Windows 3.11 (not WfW) betas?

[German]

Beta versions of Windows 3.11 exist? My need any information about this

[Battler]

I doubt any exist. Most of the changes in Windows 3.11 were also introduced in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and most probably Beta-tested there well enough that separate Beta testing of Windows 3.11 was not needed.

[johnleakedfan]

The only 3.11 Beta I have is build 411 Beta 3 (WFW)

[German]

The only 3.11 Beta I have is build 411 Beta 3 (WFW)

This is WfW Beta

[Battler]

And it's not even 411, but 300. Long story short, back in what, 2008?, I had mistakenly assumed there was no way for two or three different Builds having different numbers. Then I examined the Beta 3 (which was provided by 4tified) and the RC (which was provided by tpemail), and compared them with the RTM. I found Build differences in some minor files (such as FAX.CPL). I initially assumed the Beta 3 and RC were Build 409, and the RTM was... well, I forgot which now. Then some time later, in another file I found 411 in Beta 3 and RC, and 412 in RTM.
But the fact of the matter is, the Kernel (KRNL386.EXE), and USER.EXE (generally the file in Windows 3.1x to get the Build number from), are both 3.11.300, in all 3 Builds (Beta 3, RC, RTM). So there's just three different Builds 300, and the 4xx numbers are completely irrelevant.

[os2fan2]

Win 3.11 was a hack job done to please some antitrust issue about muscling in on network software. There's very little difference between the two, and the upgrade/downgrade diskettes comprise of three or four files.

[Battler]

What are you on about? We have complete floppy sets of 3.11 on the FTP, and there's a lot more difference. The compression method used differs (SZDD type A in 3.1 vs. KWAJ type 3 in 3.11), the Kernel differs too, etc.

[os2fan2]

The older compression is KWAJ, (compress 1.xx), the new one is SZDD (compress 2.xx). SZDD is used in Windows 3.0 and 3.10, and DOS 5. KWAJ is in DOS 6, Windows 3.11 etc, needs simply a rewrite of lzexpand.dll and expand.exe, and to repack the files using compress v 1.11 (that's in the DOS 6.0 source tapes).

Around the same time, IBM was migrating from PACK to PACK2 (blue vs salmon disks in OS/2 talk).

The kernel is new, there is a new postscript.drv, and one or two other files were updated. The printer and driver sets are different, but an uncompressed 3.11 leaves very little core functionality after 3.10 files are deleted. There's a patch file where you can update Windows 3.10 to 3.11, and a corresponding (but rare) reverse, for users of OS/2 for Windows.

Win311 was on six diskettes, and most of the larger bitmaps and some sound samples were removed.