Does anyone know if it makes a (positive!) difference to use gdi.exe and gdi32.dll from Windows ME in Windows 95?
Replacing the files doesn't do any harm (as far as I can tell as of now!) but does it do anything good like reducing the impact on gdi resources or something?

After all, these files are newer but on the other hand they weren't meant for Win95 so....

It's really hard to evaluate if it's a good or bad thing to do because the usage of gdi resources seems to depend on more than just a specific application.

did you try using 95's resource meter to measure resources? (may have to be enabled in add/remove programs)

Yes, I did that.

But it's kinda hard to tell whether there is an improvement or not because as I said, an application doesn't always need the same amount of resources, so sometimes GDI resources drop to 72% when I launch an app, next time they drop to 69% and I can't say if it's due to the newer gdi files or just a coincidence.

I would think that any significant fix would make a major change in usage.

You need to note the usage before the app runs and take the difference.
You can get more accurate results by making multiple runs and averaging the results.

Yes, that's what I did.

I wrote a batch file to make it easier to replace the two files and after a few runs it turns out that the newer GDI files might be a little bit better.

Windows starts with 99% GDI resources, then I started my application, brought the resources down to 55%, closed the app and with GDi 95 only 93% were given back whereas GDI ME returned 94%.

So, maybe the more recent files are a little more "generous"...

I think a few classes of USER and GDI Objects were moved to the larger Memory Blocks but unfortunately the major bottlenecks remain.

Edited July 6, 20179 yr by rloew

Yes, probably.

But I've replaced them again with the original files because the explorer.exe crashed twice and the error message looked a bit strange. In the left hand corner there was just a white sqare instead of the Windows logo, so I gues it might have something to do with the newer gdi files...