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Windows 95 let installers trash its files then fixed the mess behind their backs (www.theregister.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
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[–] 22 points 7 months ago (6 children)

The BSOD was a digital wellbeing feature, to make sure you didn't use your computer for too long.

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  • [–] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Being the guy who had to feed the whole 32 floppy disk stack to the wretched PC every time the user broke the Windows 95 installation pushed me to the *nix camp quite early, I can tell you that.

    Each floppy had a good 10% chance of being faulty, so imagine the fun.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, I'd actually forgotten how flaky 3.5" floppies were. That's very true.

    A 5.25" you could probably send in a letter and stick the letter on a fridge with a magnet so your remember to mail it and it would still work when it arrived.

    Well, maybe not, but it was quite a difference.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    3.5" was still better than zip disks. At least you couldn't break your floppy drive with a bad disk. Zip drives would break due to a bad disk such that they damaged any other disks you used. Then those broken disks would break any working drive, etc. First and maybe only communicable hardware bug.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Being the guy who had to feed the whole 32 floppy disk stack to the wretched PC every time the user broke the Windows 95 installation pushed me to the *nix camp quite early, I can tell you that.

    Each floppy had a good 10% chance of being faulty, so imagine the fun.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, I'd actually forgotten how flaky 3.5" floppies were. That's very true.

    A 5.25" you could probably send in a letter and stick the letter on a fridge with a magnet so your remember to mail it and it would still work when it arrived.

    Well, maybe not, but it was quite a difference.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    3.5" was still better than zip disks. At least you couldn't break your floppy drive with a bad disk. Zip drives would break due to a bad disk such that they damaged any other disks you used. Then those broken disks would break any working drive, etc. First and maybe only communicable hardware bug.

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