (and therefore MSN) needs 
6MB to run properly.

   Some older 16 or 20MHz 386 systems won't run Windows 95 because their 
old chips have a bug that keeps the chip from going into the right 
protected mode. These systems won't run Windows 3.x in 386 Enhanced mode 
either. You could fix this by installing a new 386DX chip, but the 
system would still be rather slow; upgrading to a 486-class processor, 
like a Kingston Lightning 486 or a Cyrix Cx486DRx2, would give you some 
more performance but you'd still be limited by the old, slow 
motherboard.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> I see that Windows 95 requires a 386DX processor. I have a 386SX. 
Isn't a 386SX supposed to run all 386 software?

<A> Yes, and Windows 95 will work. Microsoft recommends a 386DX because 
it moves data faster, and Windows 95 can use the speed, but we did get 
Win95 running on a 20MHz 386SX. If you have a 20 or 25MHz desktop system 
and you can't upgrade to a new system (or even a new motherboard), one 
option would be a Cyrix Cx486SRx2 chip -- this is a 486-class processor 
that clips on top of your 386SX chip. (It won't work on some earlier 
16MHz systems because their processors can't be shut down, and it's not 
available in 33 or 40MHz versions.)

                                 -=*=-

<Q> What about my old video board?

<A> As long as it's fully VGA compatible -- and you have a VGA or Super 
VGA monitor -- it'll work. A few VGA boards six or seven years ago 
didn't have full IBM VGA compatibility and won't work with Windows 95. 
Good basic SVGA boards are shockingly cheap these days, and graphic 
accelerator boards are reasonably priced as well; a new video board will 
be cheaper than more RAM, a new hard disk or a processor upgrade.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> My SVGA board isn't that old, but Windows 95 doesn't support it. How 
can I use it?

<A> First of all, there may be a driver for your board in the Windows 
Driver Library -- that's where Microsoft puts the less-used drivers that 
it distributes. If you have a CD-ROM drive, you can find such drivers in 
the \DRIVERS\DISPLAY directory on the Windows 95 CD; the EXTRA.TXT file 
in your Windows directory tells how to obtain these drivers online. Once 
you find the driver you need you'd open the Control Panel, select "Add 
New Hardware" and click the "Have Disk" box to tell Windows to use the 
driver disk. (You'll need to install Windows 95 for a standard VGA 
board, then install your driver after it's running.)

   If there's no driver listed, you can still use a Windows 3.1 driver 
as long as your driver disk lets you run Windows Setup to select a 
driver -- the Add New Hardware wizard can use those driver disks. If 
your driver disk has its own way of installing the Windows driver you'll 
need to get a Windows 95 driver from the video board manufacturer; these 
install programs won't set the driver up properly for Windows 95.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> What's this "monitor type" selection? I didn't know I needed a 
driver for a monitor!

<A> You don't need a driver, but you do need to tell Windows 95 what 
type of monitor you have so it can enable only the resolution modes that 
you can actually use. There are drivers for various generic types of VGA 
and SVGA monitors, and for many specific models from most manufacturers. 
(A few of the manufacturer names may be a bit different than the brands 
on the front of the monitor -- for example, Magnavox monitors are made 
by Philips so you'll find those models listed under "Philips.")

   If you have a Tandy VGM-200 or VGM-300 monitor, select "Standard 
monitor types" and then select "Standard VGA 640x480"; if you have a 
Tandy VGM-390, 440 or 441 (which were made by Samsung) select "Samsung" 
and then select "SyncMaster 3" for the model.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> What about my sound board and my old printer?

<A> Sound board drivers work the same way as SVGA drivers; if you don't 
see your sound board supported directly, you might find a driver in the 
WDL (on the CD under \DRIVERS\AUDIO), and if that doesn't help you can 
use the Windows 3.1 driver -- again, as long as it's set up to be 
installed from Windows (using the Control Panel in this case). Many 
sound cards support Ad Lib, Sound Blaster and/or Microsoft Windows Sound 
System emulation, so you may find that Windows 95 detects those modes 
when you upgrade; that could be enough to get you going, though some 
advanced features (such as 16-bit or 44.1 kHz high-fidelity audio) may 
not work that way because the driver doesn't support them.

