
Here are some Microsoft patches that should be applied that supposedly make things smoother:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... comupd.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... 2setup.exe
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en
If you have a later release of Windows 95 or something that you have downloaded all of the Windows Update patches for, you may already have these.
Its also recommended to have IE5+ on the machine since this will supposedly help compatibility issues, but either way its nice to have a browser to download all of the updates from. Here is the link for IE5.5 SP2, the last version for Windows 95.
http://browsers.evolt.org/download.php? ... e55sp2.exe
Once you are done installing updates, grab a zipped build of Firefox 2.0.0.20 off Mozilla's FTP. The exe installer will not work under Windows 95.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... .win32.zip
If you need a program to read the zip file on your Windows 95 machine, grab a trial of WinRAR, which still supports Windows 95:
http://www.win-rar.com/download.html
Now simply unzip the Firefox build and open firefox.exe.
Troubleshooting:
-If the Firefox window appears briefly but Windows crashes or freezes, try deleting nssearchservice.js and nssafebrowsingapplication.js from the components folder of the installation. You will lose your search bar functionality but firefox should now open and not freeze.
You can also get Flash 7 working and youtube still supports it for the time being, but you will get a message telling you to upgrade to Flash 10:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flas ... ayer_7.exe
This is mostly just for fooling around in virtual machines, I cannot get Firefox 3 to work on 95 or 98SE so it looks like 2.0.0.20 is the newest out there. Alternatively you can try out Opera which has good support for older versions of Windows.
EDIT: This trick also works in Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0, I havent had time to test it but Ive seen screenshots on the internet.
EDIT 2/17/10: Fixed firefox zipped link, its a nightly build but it should work just the same.