Category Archives: Windows

Alt Insanity

Several times, a question came up how to synthesize keyboard input to a remote system given a text string. The remote system is typically but not necessarily a VM. That sounds like something which should be trivial, yet it is anything but. … Continue reading

Posted in Virtualization, Windows | 14 Comments

Windows 3.1 Standard Mode Crash with APM

On some systems, Windows 3.1 and 3.11 in Standard mode crashes when it is configured to use APM, i.e. POWER.DRV is loaded. The crash only happens in Standard mode, not the typical default 386 Enhanced mode. Since POWER.DRV is involved … Continue reading

Posted in Bugs, Windows | 16 Comments

Updating Windows

Updating older (but still supported) Windows versions can be a tedious tasks. Not only for humans but also for computers. Searching for updates for half an hour every time with the CPU going at full tilt must be a not … Continue reading

Posted in Microsoft, Windows | 20 Comments

Windows 3.0 DR 1.14, February 1989

Another rather interesting software artifact surfaced just recently, after more than 25 years since its release: Windows 3.0 Debug Release 1.14 (further referred to as DR 1.14) from February 1989. This was an alpha version only provided to select ISVs … Continue reading

Posted in 386, Microsoft, PC history, Windows | 90 Comments

Weekend Reading, OS/2 and Windows

In a recent post I mentioned that the OS/2 Museum’s stack of PC Tech Journal issues ironically does not include the first PCTJ issue devoted to OS/2. Thanks to pcjs.org, the October 1987 issue of PCTJ can now be read … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2, Windows | 3 Comments

Untested Error Paths

About a week ago I revived an old Sony VAIO laptop (model PCG-R505TS) that hadn’t been used for a few years. It had lost CMOS contents so I had to re-enter the date and adjust a few BIOS settings. The … Continue reading

Posted in PC hardware, Windows | 2 Comments

ISA bus 8514/A?

During the development of the 8514/A, IBM clearly had ISA-based adapters. A proof of this may be found in the source code for the Windows 2.x setup program (part of the Binary Adaptation Kit, or BAK), which among other things … Continue reading

Posted in Graphics, IBM, PC hardware, Windows | 7 Comments

Windows NT BSOD Aclock Port

Do you remember the famous Windows NT Blue Screen Of Death? For years it was a source of jokes and bad reputation of Windows reliability. There even was a Blue Screen Saver! Today we fortunately see much less of it, but it … Continue reading

Posted in 386, Development, NT, VGA, Windows, x86 | 10 Comments

Windows Update Fail

The other day I needed to update a server blade with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it. The system hadn’t been running for a while and now had about 100 updates available. I wasn’t looking forward to this as … Continue reading

Posted in Microsoft, Windows | 7 Comments

On a dark, rainy night in April 1985…

Update: Since the original document disappeared, a local copy is now provided. When researching the history of computing, from time to time an unexpected gem turns up. The copy of Ray Ozzie’s notes from a 1985 meeting with Microsoft is one … Continue reading

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, Windows | 39 Comments