   You'll find less-used printer drivers in the WDL (under 
\DRIVERS\PRINTER) as well, or you can also use Windows 3.x printer 
drivers with Windows 95. Since so many printers are compatible with 
various Epson, IBM or Hewlett-Packard models, you can often use one of 
those drivers, and in fact that may be a good idea even if you have a 
3.x driver for your printer -- Windows 95 printer drivers are faster and 
have other advantages (like "error diffusion" grayscale printing on ink-
jet, laser or dot-matrix printers).

                                 -=*=-

<Q> What about my CD-ROM drive? Can I still use it?

<A> Yes, one way or another. If you have either a SCSI CD-ROM drive or 
an ATAPI (also called IDE) drive, Windows 95 will usually support it 
directly. (The exceptions are a few drives like recordable CD or read-
write PD drives that don't appear to the system as a normal CD-ROM 
drive.)

   If you have a "proprietary" CD-ROM drive -- the kind that connects to 
a special CD-ROM interface board, not a SCSI or IDE host adapter -- made 
by Mitsumi, Panasonic or Sony, Windows 95 may be able to support it 
directly if you're using the manufacturer's own CD-ROM interface. (In 
general, tray-loading Mitsumi and Sony drives will work; caddy-loading 
Sony drives probably won't, and if you have an old Mitsumi drive that 
pops out for loading it may not work either.) If you're using a sound 
card with a CD-ROM interface, or a CD-ROM interface card that is claimed 
to support more than one of these brands, it usually won't be supported 
directly by Windows 95 because those boards don't match the way the 
drive makers' own boards appear in the system.

   There may be drivers released later by CD-ROM drive or sound board 
manufacturers to provide full Windows 95 support for their products, but 
in the meantime you can still use the drive with its usual DOS driver in 
the CONFIG.SYS file and MSCDEX.EXE in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (Windows 95 
Setup will leave them in place if you already have the device driver 
installed.) It should be as fast as it was under MS-DOS, but it won't be 
as fast as it could be with a Windows 95 driver and it won't support 
Windows 95's AutoPlay feature.

   Speaking of CD-ROM drives, there's an optimization option you may 
need to change. Point to the "My Computer" icon and press the right (or 
secondary) mouse button, then select Properties to bring up the System 
properties sheet. Click on "File System," then click the CD-ROM folder 
tab. Now pull down the "Optimize access pattern" list and select the 
type of drive (single-speed, double-speed, etc.) you have. There's also 
a pointer you can drag to select the amount of RAM to be used for 
caching; if you mainly use the CD-ROM drive to read files sequentially 
(as with copying files or playing audio or video clips), you may want to 
drag this all the way to the right to make as much RAM as possible 
available for caching. I've found that some video clips -- which were 
only playable on a double-speed drive with Windows 3.x -- can play well 
on a good single-speed drive under Windows 95!

                                 -=*=-

<Q> What if I don't have a CD-ROM drive? Can I still install Windows 95?

<A> Yes, if you buy the diskette package. Be advised that this comes on 
15 high-density disks(!), so that installation would get somewhat 
tedious; also some optional features and less-common drivers aren't 
available on diskette (to reduce the number of disks), so you'll have to 
obtain them separately from Microsoft. (The EXTRA.TXT file explains how 
to get these extra files.)

