Windows 3.x/3.1.34e: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:49, 4 January 2013

Build 34e is a pre-release build of Windows 3.1 (codenamed "Janus").

This build is not much different from that of Build 26, yet it was by this point that Microsoft was starting to phase out support for Real Mode, by seeing to it that nearly all of the applications dropped support for it, though this restriction could easily be evaded by patching it with the same applications from either Build 26 or Windows 3.00a, once again resulting in a fully usable setup, even while running in Real Mode.

This build was released by someone later known as shagin099, who purchased this build at a "ham fest" (along with the similarly incomplete MS-DOS 5.0 RC 3 and RC 10), yet the copy of Disk 2 from this build was missing, though some people on OSBetaArchive, most notably sHARD>>, tried to rebuild Disk 2 completely, though they made some errors. WinPC, Battler and Daniel also attempted to fix this build.

This build is from the Beta 1 stage. Build 43e was believed to be a mislabeled copy of this build, but Antitrust docs confirm that these are two sepparate builds.

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 This build is not much different from that of Build 26, yet it was by this point that Microsoft was starting to phase out support for Real Mode, by seeing to it that nearly all of the applications dropped support for it, though this restriction could easily be evaded by patching it with the same applications from either Build 26 or Windows 3.00a, once again resulting in a fully usable setup, even while running in Real Mode.
-This build was released by someone later known as shagin099, who purchased this build at a "ham fest" (along with the similarly incomplete MS-DOS 5.0 RC 3 and RC 10), yet the copy of Disk 2 from this build was missing, though some people on OSBetaArchive, most notably sHARD>>, tried to rebuild Disk 2 completely, though they made some errors, including:
+This build was released by someone later known as shagin099, who purchased this build at a "ham fest" (along with the similarly incomplete MS-DOS 5.0 RC 3 and RC 10), yet the copy of Disk 2 from this build was missing, though some people on OSBetaArchive, most notably sHARD>>, tried to rebuild Disk 2 completely, though they made some errors. WinPC, Battler and Daniel also attempted to fix this build.
-. Incorrectly using the Setup files from the RTM release of Windows 3.1, Build 103 (!), instead of even using the files from (also available at the time) Build 61d. This build, along with Build 26, is much closer to Windows 3.00a than it is to the RTM release of Windows 3.1, or even Build 61d, and as such, uses mostly the same system files.
-. Mistaking (on sHARD>>'s part) the compressed USER.SY_ file contained on Disk 2 for a "USER.SYS" rather than a "USER.SYM" (symbol files used for debugging purposes), then copying the compressed "USER.EX_" (USER.EXE obviously) to "USER.SY_").
-As a result of this, the widely available copy of this build had numerous errors, especially a problem with trying to boot into it, which would load the Windows 3.1 RTM logo, and then return to the command prompt in such a way that not only was the machine still in VGA mode (640x480 at 16 colors), and not only was the logo still being displayed, but the text from DOS itself would be displayed as black spaces.
-A truely repaired copy of this build was released by WinPC in early March 2008, as a response to this problem, with not only all of the "(fixed)" and "fixed by sHARD>>" references removed, but also all of the files contained within Disk 2 replaced with earlier copies from either Windows 3.00a or Build 61d (depending upon whether the file itself was available as early as Windows 3.00a), with a notable exception for "USER.SY_"/"USER.SYM", which was replaced with the real USER.SYM from the Windows 3.1 SDK. Although this copy still halted at the end of Setup, the files that Setup didn't copy or create (such as the various .GRP files for the program groups) were contained within a FIXES.IMA disk image, which was supposed to be copied into the directory in which this build was installed, even replacing the PROGMAN.EXE with the one from Windows 3.00a, alongside a renamed copy of the original PROGMAN.EXE from this build (renamed to PROGMAN.W31), due to some problems that this copy of the build was having regarding Program Manager.
-However, even the copy of this build released by WinPC continued to have the problem of the system crashing when trying to display the "About" dialog box, due to the differing SHELL.DLL that was originally used by this build in this case.
-In late December 2010, shortly after YouTube member WinBetaX released Build 26 to the public, Battler (formerly known as OBrasilo and also known as OBattler) released a copy of it on The Beta Group, with an extra disk with some patches for allowing it to run in Real Mode and Standard Mode. However, although it otherwise worked properly, it not only had problems copying a couple of the files (at least with DOSSWAP.EXE and WINSWAP.EXE, due to their having been renamed to DSWAP.EXE and WSWAP.EXE respectively), but it also reported the wrong version number in the About Windows dialog box ("3.10.026", rather than "3.10.034e"), however, Daniel released yet another copy of this build, with both problems fixed, again, onto The Beta Group, with even the file dates on the replaced files in Disk 2 having been changed back to the original ones used by this build.
 This build is from the Beta 1 stage. Build 43e was believed to be a mislabeled copy of this build, but Antitrust docs confirm that these are two sepparate builds.