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Looking for Old Version of "Microsoft Upgrade Advisor" (floppy)

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First post, by Jorpho

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I posted about this in the Windows 95 thread, but thought it might get easily overlooked there.

Sometime in the mid-90's, someone in my family got ahold of a 3.5" floppy disk called the "Microsoft Upgrade Advisor" (or something to that effect) which included a free (presumably 16-bit) Windows game. But we weren't big into Windows at the time, so the disk was shortly formatted and repurposed, floppies being quite the commodity in those days.

Unfortunately attempting to Google for this item is rather hopeless, even on archive.org, as Microsoft has released numerous "upgrade advisors" for various versions of Windows in the last twenty years, none of which would have ever seen a floppy.

Has anyone here seen something like this?

Reply 1 of 4, by TheMobRules

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I assume the Win95 preview is not what you are looking for, but just in case: it comes in a floppy disk and was distributed prior to the release. Here's a description:

"Months prior to the release of Windows 95, PC magazines provided a promotional floppy disk from Microsoft containing an interactive guide showcasing the new features of the operating system. Within the presentation, there was also the ability to check the hardware and software installed for compatibility."

Let me know if you need a link to it.

Reply 2 of 4, by Jorpho

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Thanks for the suggestion. I'm pretty certain about the "upgrade advisor" part, and I'm absolutely certain about the game. Not certain at all bout the specific timeframe, though. (It might well have been more than a few months before the release of Windows 95. Maybe it was to convince people about getting NT?)

Reply 3 of 4, by chinny22

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Yeh when you mentioned it in the other post you jogged my memory but I had the preview (which if i remember right was kind of interactive demo?)
What did you have to do in the game?

Reply 4 of 4, by akula65

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One strategy you might employ is to check out archives of computing magazines from that era. Odds are you can find either Microsoft advertisements or feature articles on the upcoming Windows 95 that would tell users how to get the diskette you describe. Byte Magazine is one example:
https://vintageapple.org/byte/

Another approach would be to look for a late-20th Century Microsoft FTP archive and see if it was still available at that time.