   The industry is rapidly moving toward distributing applications (as 
well as operating systems like Windows 95 or OS/2 Warp) on CD-ROM rather 
than on diskette, since it's a lot cheaper to manufacture the media, a 
lot easier to install and there's no risk of the program being erased in 
shipment. Even if you weren't planning a full-blown multimedia upgrade, 
you may want to consider getting a low-cost CD-ROM drive of one of the 
types I mentioned above just to load programs -- the savings in wrist 
movement alone may well be worth the expense.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> If I buy the upgrade version, can I install it "fresh" when I put in 
a new hard disk?

<A> Yes. The only difference between the discounted upgrade version and 
the full-price version is that the upgrade can only be installed if you 
have Windows 3.x (including Windows for Workgroups), Windows NT or OS/2. 
If the old program isn't installed, you'll simply need to insert its 
first diskette to allow the Windows 95 installation to continue.

   At press time we learned that the full-price version will only be 
available on diskette -- not on CD -- apparently because of the 
complexity of making boot disks that work with the variety of CD-ROM 
drives supported by Windows 95.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> How about my DoubleSpace-compressed disk? Is Windows 95 compatible 
with that?

<A> Yes, both with DoubleSpace (from MS-DOS 6.0 or 6.2) and the later 
DriveSpace (from MS-DOS 6.22). In fact Windows 95 adds true 32-bit 
support for both to speed up disk operations. Windows 95 uses the same 
utilities to handle both types of compressed drives; also, unlike 
Windows 3.x, you don't have to reserve uncompressed space for your 
Windows swap file. (If you didn't already have a compression utility you 
can use DriveSpace after upgrading.)

   Interestingly enough, when I compressed a drive under Windows 95 I 
found that it uses the old (but slightly more efficient) DoubleSpace 
rather than DriveSpace; if you decide to compress your drive under MS-
DOS 6.x to make room for Windows 95, you may want to use DoubleSpace 
instead of DriveSpace if you have both (as you would if you upgraded 
from 6.0 or 6.2 to 6.22). If you only have DriveSpace, there won't be 
enough of a difference to lose sleep over.

   If, on the other hand, you're using a third-party compressor (like 
Stacker or SuperStor) you'd just continue to use it; it would load as 
usual, from the CONFIG.SYS file, before the main body of Windows loads. 
With this setup you won't be able to get 32-bit access to that drive 
until the maker of your compression software brings out a Windows 95 
version (as Stac reportedly plans to).

                                 -=*=-

<Q> Should I install Windows 95 on top of Windows 3.x, or put it in a 
separate directory?

<A> Microsoft has been saying all along that Windows 95 should be 
installed right on top of Windows 3.x, and I have to agree -- it makes 
things easier all around. Not only does this allow Windows 95 to pick up 
the items in your Program Manager groups, but it keeps the add-on files 
and WIN.INI entries in place that some of your applications may need to 
run as well as goodies like Adobe Type Manager or Apple QuickTime (if 
you have them). Running the setup program from Windows allows it to pick 
up many device settings, which speeds up the process of identifying your 
hardware. (If you still have Windows 3.0 or Windows with Multimedia 
Extensions 1.0, you'll need to run the setup program from DOS but the 
upgrade will still work.)

   Incidentally, upgrading on top of Windows 3.x doesn't get rid of your 
old DOS -- it'll still be there if needed. If you find that one or two 
particular Windows applications won't work under Windows 95, don't panic 
because you can still boot to DOS and install a minimal copy of Windows 
3.1 to make them work. (In our next issue I'll explain how to make a 
"Windows 3.1 Escape Hatch" to run Windows 3.1 from inside Windows 95.)

                                 -=*=-

<Q> I just opened the box, and the manual is awfully thin. Where's the 
rest of it?

<A> Most of the Windows 95 documentation is available as online help. 
There are two levels -- the help system for intermediate users is built 
in, and for beginning users there's an Online User Guide that can be 
installed as an option (it's under "Accessories" in the Add/Remove 
Programs area). The Online User Guide even has several animated videos 
to show you how to perform common operations.

