When I was a kid, I did unintentionally renamed loads of executives in the Windows directory into my home language, not understanding too much English, thinking doing so would help locating them better next time. Unfortunately there were no next time, and Windows 98 refused to boot past its splash screen. The concept of shortcut/link wasn't a thing in my tiny head, nor did that of file extension since Microsoft hid them at default. It was a bit confusing since there were 2 "explorer", and only the scp file (Windows Explorer Commands file, whose extension remains hidden regardless of Folder options, just like a shortcut) can be renamed. Modifying this scp file won't affect anything as confirmed by the 20-year-later me in the present in a VM, so it could be something else that led to the confusion of both the OS and my parents. That old horizontal case PC was then sold and replaced with a used Windows XP machine from my cousin, plus a pirated Windows 98 "Third Edition" as main. As of how I recovered the XP to display in the correct resolution on the old-school CRT box, that would be another story of discovery.
Back in I think it was 1993 we got out first family computer and one of the games they got for me was "Mickey Mouse's Follow the Reader" The PC had Windows 3.1 and I put the shortcut for Follow the Reader into the startup folder. My brother who was somewhat decent with computers couldn't figure out how to get rid of it and actually had to call tech support. The solution? Just take the shortcut out of the Startup folder! Once they told him that he felt so stupid like omg how did I not realize that!
SCP, the TH-cam channel. Jk and all of this just shows more proof that Microsoft did not create Windows OS. Which has been proven by the guy that actually created it. He is the guy that sold the OS for 2 dollars, the real version 1.0.
The reason you could not rename explorer.exe in Windows 95 MS-DOS mode is, the new file name "explorer1.exe" was more than 8 characters long. I just tried it in Windows 98, it does not allow renaming to explorer1.exe, but it renames to explore1.exe (8 characters) without problems. Long file names were a new thing back then and the command line utilities did not support them.
Yup. Windows just ignores characters that appear after the first 8. So he was trying to rename explorer.exe to explorer.exe, hence the "duplicate filename" error message.
Is not that, it’s the prompt command/ms-dos that doesn’t allow much chatacters so you have to use ~n to indicate the file in that case the had to write explor~1.exe or the alphabetically number of the file because there were about 3 files called explorer… so in nuts he can name a file with more than 8 digits characters… infact the error was that the file were in use…
Hi. This is my cat! *fish on string drops from ceiling and weird filter appears on video. AHHHHHHH! Lol I'm pretty sure nobody is going to get that reference
Windows Vista is NT 6.0 Windows 7 is NT 6.1 Windows 8 is NT 6.2 Windows 8.1 is NT 6.3 Windows 10 was going to be NT 6.4, but was changed to NT 10.0 to match the name, not because it's fundamentally different Windows 11 is still NT 10.0
Of all those, I prefer 7 and 10. XP was really a transition phase. I personally like how Windows became more resilient instead of restrictive. But it took some glaring pages from Apple UI design (most notably in Vista and 11) meaning it will always be a step behind.
The reason you can't rename EXPLORER.EXE to EXPLORER1.EXE in MS-DOS mode because there's no long filename support. EXPLORER1 is 9 characters long so it gets truncated back to 8 characters, and the error is because you effectively entered REN EXPLORER.EXE EXPLORER.EXE with the same name twice. Try REN EXPLORER.EXE EXPLORE1.EXE Edit: Also the shell is controlled in SYSTEM.INI by SHELL=PROGMAN.EXE in Windows 3.x family or SHELL=EXPLORER.EXE for Windows 9x family, or in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell for Windows NT family. You can change them to point to any executable.
@@CutieFakeKirby That's what happens when you rename the file in Windows (specifically, a Windows program with long file name support). Since DOS and older Windows programs can't handle long file names, the file system stores an alternate file name in the old 8.3 format that takes the first six characters (minus spaces and certain other special characters), a tilde, and a digit. So longfile1.ext becomes LONGFI~1.EXT. And that shorter name is what DOS sees. But, again, that only works if you rename the file in Windows, because Windows knows how to handle long file names and to create the duplicate short file name in the first place. If you try to do so in DOS, it will just fail the same way it would have in the pre-Windows 95 days because it was never designed to handle long file names or create the short alternate name.
