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When advertising for Windows 95, MSFT frequently said that Win95 was 32 bit. Most people have a vague understanding of this. For most, it just means "better" or "faster."
Anyway, MSFT proclaimed this jubilantly as though it made Windows 95 the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it isn't even true.
Windows 95 and 98 are only partially 32 bit. Both operating systems contain chunks of 16 bit code, largely for the sake of backward compatibility with "legacy" software.
Since Win95 needed 16 bit portions to run DOS and earlier Windows software, the rest of 95 uses the 16 bit portions. Windows 95 doesn't have 32 bit versions of all the 16 bit chunks.
Windows 95 contains so much 16 bit code that it makes Intel's Pentium Pro processors look slow.
To take advantage of the speed of a Pentium Pro, users need Linux or Windows NT. NT is Microsoft's only fully 32-bit OS.
Windows 95 is basically just Windows 4.0 and DOS 7.0. It is not a totally new operating system like Windows NT was. Windows 95 is still a graphical environment that runs on top of DOS.
Granted, both the graphical environment and DOS were enhanced and extended, but Windows 95 isn't totally new.
Under Windows 95, the DOS command line is no longer the default when booting but it is still available in a DOS "box" or in DOS "mode."
You can boot into DOS mode by pressing F8 when you start your computer, when the line "Starting Windows 95" appears on the screen. Another entrance to DOS mode is to pick "Shutdown" from the START menu and check "Restart in DOS mode." If you boot into DOS mode, you can still get to the graphical part of Windows by typing "win" -- just like you did with DOS 6 and Windows 3.
DOS is better hidden in Windows 95 but it is still there.
Early versions of Windows 95 even use the same file system as DOS does, known as FAT16. FAT16 gets its name from "16 bit File Allocation Table"
Windows 98 and newer versions of Win95 use a new system called FAT32. (Windows NT uses a totally separate system called NTFS.) FAT32 is a true 32 bit file system.
So the first release of Win95 is really just Windows 4, the second release is Windows 4.1 and Win98 is Windows 4.2 (with a special version of Internet Explorer).
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