Running Windows 1.0 Apps on Windows 10? 

Just think about it - They made clipboard function in windows so good, that they didn't do any significant changes in like 35 years (because the program still recognized everything which wouldn't be the case it they significantly edited the code)

lol I've never seen an app say it was last modified in the 80s.

22:09 - Windows: Please hold on while Windows reports this problem to Microsoft Microsoft employee: Uhhhh... we just got an error report for the Windows 2.0.3 DOS Executable edit: Wow, I take a vacation, and this becomes my most popular comment by far.

If that was Windows Smartscreen then it would have said something like "Windows protected your PC" and given you the option to run it. "This app can't run" is a compatibility message.

MSDOS.exe from Windows 1: *exists* Windows 7: 'Sure!' Almost anything made before 2015: *exists* Windows 10: 'No, I don't think I will.'

Windows 10: Please hold on while we report this problem to Microsoft... MS Employee: Why is someone still using 2.0.3 DOS executable, and why is it failing?

The programs from Windows NT 3.1 work fine in Win10, even on 64bit as they are 32bit native applications. Have Win3.1 paintbrush running in 4k resolution on Win10

Actually, the first kind of window control was introduced in Windows 3.0, where doubleclicking the menu opener thing on the top left of a windows closes it sometimes. Also, Reversi was removed in specifically Windows 3.1. Minesweeper is also officially in the Microsoft Store.

the color changes do change throughout the system 15:22 before 20:16 after

I never knew, you could still run apps from Windows 2.0 on Windows 10 so far, you can adjust things in the control panel, and log out from MS DOS Executive. This leads me to beleive, there is still some ancient code that dates back to the 80s is still lurking inside Windows 10's kernel.

15:34 Try to run Control Panel as administrator (Windows doesn't allow to change the time/date without admin rights) and disable the auto-sync in the Settings app

This program requires Microsoft Windows. Windows 10: Am I a joke to you?

Congratulations, you've just convinced me to go through the masochism of installing a Windows 1.0 VM in case, for some remarkably contrived reason, I run into some form of software somewhere that needs it.

I read about this ages ago but can't find it again. It's possible to run 1.0 apps on windows 10. Step one is to use a hex editor and modify the exe header to say it's for windows 2.0. Then you need an old version of the Borland resource editor (or resource compiler? I forgot the name) to recompile the embedded resources from the 1.0 format to a newer format (embedded resources can be icons, text messages, window layouts etc.)

The Windows 1 MS-DOS executable said "1 byte" when you moused over it.

25:35 This painting must belong in a museum :D

I'm pretty sure the time and date in Windows 10 is set by the internet and you have to disable it to change the time and date manually?

I think the time is resetting because you have to setting to automatically sync your time on.

I would have liked to see if you open windows 3's regedit if you can edit the windows 10 registry. Another thing, try opening a massive modern day photo with paintbrush

The structure of Windows kernel has definitely been changed a lot with transition to NT kernel for performance and stability. However Windows has not changed Windows API in NT kernel based Windows for compatibility with DOS kernel based one, so most Windows APIs (like CreateWindow) used in Windows 1.x are still remained with usable state in Windows 10. Not surprising. I guess most software developed for Pre - Windows 95 can be run in Windows 10, if legacy codes for 16 - Bit system (far / near pointer, Local / Glocal Memory Allocation) are replaced with modern ones.

To change the time in Coltrol Panel 2.03, you have to turn off the automatic time sync in Windows 10 settings.

This is the beauty of Windows - backwards compatibility. There are several RU-vid videos showing upgrading from Windows 1.0 to Windows 10 and several old apps still worked in Windows 10. However, Windows does not carry the settings over from the previous version of Windows

Suddenly got this video in my recommendations. I remember watching this in 2018, it's crazy to see you "only" had 20,000 subscribers back then. You've come a long way!

the fact that some functions work is pretty rad, just goes to show you how much they were able to accomplish in those older versions of windows

This video has some nostalgic moments in it lol. I haven’t seen that Windows 3.0 paint in 15+ years and i still recognize it. And i also remember the file explorer (executive thing) of win 2.0. If you clicked on the A drive button that you would hear the floppy drive buzzing lol. Always a crazy thing to realise that i lay daily on the couch with an iPad which is capable of doing thousands of more things than those old bulky computers with CRT screens could do back then.

