Slashdot Mirror
Windows 95 in 4.47MB
Silvorgold writes "BOFH of MSBetas.net has been able to compress Windows 95 into 4.47 megabytes, making it the world's first sub-5mb bootable, registry editable, command-promptable, usable version of Windows 95.
He has written a small description about what he did, and also included screenshots (with his digital camera), and don't worry, these aren't fake screenshots."
"Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots :) Oh, and don't hot-link to them, my host will kill me. Thanks!"
Yes. Yes, he will.
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
Already /.ed and not yet 5 comments?
Oh wait, it's Windows95.
Because we can... why else?
:)
I think this is pretty cool. Next challenge for them, WinXP under 1 gig
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Does it have a full-featured blue screen of death?
Are you an open source warrior?
Here's a mirror:
0x0D 0x0A
ou can discuss this at our official community, over at NeoNerds.net.
:)
;)
:) Oh, and don't hot-link to them, my host will kill me. Thanks!
Update: Chat with me in real-time at irc://irc.xbetas.com/Micro95
A FULL set of configuration files; Win.ini, system.ini, Registry, is available in our IRC channel. If you're thinking of building your own version of Micro95, be sure to head over there to find out more information about the project.
Okay, over the past couple of days you will have heard plenty of news about the latest Windows 95 in 10mb, created by Richard L. James from over at Wimborne.org. And then, there was redruM69, who managed to get 95 down to 5.35mb.
However, what you are about to hear is a world first.
Tonight, I created the world's first sub-5mb bootable, registry editable, command- promptable, usable version of Windows 95. And what's more, you can build the system yourself, if you know how.
But if I simply made this claim, you might laugh, you might mock. You might even go "hahaha you lamer". So I'm not just going to make this claim. I'm going to prove it. Here's the screenshots (taken with the camera):
Lemme guess. They're fakes, right? No they're not, but you don't believe me anyway, so here's the directory listing.
Windows 95 4.47mb Directory Listing
Well, I'm afraid that's all I can give you. I'm currently working on loading this into RAM, and also an installer for those of you with a legit copy of Windows 95. Aaaand I think that's all I can do
The system uses UPX compression on the main EXEs and DLLs, btw, in case you were wondering how I got it down past redruM69's 5.35mb. I also removed some extra files, and restored functionality which the other micro 95 builds don't have. I'll try UPXing the entire system and windows folders later, see if I can get it down past 4 or 3mb
My 16mb Office project will continue, as well as myself and Richard's collaboration on the micro 95 with TCP/IP Stack project, for those of you who wish to use this as a small browsing OS, etc. I'll also see if I can restore sound support to this, as I'm aware quite a few of you are interested in using this project as a basis for car MP3 players.
I'd also like to make it quite clear that none of this would have been possible without the help of Richard L James and his Shrinking Windows project. Also worthy of a big mention is redruM69, who sucessfully brought Windows 95 down to 5.35mb.
You can discuss this at our official community, over at NeoNerds.net.
Update: Chat with me in real-time at irc://irc.xbetas.com/Micro95
A FULL set of configuration files; Win.ini, system.ini, Registry, is available in our IRC channel. If you're thinking of building your own version of Micro95, be sure to head over there to find out more information about the project.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots
BOFH
Heh, the Contiki server was up for a longer time ;)
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
I'm still waiting for Windows 95 on a floppy.
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Actually, this is interesting, if not particularly important.
It shows just exactly how much JUNK that a Windows install puts on your system. Crap you don't need... in most cases, crap you don't know about, can't get rid of, or don't want. I'm pissed because my Windows partition is 6 gigs and WinXP takes up nearly 2 gigs of that, while still running slower than my 7 year old computer did back in 1996. Windows is actually a pretty fast operating system, once you take away all the junk. This just shows how much junk there is.
Although, if someone had come out with this 6 years ago, I'd be clamoring for the code - I would have loved this instead of having to clear out the advertizing junk and IE and Outlook Express manually...
most of the extra bloat in windows is the enourmass device driver database (that makes the automagical plug and play thing work). this guy actually deleted plenty of system files though, I guess by trial and error.. delete a file, see if solitair runs, delete a file, etc. problem is the win32 api consists of way more than just user32.dll. I'd bet trying to run anything other than solitair results in an "unable to locate advapixxxx.dll"
bite my glorious golden ass.
Complete list of uses for this:
[end list]
John Kerry is a Joke!
- Because it's there. While Linux is fairly easy to get a useful Linux distro under 2 MB, you can do things like strip the kernel to the bare essentials. Needless to say, you can't do that under Windows; there's a lot more challenge in getting Win 95 under 5 MB.
- Also, making Win95 fit in small spaces may be of interest to people who want to run legacy Windows apps on embedded devices. I could see this put on an old Pentium with an all-in-one motherboard and a 16 MB solid state drive, with room for a small program or two. The only issue would be swap space. This might be useful in places looking for a small, simple pseudo-embedded PC that needs to run Windows apps. Linux might be better for 95% of these kinds of tasks, but if Windows is necessary to run legacy apps, then it would be best to run, well, Windows.
