progman.exe in win95 wasn't quite the same imho as Windows 3.x Different windows decorations and the way it handles minimized groups. With Win 7 being NT based you might be able to get XPs-up to SP2 (or maybe even NT 3.51s, NT4s W2ks ) Program Manager running on the 32 bit version of Win7 but again it's not going to be quite the same.

there's some windowblinds themes that mimic 3.1 out there, however I never looked into whether that program worked on 7 since I last used it during the "fake xp luna in 98" era.

Caluser2000 wrote:

progman.exe in win95 wasn't quite the same imho as Windows 3.x Different windows decorations and the way it handles minimized groups. With Win 7 being NT based you might be able to get XPs-up to SP2 (or maybe even NT 3.51s, NT4s W2ks ) Program Manager running on the 32 bit version of Win7 but again it's not going to be quite the same.

I don't think the differences were in Progman per se, but rather on USER.EXE / USER32.DLL. But anyway, the effects are there.

And yeah, try getting PROGMAN.EXE from Windows 2000 or something.

Win2k Progman.exe + Win7x64 =

Entry Point Not Found wrote:

The procedure entry point ExtractIconResInfoW could not be located in the dynamic link library SHELL32.dll

Out of curiosity is there a copy shell32.dll in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\

lucky7456969 wrote:

But can Windows 7 etc be tweaked in the same way?

Since Windows XP, progman.exe is just a stub for handling .GRP files used by legacy installers.

As mentioned above, it may be feasible to get a copy from an older Windows version and get it to run with some jiggery pokery.

Program Manager in Windows 10 x64 would be one hell of a ToastyTech Sick Windows Trick(tm)

You can go back version by version of Windows NT untill you find a working Program manager. Windows 2000 -> Windows NT 4.0 SP6 -> Windows NT 4 RTM -> Windows NT 3.51 SP5 -> Windows NT 3.5 -> Windows NT 3.1

AFAIK, NT 3.1 binaries won't work on later versions.

You may have luck with compatibility mode, as well as look at this.