First post, by K32x86
- Rank
- Newbie
Hi! First time posting here.
Many years ago I remember reading that you could run some of the applications bundled with Windows 95 in Windows 3.1x (specifically on this website: http://stephan.win31.de/w32slist.htm)
However, there weren’t any specific instructions as to how to get those applications running. So I tried to figure all this out by myself.
First, lets start with the basics. Since most of the Windows 95 applications are 32-Bit, you need to install Win32s 1.30c (i’m using the installer files from the PW1118.EXE self-extracting executable) (if you are using DosBox, make sure you have the “cputype” option set to “486_slow”, to avoid errors when running 32-bit programs).
Ok, now let’s get the first application running: WordPad. We have to obtain the executable (WORDPAD.EXE) from a RETAIL copy of Windows 95, specifically from build 4.00.950. (I extracted this file directly from WIN95_03.CAB).
If you try to run WordPad as is, it will trow this error: “File Error – Cannot find MFC30.DLL”.
In order to fix this, we need to find all of the Microsoft Foundation Class libraries:
mfc30.dll
mfcans32.dll
mfcd30.dll
mfcn30.dll
mfco30.dll
mfcuia32.dll
msvcrt20.dll
And, on top of that, we need to obtain the C Runtime DLL Version 2 (MSVCRT20.DLL)
Sure, the DLLs from Windows 95 might work, but I personally recommend getting those from the Microsoft Visual C++ 2.2 Upgrade CD, as this one contains the latest DLLs that are compatible with Win32s. In that CD in particular, the libraries can be found in the /WIN32S/REDIST/ directory.
Place the DLLs next to WORDPAD.EXE or in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM\WIN32S directory. Now, if you try running WordPad you’ll get this: “Could not load the RichEdit control DLL. The file RICHED32.DLL might be corrupt or missing”.
I thought this was strange, because this DLL is already present in the WIN32S directory! However... turns out that WordPad is always expecting RICHED32.DLL to be located in the SYSTEM directory and only there! All we have to do is copy the RICHED32.DLL from the WIN32S directory to the SYSTEM directory, and then…
It works! Well for the most part… There actually few bugs that you might encounter. For some reason, if there’s a printer already installed, the ruler breaks, though it can still be useful to read RTF files.
Here's the Windows 95 calculator (I extracted it from WIN95_02.CAB) It doesn’t seem to require any extra files and it seems to work perfectly.
And then there’s the Windows 95 Paint program (Also extracted from WIN95_02.CAB) and just like WordPad, it requires MSVCRT20 and all of the MFC* libraries. This one is a mess; it works in 16 colors only (it seems to run out of GDI objects if there are more colors available on screen), can’t open existing files, seems to mess with registry entries and forces itself as the default Paint program… It’s useless, only useful for experiments I guess.
Interestingly, all the tools work with exception of the the bezier tool. As far as I’m concerned, Win32s doesn’t actually have any bezier functionality of any kind.
I should probably experiment with the programs from the Windows 95 beta builds, those might be a bit more stable...