While it might not be eminently practical, neither is, say, running Linux or NetBSD on some obscure piece of hardware. Nifty hacks like this aren't always done for practical reasons; they're just as often done for fun.That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I don't think any company would trust Windows 95 as an embeded solution. WindowsCE already covers that area and works much more efficiently. This is more of a just a fun trick to do with Windows 95 than anything.
Also, considering how many files they removed from the system, I would be suprised if anything could run with all those missing DLL files.
From the page:
;)
;) ) as the executables/libraries get uncompressed to memory when they get loaded by the Windows PE loader.
:)
The system uses UPX compression on the main EXEs and DLLs, btw, in case you were wondering how I got it down past redruM69's 5.35mb. I also removed some extra files, and restored functionality which the other micro 95 builds don't have. I'll try UPXing the entire system and windows folders later, see if I can get it down past 4 or 3mb
UPX compresses most executables to 30% of their normal size. But it also makes the system slower (well its Win95 so thats not a big issue
I'd like to see how small you can get the smallest floppy Linux using UPX, `strip` and some size squeezing GCC and linker flags
If you check the UPX examples you'll see that you can even get Emacs to less than 1 MB 8)
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
From their forum: :: prays :: I hope that b/w limit doesn't kick in
<BLOCKQUOTE>
#7 - BOFH - Aug 7, 2003 00:52<BR>
Eek... I think we're on an OC12, though, so we should be okay...
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Reminds me of that tiny copy of Windows 3.1 that came on the Windows 95 disc. Used only during installation, a certain cab file contained all the necessary files to run 3.1 apps. All one needed to do was decompress the file, copy the Program Manager or any other shell program to the same directory, and add it into the win.ini (or was it the system.ini?) file. The entire thing was so small, it fit comfortably onto a 1.44 meg floppy.
I think the file was user.cab, although I'm not sure. Guess I gotta dig up that old 95 install disc.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
From this page, it appears that the previous 'record holder', 5.35 MB, did not use an executable packer or other compression.
;). Just what is the purpose of this, and at what point do your modifications, whether extreme, or just running binaries through an executable packer, defeat the purpose of doing this in the first place?
"Apparently only 5.35Mb in size (at the moment.... I'm told this might go down!) - without using UPX / any compression"
So, is what this fellow has done a superior acheivement, or did he mostly just run an executable packer on a few binaries?
Certainly if the idea here is to just shrink the physical disk space usage we can do better than either of these entries by compressing all files and hacking the Windows I/O subsystem calls to handle our compression.
I think all of this raises an interesting question. (ok, so it's not interesting at all, but I've had similar issues come up in a lot of other unofficial sort of 'competitions' like this, and we all just kind of use interest at that point
Is the idea to have the smallest possible OS capable of doing x or y?
Is the idea to have the smallest possible OS that looks like Windows 95?
Is the idea to have the smallest possible 'distribution' of Windows 95 attainable by just removing unecessary features?
Do we want smallest in terms of RAM usage, or smallest in terms of disk space? What do we then if we run it on a RAM disk? Which space counts?
Surely depending up just what is the goal here, we can do a lot better than 4.47 MB.
I guess I don't 'get it', what they're doing =)
That's Windows users for you!
There is a micro Linux distribution floating around somewhere that provides an X server in under 2 MB of physical disk space (but 4 or 8 MB of RAM), but I can't recall the name of it just now.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
What I find telling as well is that the Mac OSX calculator.app is SIX times the size of the total RAM in the first Mac, and over twice the size of a complete OS install.
That's the "cruft" of a new software framework... it's a fact of computer life. The original Mac had 128 KB of RAM and a single internal 400 KB 3.5" floppy drive. A few people had an external floppy or hard drive for further storage. These days Apple doesn't even sell a machine with less than 128 MB of RAM and 30 GB of HDD space.
The original Mac OS and bundled software was written between 1981 - 1983 in assembly as well as heavily optimized compiled higher level languages. Every byte counted. The team's goal was to outgun the Lisa with 1/8 as much ram and no hard drive. (And way less than what the Xerox Star had). They pulled it off, though. With a single floppy a person could have the full OS and a couple apps. By the time postscript support and networking was added in early 1985, two floppy drives were required for enough space for OS, drivers, apps, and storage.
He used a better method, though: He deleted everything but win.exe, then tried to run it. When it failed, he monitored what file it was trying to process, and added that from a full installation. Repeat until it boots, and you can do this for any OS.
Making Windozz 95 useable - now that is an accomplishment!
Remove, err, Windows? How? By removing the computer?
Everybody knows that without Windows, no computer is able to work.
most of the extra bloat in windows is the enourmass device driver database (that makes the automagical plug and play thing work).
.avi format.
A lot of it was also the weezer buddy holly video in
~Will
sig?
Used this method (usually combined with stacker and 2m format) lots when I was at university, we didn't have access to hard disk storage so we'd squash things onto disk to use; I got the following working off single disks :
:) Although for doom a friend of mine wrote a program that hacked the .wad file and ripped out all the sound files 'cos those didn't compress with stacker.
Win3.11
Win3.11 booting into netscape
Win3.11 booting into Mirc/Pirch
X-wing (without cutscenes/movies)
Lemmings 2
Borland C (dos ver)
Turbo pascal 7 (dos ver)
A few others, including shareware doom off a single disk so that we could play it across the (novell) network without having to log in and be traced