@@Lofote Keep the list of hashes of most important binaries, if any of them are wrong start a system check/recovery of the files from some system archive to at least make it bootable. After boot, show a warning that the system was tampered with, ask the user to back up his files and seek professional help immediately. Load system binaries not by name but by a hash and a digital signature. Add the checkbox to the settings 'Professional mode' where all system checks and security is disabled, the user can modify anything apart from the kernel and proprietary bits.
@@Tigglesmith What do you mean? MD5 hash is from 1991. Encryption and keys are also not particularly new concepts, RSA is from ~1977. Signatures were probably not that important in early Windows because web and networks were not yet popular, I'm not complaining about that, just saying what I would have done instead.
Fun fact... We used to make Win 3.1 kiosks by replacing progman with whatever executable we wanted running on the kiosk. Florsheim Shoes self ordering kiosks At the mall did this.
Upon further inspection, the reason why Notepad didn't come up after logging on, after having replaced Explorer with Notepad in Windows Vista and later is because Notepad won't open if it's got a different name, or in a different location. If I replace Explorer with Command Prompt, Command Prompt will come up after logging on. th-cam.com/video/HbWgwVgOuQ4/w-d-xo.html
This is bizarre. I thought that a relatively modern os would perform some hash check before opening a system executable. Do you know whether this has been exploited in the past? For example, for autorunning a keylogger or or some other malware that would then execute explorer.exe so that the user would not notice? Or even by replacing explorer.exe with a modified, malignant version of the shell so that even task manager would not be able to show it?
@@ThatRandomToast It gives me an error in Windows XP saying: "Not a valid Win32 application" when launching the setup.exe It works in Windows Vista but I don't know why it doesn't work with Windows XP
what I was really interested in is all the evolution of windowses. How they changed, it's all connected with change of hardware It was even more interesting than the video idea for me as I was doing such things in the past, playing with explorer, replacing sethc.exe (there was exploit, still working on win10) so i already knew what was gonna happens but you got me with that nostalgy from old windowses, names of programs with upper-case :) Thanks for video)
@@World_of_OSes I guess it waits for explorer.exe to load and get to the desktop, but since there is no desktop component if you rename/replace explorer.exe, it keeps waiting for it and eventually times out.
@@markusTegelaneyou can change the timeout by creating a dword value named DelayedDesktopSwitchTimeout in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and with the value to the number in seconds
@@markusTegelane That's true. I've done it many times to avoid Windows 10/11's "Hi" screen when I install a new copy of the aforementioned two systems.
@@markusTegelane Its not waiting, explorer.exe will fade the opacity of the welcome screen window when it loads. so they made the welcome screen stay running on a sleep timer long enough for explorer to load and fade it.
I like how Win9x is functionally useless without explorer but NT chugs along like nothing happened. Shows the test of time that NT can go wrong in less ways than Win9x.
@@thepparagraphguyand they add a lot of bloatware on top. Really annoying tbh. They could have stuck with a very light system but they run more stuff than necessary, and a lot of those aren't even essential for the system. The system underneath is perfect, like fast, and backward-compatible. The user space however is full of bloat.
Upon further inspection, the reason why Notepad didn't come up after logging on, after having replaced Explorer with Notepad in Windows Vista and later is because Notepad won't open if it's got a different name, or in a different location. If I replace Explorer with Command Prompt, Command Prompt will come up after logging on. th-cam.com/video/HbWgwVgOuQ4/w-d-xo.html
It makes me happy how 'simple' windows 1 and 2 look, like essentially a colorful DOS prompt with various characters everywhere. That being said I haven't used win 1 or 2, only 2000
@@IspartaliKonstantinos yeah it's pretty easy, but a virus could never do something like that. you'd have to have pretty decent computer knowledge to pull off something like that because windows makes impossible to do something like that. i mean I don't even remember what the single line of code was because I found this out in 2020 so I'm probably just yapping nonsense ngl
@@IspartaliKonstantinosMalware doesn't really aim to trash your system anymore. Script kiddies went from trolling to stealing bank information and demanding crypto payments long ago
7:47 - DOS is not blocking you from renaming the file, it simply supported only 8.3 names so EXPLORER.EXE is the same as EXPLORER1.EXE because it's limited to 8 characters
this video takes me back to when i first got an interest in computers when i was young and was so fascinated by having so many different options to do one thing, like opening programs through anything from program manager to task manager to notepad. seems like nowadays windows only wants you to be able to do something one way and for that one way to change with every update
32:09 Windows11 is really fast to boot compared to W8 and W10 because it uses a new system that's basically loading from a saved-state, at least for the kernel side, its almost like "initramfs". Its fun to see operating systems converging to solutions to the problems.