"Hello everybody and welcome back to another video." Classic Michael intro, and it's perfect!

Wow good timing. I just stumbled across your 5k video and found it super interesting and here you are posting a related video, sweet

You need to rename some of the applications because Windows blocks them if they’re named the same as system files like calc.exe.

I literally just watched your old 5k special video earlier today!! You do some really interesting stuff! ❤ have you considered try to do the same style upgrade video for linux/Ubuntu ?

You have to log out of Win10 and log back in for color changes to reliably take effect. Also, now I'm wondering if this trick would make XP's color control panel work. Getting rid of white menus would be worth the effort.

As much as I can't stand Microsoft these days, they generally do have the best backwards compatibility of all OSes.

The icon for msdos.exe is the old program manager icon for Windows 3.1 - interesting that icon is still included as part of Windows 10.

It's interesting to see the file sizes of these old programs...

Your the best at bringing old windows executable's back to life! :D

For the border width check if the area where you can resize windows gets bigger. In Windows 10 the border is hidden to make everything look thin. Menu bar themes might work on programs that do not support UxTheme.

Great video ya got here ^^. I was wondering if you could do the same thing as the 5k subsciber special, except maybe you can upgrade from windows 2.0/3.0, seeing that some of the old apps working in windows 10 :P

I feel like you should have run the Program Manager as an Admin, not too sure why.

the color settings from wwin 2.0 control panel applies to the classic windows skin introduced in 9x, so you will see the changes if you manage to bring it up in windows 10 , it is still here but hidden !

Hey, Michael! I love your channel! Can you please do a video on how you extracted the Windows apps from their .iso? Thanks in advance!

I find you interesting keep up the good work!

I would believe the color changes would work for some programs,ones that are kinda older (probably xp age) / ones that have really old menu styles. I have a program for windows that allows me to have tabs in explorer, it uses old unthemed dropdown menus, unlike notepad which uses windows 10 ish ones

I'm somewhat surprised by how many programs still work natively, I'm however not surprised that bmp files happen to open still. It's legacy format for sure but it's so simple it's still being used on some applications.

I wonder whether it's the Program Compatibility Assistant service that is preventing the apps from opening...?

I was able to run most (not all) of win 1.0 on 64 bit with otvdm, as well as some 2.0 and 3.1 apps, I couldn’t get 1 executable to work mainly cause i didn’t wanna find the files needed for it but 2 worked flawlessly almost. Reversi, calc, clipbrd, and calendar worked everytime.

The biggest obstacle is that Windows 1.0 and many Windows 2.0 programs were written to run on an original IBM PC with an 8086/8088 processor; i.e. what came to be known as "real mode" on 80286 and later processors. Beginning with the Windows/286 and Windows/386 editions of Windows 2.0, support was added to the kernel for "standard mode" and "386 enhanced mode" in order to support the protected mode of the 80286 and 80386 processors respectively. This had the consequence that some older programs; having been written to expect the (somewhat peculiar) memory addressing scheme of the 8088, would attempt to access memory in a way that is invalid for an 80286 or later CPU running in protected mode; causing either the program (or, just as likely, Windows itself) to crash with a "general protection fault". As some others have hinted, Windows 1.0 execuables used the exact same file format as early MS-DOS executables; and all were designed to run in "real mode" Windows, because nothing else existed at the time. Beginning with Windows 2.0, the executables were changed to the modern "NE" (new executable) format that is used by all modern DOS, OS/2, and Windows systems; which includes headers indicating such things as which operating system modes are supported by the program (i.e. DOS real mode, DOS extended mode, OS/2, Win16 real mode, Win16 standard mode, Win16 enhanced mode, Win32, Win64, UWP, etc). This explains why Windows 10 (probably also all versions of Windows NT) cannot recognise the Windows 1.0 executables as Windows programs and instead attempt to execute them as MS-DOS programs (usually just a stub which prints a message stating that the program requires Windows and then exits).

