How did oems pre-install windows before win95b?

[wyf180]

Microsoft add aduit mode support in win95b
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28621 ,and add sysprep support in 98 and nt 4 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=38709&p=434099&hilit=oobe#p434099 .So the question come how did oems pre-install systems including win1-3,win95a and winnt3.x?

[Meow]

Microsoft add aduit mode support in win95b
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28621 ,and add sysprep support in 98 and nt 4 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=38709&p=434099&hilit=oobe#p434099 .So the question come how did oems pre-install systems including win1-3,win95a and winnt3.x?

Did you ever think of drive imaging?

Windows 1.0-3.1 were not widely preinstalled.
Windows NT 3.x was only preinstalled on a few computers.

[Fanta Shokata]

Microsoft add aduit mode support in win95b
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28621 ,and add sysprep support in 98 and nt 4 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=38709&p=434099&hilit=oobe#p434099 .So the question come how did oems pre-install systems including win1-3,win95a and winnt3.x?

Did you ever think of drive imaging?

Windows 1.0-3.1 were not widely preinstalled.
Windows NT 3.x was only preinstalled on a few computers.

At that time, MS-DOS was dominant.

[JimOlive]

I dunno, maybe by putting the floppy disks into the PC like any other user?

[KTRMAmbiance]

Maybe they used a software to put their branding to their installations, and made floppy disks to re-install with the same branding (similar to how modern PCs are distributed, which had DVDs)

[computergoose]

I have a 3.5" OEM copy of 95 OSR 2. Somehow, a "Windows 95 OEM Pre-Installation" disk -- not intended to be shipped to the end user -- made it in the box. I can scan the disk label (which contains some use instructions) later but don't have access to it right now. Sadly, the original contents of the disk are long overwritten with MS-DOS 6.2 and a copy of CheckIt.

For what it's worth, I believe this copy originated a very small, potentially regional, OEM.

[JustZisGuy]

I dunno, maybe by putting the floppy disks into the PC like any other user?

Not a chance. OEMs imaged the drives before they were even installed in to the units.

The master image would have been configured a single time manually, usually using vendor specific software to aid the final setup process.

Once the end user powered on the machine, their software would walk them through creating any unique configuration settings (user names, network configurations, and so on) as well as configuring pre-installed software.

For example I remember on some early 1996 Compaq Deskpro desktops, you would power it on for the first time and it would display a fancy GUI menu asking if you wanted to install Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Depending on which you selected, it would shuffle things around on the hard drive and then do the final stage setup of the selected Windows version. None of that was from Microsoft - it was all Compaq's doing.

The annoying thing was that even if they included re-installation floppy disks or a re-install CD, they often lacked some things that were pre-installed.

[os2fan2]

There is indeed a win95 oak. This has the goodies on the cdrom.