The reason the shell doesn't start if you have no app named "Explorer" is because in the registry editor the shell is set to "Explorer.exe" and if there is no Explorer.exe there will be no shell for it to start.
On some versions of Windows, if you launch the task manager, you can run "Progman.exe" and end up using the Win3x-style Program Manager. With some minor tweaking, you can make it the shell instead of Explorer.
What did you expect? The video does what it says on the tin. Every single version of Windows is covered. Of course it's going to take a while you god damn dumbass 💀
14:07 It should be rename-able if you start cmd.exe, then kill explorer.exe e.g. from Task Manager. You don't need Linux for it. But of course you need admin rights, just like in all Windows NT-based versions :)... By the way, in all versions at least from Win3.x you can define a different shell than progman.exe or explorer.exe, and then you eliminate the need for that EXE completely. And in safe mode you can boot to command prompt, then explorer.exe isn't needed as well. In fact Windows Server Core (e.g. Windows Server 2022) for example doesn't even install explorer.exe at all :). So it never was a necessary component, just the default shell. Oh and the reason why login screens always work in Windows NT based OS is of course thats before the shell even loads ;)... 17:48 Actually Windows XP logs on just as fast as Win2000 here, however the login screen has a waiting routing, it waits for the shell to come up to switch to the new virual desktop (login/security dialog are on a different virtual desktop than the users desktop, and thats from day #1 of Windows NT 3.1). Thats just a visual effect. It has a timeout so it finally switches over at some point (in the registry you can set the number of seconds after which it times out). You can press Ctrl+Alt+Del before that timeout and it will respond immediatly, and after "Cancel" you are on the actual (blank) desktop.
Me from around 30 years ago totally would've done the replace ProgMan with Winfile trick at 3:30 if I knew about it 😁 99% of my time I would exclusively ran applications through the file manager and it would've sped up my creaky machine by just starting what I wanted when launching windows.
I like how all Windows versions above vista reveal their old code of stacking all folded apps into blocks along eachother in the bottom even though they don't do that normally
Not gonna lie but I never imagined that we could do something like that to our Window computers to change it in to a different version of Windows from past and present! This is very interesting!👍
Huh, that "Tasks" thing is an interesting fallback that I've never seen before. And it's weird they just got rid of it after only one iteration of Windows. An emergency, "option-of-last-resort" shell like that seems like it should have hung around. I guess Task Manager from 2000 onwards kind of serves that purpose but at least for 9x they could have simply left that code alone.
I remember that exact thing happened on my pc in past when explorer patcher for windows 11 got bugged out. I get deal with the problem by boot up Oculus Link, boot up Steam(VR) from Oculus, boot up browser of steam, then reinstalled explorer patcher. Ah, classic.
A winrar glitch happened to me once, where I could set an .exe program inside winrar file explorer to launch as another program, I accidentally set all .exe programs to start with winrar.exe. Once I rebooted my PC everything, every process, every program that started with windows 7 started as a winrar window. It was crazy, I didn’t know how to reverse this so I just backed up everything and formatted my computer lol
I wonder what happens if the names of critical files were swapped with each other in different OS versions. Obviously, don't do this on a machine you care a lot about.
Cool video idea but it is a bit longer than it should be imo. I feel not many people will actually sit through the whole thing where as if it was around 10 minutes more people might stick around.
I think on win95 or 98, if you had explorer exe in the root of C drive, windows would prioritize launching that instead of explorer in windows directory. I remember reading someone's story about how a game with an exe that was named explorer that they placed in the C:\ made their windows not work (until they got into DOS and fixed it) I tried finding this story, but oh well, no dice.