Try to run Windows 10 Apps on Windows 1.0 😂

Windows 10 has very good compatibility with old things, not only software but also old hardware. I am running candy crush saga on ati rage pro and framerate is also playable.

Me: It's hot in here Microsoft: Time to open up some windows (windows xp start up plays) Me: Now it's to cold, shut the darn window (windows xp shutdown plays)

I think when you disable the automatic time set from win10, you could change it with the windows 2 program

This is interesting from an academic point of view (let's see if we can do it just for the heck of it), but I'd say it's more interesting and more practical to run 16-bit Windows 3.1 progs in Win10. Yeah, Paintbrush! And Cardfile might be useful, too. Clock and Minesweeper is just fun.

Man, this video is really cool but also kinda scary. Imagine all of the vulnerabilities that could be caused by NTVDM.

I've never seen such time savings! Pressing Ctrl+R then typing "ms-settings://" saves so much time over clicking Start and the gear icon just above it

The windows 2 clock in control panel may have worked if you disabled the windows time server in Windows 10. You can either set your time manually, or you can tell the clock to grab time, date, and time zone from the server automatically. This is actually the default; You have to opt out of it and tell the system that you want to set it manually. I'm betting if you turned off the automatic functionality then the control panel would have allowed you to adjust the time. my assumptions come from the fact that the cursor blink actually changed the system functionality of Windows 10.

Once I installed a program from a 90s National Geographic CD and it worked like it was made for Windows 10... Windows is the absolute king of backwards compatibility

you all ways make my day😁

I have always been curious about these things and I really want a windows 1 so this is actually really cool! Maybe you could try a Vista?

The time and date settings probably didn't work because windows had automatic time setting on.

4:40 I don't know about SmartScreen (isn't that more for security?), but Win10 does indeed have some sort of blacklist or whitelist as far as program compatibility goes. Sometimes when doing a feature upgrade, I've been forced to uninstall a program or two before the upgrade could continue because the installer determined that said program was incompatible with the incoming build of Windows.

If I recall, you could exit Windows from Task Manager, even back in Win 3. I'm not 100% on that, but it might've been something to try if the ability existed.

Windows 3 was the version that laid the definitive groundwork for the Windows backend, so no surprise that NTVDM barely works until that point. That's about how it is in Windows 3 itself, though users of _that_ had a workaround: if they absolutely had to run something for Windows 2 or earlier, they could start Windows 3.0 in real mode (a function removed in 3.1), though this would then prevent most Windows 3 programs from running. The command is "win /r".

Issue with the time is that the system defaults to internet time to make sure your security certificates are valid in your browser. You need to disable internet time for the clock to work.

The time thing might be the autotime setting.

I've been using a desktop clock called EMICLOCK since Win95, and it still works in Win10. Other apps from the era are more hit-or-miss. That's about as far back as I dare go (w/o resorting to DOSBOX)

the border width changed in notepad, btw before = 7:17 after = 19:42

You forgot to try Windows NT 3.1 workstation executables with latest service pack. Winnt3.1 is theorically all 32bit. I believe some things do run on win10 because there are API leftovers. Some things require NTVDM. Win10 doesnt ship with NTVDM. When Win10 needs NTVDM, it prompts user and downloads it the net, same for .net 2/3. I believe also windows does try to detect which version of windows can run an executable, some will need compatibility mode adjusted.

Speaking of Windows 1, you could try and triple-boot the first three versions of Windows! (i even did this in my browser, starting from 3.0)

I got inspiration from this video and tried launching Windows 3.1 programs in Ubuntu with Wine and...it works! Just set the Windows version to "XP" but don't expect every program to work...

