Skip to content

More adventures from Windows 95 VM land

I got IE3 under Windows 95 to display my site. But I didn’t stop there.

After a quick trip around the web to find a copy of IE 5.5 SP2 (the last IE for Windows 95), I manage to grab it and get it installed on Windows 95. Not only does this modernise the browser a touch, but it also installs various DLLs we’ll need to run a much better browser. 🙂

Thumbnails are clickable to enlarge, by the way.

IE 5.5 with 16 colours

Now we have IE 5.5, albeit at a rather bad 16 colours (not 16-bit colour, 16 different colours).

After an install of VMware Tools, we have the drivers to ramp up the colour depth to a respectable 65,536 different colours (that’s 16-bit colour).

IE 5.5 with 16-bit colour

A quick run of Windows Update to apply some security updates from, hmmm, looks like 1999. 😀

Windows Update

And finally, we install Firefox 1.5.0.9 (it crashes on first run, but a reboot and relaunch and it works perfectly). Finally, a decent browser.

Firefox on Windows 95

Unfortunately, Firefox 2.0.x apparently doesn’t want to work with Windows 95 anymore.

Great fun – and I couldn’t have done it without this guide.

Like this post?

If you would like to support the time and effort I have put into my tutorials and writing, please consider making a donation.

4 Comments

  1. Chris wrote:

    You ought to run a series showing how big websites look in IE3. I imagine it’d be interesting comparing Microsoft.com and Apple.com renders!

    Monday, February 5, 2007 at 23:31 | Permalink |
  2. Peter wrote:

    Hmmm… interesting idea.

    Unfortunately, I just upgraded(?) it to IE5.5, so I’ll have to make a new VM and re-install, but then that’s not too hard at all.

    In fact, you just boot off a floppy image and do D:setup. Oh, and you have to explicitly tell Windows 95 to install TCP/IP. How times have changed. 🙂

    Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 17:08 | Permalink |
  3. John wrote:

    I like chris’ idea, though i think it would be more interesting if you were to try it with IE1.

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 10:46 | Permalink |
  4. James Bennet wrote:

    I am currently running windows 95-C just fine. I got PLUS and the desktop update and SP1 – makes it have the same interface as 98 does. Office 97 and Visual Studio 5 work perfectly.

    and by the way, ie 1 is totally useless.

    Its essential to get the windows 95 SP1, windows installer, winsock2 and the dial up networking fix.

    install IE4 BEFORE IE5 and you will get the updated desktop.

    Friday, January 4, 2008 at 11:16 | Permalink |

Post a Comment

On some sites, you must be logged in to post a comment. This is not the case on this site.
Your email address is not made public or shared. Required fields are marked with *.
*
*
*

Posting a comment signifies you accept the privacy policy.
Please note — your comment will not appear straight away, as all comments are held for approval.