Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen has answered the question of why Microsoft insisted on running up a miniature Windows 3.1 rather than a diminutive Windows 95 to install the full-fat version of the latter.

The reason? A combination of time, reboots, and size.

It is 30 years since Windows 95 graced computers around the world, and in 2024, Chen went into detail on the hows and whys of the operating system's setup process . If a user ran from MS-DOS, a stripped-down version of Windows 3.1 was installed, and a 16-bit Windows application would take care of copying files and migrating settings before firing up Windows 95.

If you started from Windows 3.1, you would go straight into that 16-bit app. But why bother with Windows 3.1 at all? Why not jump straight into a miniature Windows 95

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