Windows 1.0 cmd: Shut down the PC, please. Windows 7: OK, grandpa :(

Wow, thats really interesting how you can open some old apps in windows 10!

Thank you for an interesting video. I think old programs can still run in modern OS, because of compatibility of military programs, even for modern fighter jets, who use simple programming language (as it is perceived as being more stable). Of course other systems onboard might be of AI models that only works with complex language.

Windows checks for type of executable, as far as I know COM files are different from exe, they are essentially just snapshots of memory. Also exe has several types, each does it's own thing.

Very interesting video, makes you think how much legacy code is actually in Win 10

Maybe the Win2 control panel couldn't change the time because Win10 didn't have the option to automatically synchronize the clock disabled. If you disable automatically synchronizing the clock, does it work then?

12:29, I think that when the program checked your windows version it was like "Windows 10? Windows 10 does not exist yet!"

But can Paintbrush open a modern .BMP made in a newer program? :o That's what I really wanted to see in that part. Everything else was great though, I honestly didn't know what to expect!

Goes to show the amazing backward compatibility Windows has... which is part of the reason it still has the same problems as always. They’re stuck in the past.

I have noticed the old programs had the Windows 98-esc dropdown menu. This tells us that classic theme is in Windows 10!

Pretty cool, I don't use Windows... but the backwards compatibility is really freaking cool. In the Linux world "backwards compatibility" is usually trying to compile an application against newer libraries or compiling the app and libraries. If that doesn't work or it's a binary then your out of luck.

If i would get a dollar every time Micheal MJD says "Check that out!" I would be a billionaire!

this made into my recommendations

Time + date probably didn't change due to network protocol. If you disable network time it would probably work

16:00 perhaps the VM software is using the host system time and overwriting the guest time. 🤔 18:50 if my observations are correct, windows 10 has at least 3 different context menus - the normal one, the large, W10/UWP one, and a third one which (if I'm correct) is only used for the alt+space on a window menu. I'd bet it's changing the colour of the alt+space menu. 🤔

If you'd told me this morning the undescribable joy I'd feel just from watching a cursor slow down...

That's so cool!

When you were trying to terminate the Windows session with MS-DOS Executive, in that same menu it said "Format Data Disk" I wonder what that will do on Windows 10...

great scott!

Well, Smartscreen is when it says “Windows protected your PC”, “This app can’t run on PC” means that the EXE or COM file can’t run because of possible improper file data.

Got an ad, you sounded like the person narrating the ad.

I really liked how this video went and how exhaustive you where in trying to get them to work. only gripe I have is can you not play the error beeps when they happen? I run this in the background on my 3rd monitor while I have things running on the other 2 monitors and it was freaking me out a bit the first few times and setting me on edge even though I knew where it was coming from after that.

NTVDM= Windows NT Virtual DOS Machine In other words, the WinNT component that allows for DOS/Win16 compatibility.

Really cool.

this is so cool... tou forgot to run sol.exe ( solitaire ) 😎

Most Win 10 installs I've seen don't have NTVDM installable. Doings a search on ntvdmx64 reveals a github page with a third party NTVDM for 16 bit apps. I use it to run ancient programs such as WinGIF :)

The clock and date probably didn't change because windows 10 uses the internet time so it keeps resetting.

hello, just wondering...why do windows 1.0 to 3.0 files are all in capital letters? just curious

16 bit software natively on 64 bit Windows? Not a good chance, there’s a higher chance if you try it on 32 bit Windows

Correction at 27:24 you can move the window easily just cilck the icon then click "move" then drag your mouse

I understand why the windows 3.0 ones would work, at least windows 3 nt programs would work cause the kernel is the same as windows 10. But the fact the windows 2 programs work, well some, is astonishing. I have no idea why that happens

Control.exe in windows 3 does not work unless you put the files in c:\windows

I know Windows 95 and such would do program groups as start menu folders, so try elevating the Program Manager?