shell swap 98 - 95

[prx984]

i was wondering if anyone knew of a way to change the windows 98 shell to the faster,more efficient shell of windows 95. i had it working with 98lite, but i needed to reload the computer and didnt bother putting it back. so i tried 98lite from within windows this time, and it did not work, it failed. so i wanted to know of another way to do it, if anyone knew how that would be great. thanks

-brian

[Spock]

i was wondering if anyone knew of a way to change the windows 98 shell to the faster,more efficient shell of windows 95. i had it working with 98lite, but i needed to reload the computer and didnt bother putting it back. so i tried 98lite from within windows this time, and it did not work, it failed. so i wanted to know of another way to do it, if anyone knew how that would be great. thanks

-brian

Did you try 98lite from a DOS prompt? Boot the PC into DOS, navigate to the folder where you placed 98lite, and run from there. Any joy?

[prx984]

i tried that too, it greys out option 2 and 3. i need option 3, thats the one where i can swap the shell. only 1 and 4 arent greyed out and thats to install it fresh or delete the install folder for 98lite. thanks anyway, any other ideas?

-brian

ps: im running windows 98se on 32mb of ram, thats why i want to be able to do this. the windows 95 shell hardly even swaps on this computer when i had it. would be so happy if we could get this changed.

Edited April 2, 2006 by brian10161

[LLXX]

Do it manually from the DOS prompt.

Just rename your existing explorer.exe and copy the 95 one into the Windows directory, then run WIN to start Windows with the new shell.

[prx984]

i was thinking of doing that, but i didnt know if it would work. ill try it. ill be able to restore the other one fairly easily anyway. thanks.

-brian

[Dels]

Hard ways (semi safe ways)

1. do BACKUP

2. open up dos prompt (command.com) and kill explorer (from task manager,explorer.exe)

3. switch to command prompt (Alt+Tab, doh)do some command (copy or xcopy) from dos prompt to replace the explorer

4. run taskmanager and select to run a new task, run explorer.exe

Semi-Hard ways (safe ways)

1. rename the 95 shell to explorer95.exe (just example) and copy it to C:\Windows

2. restart and go to command prompt (start in command prompt)

3. type edit C:\Windows\system.ini

4. search for line shell=explorer.exe

5. rename it to shell=explorer95.exe

6. restart or type win

PS: you can play a bit with system.ini, example : shell=C:\explorer95.exe (if you place the shell in C:\)

Edited April 3, 2006 by Dels

[charly]

Hard ways (semi safe ways)

1. do BACKUP

2. open up dos prompt (command.com) and kill explorer (from task manager,explorer.exe)

3. switch to command prompt (Alt+Tab, doh)do some command (copy or xcopy) from dos prompt to replace the explorer

4. run taskmanager and select to run a new task, run explorer.exe

Semi-Hard ways (safe ways)

1. rename the 95 shell to explorer95.exe (just example) and copy it to C:\Windows

2. restart and go to command prompt (start in command prompt)

3. type edit C:\Windows\system.ini

4. search for line shell=explorer.exe

5. rename it to shell=explorer95.exe

6. restart or type win

PS: you can play a bit with system.ini, example : shell=C:\explorer95.exe (if you place the shell in C:\)

Thought you had to also replace with Explorer the 95's ver. of COMDLG32.DLL and SHELL32.DLL

at the same time?

[os2fan2]

There is at the 98lite site a version of the 95 explorer, that has its own attached files, that work quite nicely under windows 98. It's called sleekv2.zip, or sleekv2.exe, if i recall correctly.

W

[Dels]

for some reason (cause a DOS Based Kernel) in win9x/me you can use some program as shell for example :

- the old program manager from win3.x (PROGMAN.EXE)

- dos command line (command.com)

- and even task manager (TASKMAN.EXE)

for some reason (cause a DOS Based Kernel) in win9x/me you can use some program as shell for example :

- the old program manager from win3.x (PROGMAN.EXE)

- dos command line (command.com)

- and even task manager (TASKMAN.EXE)

Some people even more crazier to make game as a shell (reported Doom 1 Dos and Windows version know to work) lol

[prx984]

well i got the sleekv2.exe thingy, and it did work. just now everytime i start the computer i get the welcome to windows 98 thing and my icons don't show up right now either. it doesnt seem all that fast either, so ill just run my restore cd and leave it alone. i reload waaaayyyy to much. lol, last week i reloaded everynight o.O

-brian

[os2fan2]

In the days of Windows 2.x, the standard way of running windows was 'single application mode', where the app in question was loaded as the shell, and windows was loaded as a DOS run-time loader. This is also how kiosk-mode programs typcially run.

I have loaded things like spider.exe as the shell, as well as things like tcmd.exe. From what i recall, you can't really load command-line stuff as shell, although i used windows stuff like win95cmd, 4nt. tcmd32 works as a shell, though.

I did make a version of Windows that fitted on a floppy disk, and launched sol.exe. Pretty useful: now what was windows really used for...

W

[At0mic]

I did make a version of Windows that fitted on a floppy disk, and launched sol.exe. Pretty useful: now what was windows really used for...

that sounds cool, what shell did you use I would like to know more...

[os2fan2]

You use a line like "shell=sol.exe" in system.ini [boot] section.

You can even do this sort of stuff under something like Windows XP.

The trick, is to use some kind of task manager that can launch proggies. For example, taskman.exe = progman.exe or whatever. I used to use some kind of windows command line to do this sort of stuff.

W

[Dels]

You use a line like "shell=sol.exe" in system.ini [boot]section.

Lets play's solitaire

[os2fan2]

The same trick works under Windows 9x.

You have to do something subtler to get Windows NT (ie NT/2K/XP/23) to do it, but it works as directed. You can even do it on a user-by-user basis

W