It's still really surprising to me that modern day windows since vista, and especially since 10, does not have an automatic "oh fluff where's this core file I need?" and run its dism+sfc stuff automatically, even though it does try to when it has a more catastrophic "can't load at all" issue. Then again, I'm surprised windows nowadays doesn't periodically do a dism+sfc for maintenance every so often, given how many times those saved my butt from a lot of headaches from "natural" issues that crop up over time, and the fact that requirements for windows 10/11 are so high even low end systems could do it relatively transparently.
The reason you were not able to rename Explorer to Explorer1 in Msdos mode for win95 is the 8 character limit of msdos. You basically tried to rename Explorer to Explorer, the 1 got cut off.
As a PC user since 1993, I have to say that I have never seen Windows 8 in action until this day. I guess it wasn't very popular if nobody I know ever had it.
I remember some kind of Windows version, but the folders were arranged in a sort of rectangle in the style of an open file cabinet with a little triangle in the top right corner of each folder and that little triangle was yellow, lilac or cyan. I don't know what that version of Winodws is called.
Have you tried to run the renamed "explorer1" at win 8.1, 10 and 11? Same result as vista, 7 and 8.0? And if you rename back to "explorer" it just fixes it, or messed at the reg lvl?
Thank you for the video and for doing all this effort. It is very clear now: first is that every version of Windows is seriously dumb (meaning unadaptable and unaware of the changes in its FS environment) and second is that the launch of NT Task Manager was a true milestone for Windows. This also explains why it would take one minute to code a script that can compromise a Winows OS. What we really need is a new generation of smart (environment aware) OS's that are more dynamic in nature and do not rely on file names and such. Such OS can be more core-centric and use AI and other core tools to self-check the FS structure during boot and make corrections on-the-fly to its dependencies, optimising the user experience every time. But wait, we are only in 2024...
My grandma said, if i get good grades then she will buy anything i want! (Except Car and Airplane) I will try to ask her if i could get a laptop!! I really wanted to make experiments on windows!
Какая мерзкая "музыка"
When I was a kid, I did unintentionally renamed loads of executives in the Windows directory into my home language, not understanding too much English, thinking doing so would help locating them better next time. Unfortunately there were no next time, and Windows 98 refused to boot past its splash screen. The concept of shortcut/link wasn't a thing in my tiny head, nor did that of file extension since Microsoft hid them at default.
It was a bit confusing since there were 2 "explorer", and only the scp file (Windows Explorer Commands file, whose extension remains hidden regardless of Folder options, just like a shortcut) can be renamed. Modifying this scp file won't affect anything as confirmed by the 20-year-later me in the present in a VM, so it could be something else that led to the confusion of both the OS and my parents.
That old horizontal case PC was then sold and replaced with a used Windows XP machine from my cousin, plus a pirated Windows 98 "Third Edition" as main. As of how I recovered the XP to display in the correct resolution on the old-school CRT box, that would be another story of discovery.
It happened to me too. But, be careful. Thank you for sharing your story. :)
Back in I think it was 1993 we got out first family computer and one of the games they got for me was "Mickey Mouse's Follow the Reader" The PC had Windows 3.1 and I put the shortcut for Follow the Reader into the startup folder. My brother who was somewhat decent with computers couldn't figure out how to get rid of it and actually had to call tech support. The solution? Just take the shortcut out of the Startup folder! Once they told him that he felt so stupid like omg how did I not realize that!
nice story
SCP, the TH-cam channel. Jk and all of this just shows more proof that Microsoft did not create Windows OS. Which has been proven by the guy that actually created it. He is the guy that sold the OS for 2 dollars, the real version 1.0.
that’s kinda sad
The reason you could not rename explorer.exe in Windows 95 MS-DOS mode is, the new file name "explorer1.exe" was more than 8 characters long. I just tried it in Windows 98, it does not allow renaming to explorer1.exe, but it renames to explore1.exe (8 characters) without problems. Long file names were a new thing back then and the command line utilities did not support them.
