MS-DOS software compatibility wasn't quite as good, because Windows, including Windows 3.11, runs in protected mode and that necessarily limited what MS-DOS applications could do, and MS-DOS applications could do anything. If you do manage to find something that doesn't work, you'll probably need to install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 on a separate FAT16 partition in order to fix the problem anyways. They won't automagically get full long filename support, as they'll still be using the old 8.3 interfaces, but they'll work just fine. No patches, no extra drivers are necessary. Problems that your proposed setup wouldn't fix.įor old 16-bit Windows software written for Windows 3.11 or earlier, you're just better off running them under Windows 98. Things like drives being bigger than the software assumed possible, or the CPU being 10 or 100 times faster. The most likely reason for an old Windows applications not to work is because of new hardware. It was just an evolution of Windows 3.11, with a lot of new features but also with a lot of the same code. It's predecessor, Windows 95 wasn't the revolutionary new operating system that it superficially appears to be. Microsoft has always taken backwards compatibility very seriously (even today, the 32-bit version of Windows 10 will run many old 16-bit Windows applications), and Windows 98 wasn't an exception. In particular trying to force Windows (for Workgroups) 3.11 to work under MS-DOS 7.1 requires various hacks and will likely result in something that's less compatible with applications. Instead you're better off just installing Windows 98 SE and booting (or rebooting) into MS-DOS mode for the few applications that need it. I'm going to post a frame challenge answer and say that if your goal is to run MS-DOS and Windows software from the early 90s and before then you don't want to do what you propose. Thanks to Ross Ridge for the pointer to this Vogons thread on the subject! Note that the vast majority of Windows 3 programs will work fine under Windows 98, so you might find it simpler to use that instead, as explained in Ross’ answer. In situations where you don’t need FAT32, Windows 98 also supports dual-booting with MS-DOS 6 in the same partition, as long as you install the latter first, and choose the option to back up your previous operating system during the Windows 98 installation. The CONFIG.SYS menu system is still available under Windows 98, so you can use that to build your boot menu. Windows 98 also no longer supports SHARE.EXE, but its DOS kernel is apparently incompatible with Windows 3’s VSHARE.386, so programs which need the corresponding features will fail to run. 32-bit disk access will only work if you use Windows 3’s version of IFSHLP.SYS. Windows 3 also doesn’t support long file names you can however use DOSLFN and Calmira LFN to get some level of support for long file names. Some third-party installers will refuse to install on disks where the available space is “too large”. Windows 3.11 doesn’t support FAT32 directly, so some of its features won’t be enabled (32-bit file access in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 for example), and it can produce confusing results with large partitions. After installation, you should also patch WIN386.EXE (see the previous link) to avoid issues after exiting Windows. Once that’s done, Windows 3’s SETUP will work choose “user defined setup” so that you can specify what directory to use, and make sure you don’t let the installation program make any changes to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Before you can, you’ll need to patch IO.SYS using Ralf Buschmann’s Win3xStart program (in osr2fix.exe). You can install Windows 3.11 in a different directory than Windows 98. This will disable the automatic GUI startup, and the computer will boot to a COMMAND.COM prompt. The first part isn’t too difficult: install Windows 98 as usual, then edit MSDOS.SYS to change its BootGUI setting to 0.
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