Oh, one of those guides again: Most of the text talks about "Windows 3.11", but in the part about how to get the installation files it's suddenly "Windows for Workgroups", which is a different system from non-Workgroups, including major differences in the setup scripts (which may be relevant here, or not - tbh I only skimmed the rest after noticing that bit). Since you already have a half sentence pointing out it needs to be a "roman-alphabet version" you apparently already fiddled with different ones, and it might be worth capturing more detail about which versions will or won't work.

Actually the page says:

(I assume that you have Windows 3.11, but the installation should work with the earlier 3.1 version.

So wherever you see "Windows for Workgroups" you can assume that it means any Windows 3.1x version. I'll make that more clear, but it would be clear when reading the page (not just skimming it).

EDIT: Fixed the page to be absolutely clear about this.

Are you aware that there is a Windows (NOT for workgroups) 3.11? As well as a Windows for Workgroups 3.1?

conflating 3.11 with "for workgroups" is a pretty common mistake but it's very wrong

That's what I was saying, but OP misunderstood and I'm tired of having the same discussion over and over again. Pointing it out once so people "in the know" know what level of expertise to expect from this guide is good enough in my book.

Anyways, since OP "fixed" the guide I had a closer look at what's provided and noticed there's a couple archives in there - FileBackups.7z and SetupHelp.7z - that are password protected for whatever reason. We don't get to know what's hidden in them so that's a hard nope from me. (Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it's not malware, "FileBackups" is big enough to contain an entire copy of Windows, which would be one way to make sure everything works regardless of what install media the user provides, I guess... Just ignore and substitute with known-good files. But that's just me spitballing.)

Good catch! Back in 2018, when I was first building this system, I used those encrypted files for my own convenience. The system hasn't used them since 2018, and I've removed them from the download ZIP. They can be deleted from any existing system, because they were never used when installing or running any existing copies of this system.

I've also now included the AutoIt source code in the ZIP, which anyone is free to read, test, and compile, in case anyone has any remaining doubts about what's going on in this system. The code is sloppy, inefficient, and mostly incompetent, but it seems to work anyway - which is probably good enough until someone else does this job better.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-10-26, 13:33:

Are you aware that there is a Windows (NOT for workgroups) 3.11? As well as a Windows for Workgroups 3.1?

Yes, of course: as the linked page says, this setup works with Workgroups and non-Workgroups installation disks/files, and it displays different prompts depending on which is used. It also should work with any roman-alphabet version of 3.1, 3.11, Workgroups or non-Workgroups, though I haven't tested all of them. The installer works correctly with the two language versions that I know of which use a non-English name for SETUP.EXE. But some language versions may pop up message boxes that will need to be clicked, etc., for installation to continue.