   If you're an advanced user who needs the highest level of details on 
Windows 95, there's a help file for that too -- the Windows 95 Resource 
Kit, on the CD in the \ADMIN\RESKIT\HELPFILE directory. The file is 
called WIN95RK.HLP; there's also a tour of Windows 95 for system 
administrators (TOUR4ADM.HLP) and special help for Macintosh users 
moving to Windows 95 (MACUSERS.HLP).

                                 -=*=-

<Q> OK, Windows 95 is installed, but some of my Windows accessories are 
gone -- like Write. Where did they go?

<A> Windows 95 does delete a few Windows 3.x accessories -- most notably 
Write -- when you upgrade. In the case of Write, Microsoft has replaced 
that accessory with WordPad, a more advanced editor that handles more 
text formats and operates in 32-bit mode. Because many Windows 
applications depend on Write to display formatted "read me" files after 
you install them, Microsoft has stuck a "dummy" WRITE.EXE in the Windows 
directory to launch WordPad to display those files. (One thing WordPad 
doesn't have is an option to justify text at both sides -- you can left-
justify, center or even right-justify text, but the fourth option is 
gone.)

   If you want to bring back Write you'll need to expand the compressed 
files from your Windows 3.1 disks with these two commands:

          EXPAND A:WRITE.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\WRITE.EXE
          EXPAND A:WRITE.HL_ C:\WINDOWS\WRITE.HLP

   If you have Windows for Workgroups (which comes on eight floppy 
disks) WRITE.EX_ is on Disk 3 and WRITE.HL_ is on Disk 5. If you have 
Windows 3.1 on six disks both files are on Disk 3. Once you've done 
that, use the Start Menu Settings property sheet to add a start menu 
item for Write.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> OK, how about all the files that got killed in my DOS directory? Why 
can't I run Defrag any more?

<A> If you upgrade on top of DOS, Windows 95 does delete a number of DOS 
utility programs that aren't safe to use on disks with long filenames. 
Some of them (like ScanDisk) have been replaced by versions that are 
"LFN-safe," which you'll find either in the \WINDOWS or \WINDOWS\COMMAND 
directory; others (Defrag is the best example) have been replaced with 
Windows utilities or features. Some of the utilities that came with your 
version of DOS may have been moved to the \WINDOWS\COMMAND directory 
when you upgraded -- one of these is MemMaker, which comes with MS-DOS 
6.x.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> I still like to run programs in BASIC. Will those still work?

<A> Yes. Qbasic (which came with MS-DOS 5.0 through 6.22) is included on 
the Windows 95 Upgrade CD; if you had a version of MS-DOS below 5.0, you 
can still use GW-BASIC. In both cases these run in a DOS box. You'll 
find Qbasic (and a number of other MS-DOS 6.22 utilities) in the 
\OTHER\OLDMSDOS directory on the CD; just click the Start button, select 
Run and type D:\OTHER\OLDMSDOS\INSTSUPP [ENTER] to install them. (If 
your CD-ROM drive isn't drive D:, substitute the correct letter here.)

   We haven't been able to test Windows 95 on an IBM PC system using 
their version of BASIC; since part of this was built into the system 
BIOS ROM on many IBM models, it's not certain whether Windows 95 can use 
it from within a DOS box. Qbasic doesn't use the ROM, so it will work 
fine.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> Another thing -- I booted to the DOS prompt and tried some of my 
favorite DOS file-management programs, and they show a bunch of goofy 
file entries with weird dates and unbelievable sizes. And there are some 
filenames that have a ~ in them -- whatever that is!

<A> The names with ~ (a tilde) in them are short versions of long 
filenames, and they're there to let you access those files from DOS or 
16-bit Windows applications. Whenever you save a file with a long 
filename, such as "Angry letter to Senator Claghorn" -- or create a 
directory with one, like "Image Files" -- Windows 95 actually sets up a 
normal name that matches the first six letters (not counting spaces) 
followed by a tilde and a digit, so your document would be called 
ANGRYL~1.DOC and your directory would be called IMAGEF~1. (If there is 
more than one file with the same first six letters, the later ones would 
be called ~2, ~3 and so on; so if you then wrote another letter to your 
other Senator named "Angry letter to Senator Soaper," it would be called 
ANGRYL~2.DOC.)