Yup. Windows just ignores characters that appear after the first 8. So he was trying to rename explorer.exe to explorer.exe, hence the "duplicate filename" error message.
Of course.
Is not that, it’s the prompt command/ms-dos that doesn’t allow much chatacters so you have to use ~n to indicate the file in that case the had to write explor~1.exe or the alphabetically number of the file because there were about 3 files called explorer… so in nuts he can name a file with more than 8 digits characters… infact the error was that the file were in use…
Skibity
@@PurpleMonkVR4 get out of here with your Skibity jk at least your probably learning
So this is my computer!
-Sir, that's a notepad
😂
Haha. xD
Yep a note pad to launch programs
Hi. This is my cat! *fish on string drops from ceiling and weird filter appears on video. AHHHHHHH! Lol I'm pretty sure nobody is going to get that reference
I wonder if there is a practical benefit to doing this. Maybe less system memory usage.
I kinda already knew that, but it's still kinda impressive how windows 10/11 is still really similar to windows vista under the hood
I just thought it would boot windows repair and just fix it, turns out new tech can still be old school 😂
All windows versions are just old ones, but with new added features and design. You can still see old resource monitor
Windows Vista is NT 6.0
Windows 7 is NT 6.1
Windows 8 is NT 6.2
Windows 8.1 is NT 6.3
Windows 10 was going to be NT 6.4, but was changed to NT 10.0 to match the name, not because it's fundamentally different
Windows 11 is still NT 10.0
Of all those, I prefer 7 and 10. XP was really a transition phase. I personally like how Windows became more resilient instead of restrictive. But it took some glaring pages from Apple UI design (most notably in Vista and 11) meaning it will always be a step behind.
@@kickpaw when windows 10 freezes, windows 7 window borders show up
The reason you can't rename EXPLORER.EXE to EXPLORER1.EXE in MS-DOS mode because there's no long filename support. EXPLORER1 is 9 characters long so it gets truncated back to 8 characters, and the error is because you effectively entered REN EXPLORER.EXE EXPLORER.EXE with the same name twice. Try REN EXPLORER.EXE EXPLORE1.EXE
Edit: Also the shell is controlled in SYSTEM.INI by SHELL=PROGMAN.EXE in Windows 3.x family or SHELL=EXPLORER.EXE for Windows 9x family, or in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell for Windows NT family. You can change them to point to any executable.
True.
dosen't it make it say EXPLOR~1?
@@CutieFakeKirby That's what happens when you rename the file in Windows (specifically, a Windows program with long file name support). Since DOS and older Windows programs can't handle long file names, the file system stores an alternate file name in the old 8.3 format that takes the first six characters (minus spaces and certain other special characters), a tilde, and a digit. So longfile1.ext becomes LONGFI~1.EXT. And that shorter name is what DOS sees.
But, again, that only works if you rename the file in Windows, because Windows knows how to handle long file names and to create the duplicate short file name in the first place. If you try to do so in DOS, it will just fail the same way it would have in the pre-Windows 95 days because it was never designed to handle long file names or create the short alternate name.
@@seancdaugIIRC only staring with WinME you could use long filenames in command line.
in Windows 95 to XP, the program manager and file manager still exist
8:44 wow that unlocked memories, I remember you could do that if explorer.exe died
what if you replace Explorer.exe with previous Windows' Explorer.exes?
Pov you do it and now you dond have an windows 10 you hawe an windows XP
you what a windows xp
@@bombowyolaf1244
Or older windows with newer exe? Tho, That might not work due to things that newer explorere does older windows doesnt "understand"
I'm gonna try that
@Dinguslamer how'd it go?
"You must reinstall Windows", typical Microsoft solution.
So how different would you as a programmer handle that unexpected exception?
@@Lofote Keep the list of hashes of most important binaries, if any of them are wrong start a system check/recovery of the files from some system archive to at least make it bootable.
After boot, show a warning that the system was tampered with, ask the user to back up his files and seek professional help immediately.
Load system binaries not by name but by a hash and a digital signature.
Add the checkbox to the settings 'Professional mode' where all system checks and security is disabled, the user can modify anything apart from the kernel and proprietary bits.
