Well the shell is entirely different for one. 3.51 takes the shell of Windows 3.1, where as NT4 takes the shell of Windows 95. I'm also guessing that Win32 applications won't run under NT 3.51.

F2bnp wrote:

I'm also guessing that Win32 applications won't run under NT 3.51.

Considering NT 3.51 is entirely 32-bit..........

Considering that there are wikipedia articles on this... Early 32bit programs should run. The more IE stuff they are using the less likely they will run...

http://stephan.win31.de/w32slist.htm#nt351

lo

As already pointed out, the GUI in 3.5(1) was
the same as win3. although this was pretty poor
by today's standards and even those of 95/NT4,
if you were coding applications targeting win3.1
(using WOW in NT) it was the best workstation
setup to use.

If you don't intend to do anything that demands a win3
style front-end I would suggest you steer clear
of it to be honest.

bye

You can install NewShell, which is a beta of the 95 explorer shell that was to be added to NT 4.0

leileilol wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

I'm also guessing that Win32 applications won't run under NT 3.51.

Considering NT 3.51 is entirely 32-bit..........

I should have written that a TON of Win32 applications that run under Win9x and NT4.0 just won't work under NT 3.51 😜.

Office 95 *should* run in NT 3.51... it came out before NT4 was released... I'm fairly certain of this because I have a copy of Money 95 (unrelated, not part of Office) that supports NT 3.51 and that too came out before NT4

one feature that hardly gets a mention is the fact that NT 3.51 officially supported mounting OS/2's HPFS volumes... this was dropped in NT4 but worked if you ripped the drivers off NT 3.51... not that anyone really cares any more, but it's a cool feature if you happen to dual boot both obsolete/useless OS's 🤣

Up to Office 97 works on NT 3.51, and that was completely intended. Lots of early 32-bit stuff will work as long as it doesn't use things like DirectX. Heck... even up to Firefox 2.0 will run!

This page has some good info on NT 3.51 and has some extra stuff to update it / improve compatibiliity: http://bearwindows.boot-land.net/winnt351.htm

As long as the app also supports NT4 and doesn't check the version number, it will run. Unfortunately, doesn't work with WinQuake/GLQuake. And also, only the 16-bit versions of IE will run under 3.51, but there's better stuff than that anyway.

I also did manage to get UT99 to run before, but I had to manually install the files. Here's a screenshot illustrating that:

http://winhistory.de/more/bilder/utnt351.gif

Also, like NT4, there are editions that support Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC platforms.

Be right back, installing NT3.51

EDIT: Unable to locate 3.51 diskettes

in my dealings with hard drives, it turns out that NT 3.51 has trouble with hard drives over 1gb. Also, you CANNOT install 4.0 on a hard drive bigger than 8gb.

I think you can create your own NT 3.5x boot floppies off the CD... I know it was like this with NT4

luckybob wrote:

in my dealings with hard drives, it turns out that NT 3.51 has trouble with hard drives over 1gb. Also, you CANNOT install 4.0 on a hard drive bigger than 8gb.

you can install NT4 on drives bigger then 8GB just fine it is just the setup can't see the full size of the drive. You can expand the 2GBish NTFS partition to a bigger size after you have installed NT4 SP6a and all is good