   When an entry like this is created, another one is also created 
elsewhere in the directory to hold the long version of the filename 
linked to the short MS-DOS filename. This entry is marked so it won't 
appear when you pull up a directory in DOS (and won't be overwritten by 
DOS), but some utilities that look directly at the disk may see them and 
incorrectly try to decode them as DOS filenames. (If the same utility 
will run in a Windows 95 DOS box these entries won't appear that way -- 
Windows will mask them.)

   If you open an MS-DOS box in Windows 95 and type DIR you'll see a 
listing with the short filenames on the left and the long names on the 
right; you can even use long filenames in DOS commands by enclosing them 
in quotes, so typing

          RENAME CLAGHORN.DOC "Angry letter to Senator Claghorn.DOC"

would attach a new long name (and a corresponding short name) to that 
file.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> I've got some really cantankerous DOS applications that just refuse 
to run in a DOS box. How can I run them now that I have Windows 95 
installed?

<A> We'll have a feature next month on how to set up custom DOS features 
to make just about anything run from Windows 95, but for now there's an 
easy way to stay in DOS. When the "Starting Windows 95..." message 
appears, press the [F8] key right away to get the boot menu, then select 
"Command prompt only." You'll get a perfectly normal C:\> prompt, and 
you can work that way just as you would have before -- in fact you now 
have "MS-DOS 7.0" in everything but name, and when your applications 
check the DOS version they'll actually see "7.0." You can also select 
"Restart your computer in MS-DOS mode" when you shut down Windows to do 
the same thing.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> That reminds me -- what version number is Windows 95? Is it really 
4.0, or 1.0, or what?

<A> It's 4.00, since it's the fourth major version since Windows was 
introduced. However, some Windows 3.x applications may indicate that 
you're running version 3.95; this is a special compatibility trick that 
Microsoft came up with, since some programs will refuse to run if they 
see a version number other than 3.x.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> Now for the big question -- should I upgrade to new versions of my 
applications?

<A> That's a tough one indeed. The good news is that, as far as I've 
been able to tell, there aren't any Windows 3.x applications that don't 
work well in Windows 95, aside from a few that (for various reasons best 
known to their authors) are truly incompatible with it. This means that 
you can get most of the benefits of Windows 95 without any other 
software upgrades.

   On the other hand, the new 32-bit applications do have some real 
advantages. For one thing they allow more reliable multitasking than do 
16-bit apps; the rare occasions where an application brings everything 
else down with it are even rarer. Some 32-bit apps are "multithreaded," 
which allows them to perform multiple tasks (say, printing one document 
and editing another) more effectively. But for many people the biggest 
advantage of 32-bit application upgrades will be the ability to use long 
filenames.

   In addition to Microsoft -- which, not surprisingly, will have 
Windows 95 versions of Works and all the Microsoft Office applications 
(Word, Excel, Schedule Plus, PowerPoint and Access) out soon after 
Windows 95 becomes available -- support has been announced by Adobe, 
Autodesk, Borland, Caere, Claris, Corel, Delrina, Software Publishing 
Corp., Symantec and others.

                                 -=*=-

<Q> One last thing. Just how the heck do I copy a floppy disk?

<A> Double-click to open up My Computer, and you'll see icons for your 
floppy drives. Right-click on the drive you intend to use, then select 
"Copy Disk..." to copy a diskette or "Format..." to format one.

                                  -=*=-

           Ed Ellers is a self-confessed electronics fanatic
           whose other interests include photography and 
           science-fiction writing. He can be contacted on 
           Delphi, username EDELLERS, or via the Internet at 
           edellers@delphi.com.

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