@@JamesSmith-ix5jdand how exactly would they do that on the old days
@@JamesSmith-ix5jd How the fuck would they do that in 1995
@@Tigglesmith What do you mean? MD5 hash is from 1991. Encryption and keys are also not particularly new concepts, RSA is from ~1977.
Signatures were probably not that important in early Windows because web and networks were not yet popular, I'm not complaining about that, just saying what I would have done instead.
The ultimate minimalist desktop
Windows 11 = 4 squares
Next one will literally just be called "Window" and have a single square.
@@TowerWatchTVnext we will have "" with nothiNg
i like how you can use windows kind of normally with just the notepad
Fun fact... We used to make Win 3.1 kiosks by replacing progman with whatever executable we wanted running on the kiosk. Florsheim Shoes self ordering kiosks At the mall did this.
Windows 3.0: *Cries in the corner.*
Yea
And windows 9 too
CE too
@@z3n._frwindows doesnt have windows 9
windows NONEXISTANT too man.
Upon further inspection, the reason why Notepad didn't come up after logging on, after having replaced Explorer with Notepad in Windows Vista and later is because Notepad won't open if it's got a different name, or in a different location. If I replace Explorer with Command Prompt, Command Prompt will come up after logging on.
th-cam.com/video/HbWgwVgOuQ4/w-d-xo.html
This is bizarre. I thought that a relatively modern os would perform some hash check before opening a system executable. Do you know whether this has been exploited in the past? For example, for autorunning a keylogger or or some other malware that would then execute explorer.exe so that the user would not notice?
Or even by replacing explorer.exe with a modified, malignant version of the shell so that even task manager would not be able to show it?
@@GiorgioCapocasa task Manager is able to Show Explorer and also able to kill it
Hi @World_of_OSes how did you install office 2010 in Windows XP ?
@@abhishekshekhar4226 You just launch the installer and install it as you would in later versions of Windows. No workarounds needed.
@@ThatRandomToast It gives me an error in Windows XP saying: "Not a valid Win32 application" when launching the setup.exe It works in Windows Vista but I don't know why it doesn't work with Windows XP
Is it me or old versions call "Program" as "Progman"
"Progman" is short form "Program Manager"
purple frog man
nincompoop
Is it me or is the word progman looking kinda...... Thicccccc
@@Nkmura6912-hl3mr*PROGMAN*
what I was really interested in is all the evolution of windowses. How they changed, it's all connected with change of hardware
It was even more interesting than the video idea for me as I was doing such things in the past, playing with explorer, replacing sethc.exe (there was exploit, still working on win10) so i already knew what was gonna happens
but you got me with that nostalgy from old windowses, names of programs with upper-case :)
Thanks for video)
you can skip the slow login if you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and then select cancel from the Windows Security menu
Any idea why it takes ages to log in?
@@World_of_OSes I guess it waits for explorer.exe to load and get to the desktop, but since there is no desktop component if you rename/replace explorer.exe, it keeps waiting for it and eventually times out.
@@markusTegelaneyou can change the timeout by creating a dword value named DelayedDesktopSwitchTimeout in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and with the value to the number in seconds
@@markusTegelane That's true. I've done it many times to avoid Windows 10/11's "Hi" screen when I install a new copy of the aforementioned two systems.
@@markusTegelane Its not waiting, explorer.exe will fade the opacity of the welcome screen window when it loads. so they made the welcome screen stay running on a sleep timer long enough for explorer to load and fade it.
I really like the selection of background music!
I like how Win9x is functionally useless without explorer but NT chugs along like nothing happened. Shows the test of time that NT can go wrong in less ways than Win9x.
Yeah. Because new versions of windows were improved as it should be!
@@thepparagraphguyand they add a lot of bloatware on top. Really annoying tbh. They could have stuck with a very light system but they run more stuff than necessary, and a lot of those aren't even essential for the system. The system underneath is perfect, like fast, and backward-compatible. The user space however is full of bloat.
@@akeiai yeah I hate bloatware like "AntIviRUs" it's litterally annoying to have a antivirus window pop up while you're gaming.
Thanks Captain Obvious
the w95 section scratches my brain so good every question I had you answered immediately like what if I rename this and open that, so satisfying
I remember replacing explorer.exe with another app in Windows 7 and it was working correctly...
Upon further inspection, the reason why Notepad didn't come up after logging on, after having replaced Explorer with Notepad in Windows Vista and later is because Notepad won't open if it's got a different name, or in a different location. If I replace Explorer with Command Prompt, Command Prompt will come up after logging on.
th-cam.com/video/HbWgwVgOuQ4/w-d-xo.html
@@World_of_OSes I see.. thank you!
8:16 thats a fallback error message from Windows 3.0
i love how Windows 1.0 still looks more responsive than a school Chromebook
LOL
8, 8.1, 10 and 11 can run totally fine, just Task Manager becoming the new explorer.exe.
Changing explorer.exe to Task Manager, you can use its Run system.
It makes me happy how 'simple' windows 1 and 2 look, like essentially a colorful DOS prompt with various characters everywhere. That being said I haven't used win 1 or 2, only 2000
Nice, keep up the good work man 👍🏻
wow! i thought a file wont be that important but it seems i am wrong :D.Good content bro!
i mean there's a single line of code in windows that if you remove then the whole thing won't start at all
@@modables oh shoot! =_D i really didnt think Windows is that vulnerable! what if a virus deletes it? is destroying a computer that easy?
@@IspartaliKonstantinos yeah it's pretty easy, but a virus could never do something like that. you'd have to have pretty decent computer knowledge to pull off something like that because windows makes impossible to do something like that. i mean I don't even remember what the single line of code was because I found this out in 2020 so I'm probably just yapping nonsense ngl
@@IspartaliKonstantinosMalware doesn't really aim to trash your system anymore. Script kiddies went from trolling to stealing bank information and demanding crypto payments long ago
7:47 - DOS is not blocking you from renaming the file, it simply supported only 8.3 names so EXPLORER.EXE is the same as EXPLORER1.EXE because it's limited to 8 characters
Vista: Everything changed then The Fire Nation attacked.
Turn up the Computer/hkey-local-machine/security/heat
bruh .
Was that mispelling done on purpose?
It’s neat how well Windows 95 copes
That’s a lot of extra code there that wasn’t meant to be used in the end
The code is still used by Windows 10. I accidentally crashed Explorer and tried minimizing a window, and it did show a small toolbar as well.
Man i loves winvista back in the olddays... it was pretty
when in doubt, ask the prog man
Ehh, he always wants me to smoke weed with him while he rambles on. I would rather ask Jeeves.
Or the Pro G-Man when you need to smell the ashes
more like purple frog man
this video takes me back to when i first got an interest in computers when i was young and was so fascinated by having so many different options to do one thing, like opening programs through anything from program manager to task manager to notepad. seems like nowadays windows only wants you to be able to do something one way and for that one way to change with every update
This is why i never used internet explorer on my pc. If it fails , whole os crashes.
0 likes and 0 replies on pinned comment is wild
and yeah i agree arc is better
@@i_make_beats my favorite is mozilla
commenting and liking just because i don't want it to be wild
Isn't this Windows explorer? The file manager not Internet explorer
Win3.1 (may also work with 95,98, ME): You can also change "shell=progman.exe" line in win.ini to select the program which should run at startup...
You can do the same in other windows versions via regedit
32:09 Windows11 is really fast to boot compared to W8 and W10 because it uses a new system that's basically loading from a saved-state, at least for the kernel side, its almost like "initramfs". Its fun to see operating systems converging to solutions to the problems.
Fast boot is a thing since Windows 8. And i always disable it, because it causes many problems
Win 11 needs 5 minutes to boot on my PC...
the only point of initramfs is to load a base system in order to mount the disk, to finish booting (in a usual sense)
The reason the shell doesn't start if you have no app named "Explorer" is because in the registry editor the shell is set to "Explorer.exe" and if there is no Explorer.exe there will be no shell for it to start.
Keep Going Because You Made a Great Job
On some versions of Windows, if you launch the task manager, you can run "Progman.exe" and end up using the Win3x-style Program Manager. With some minor tweaking, you can make it the shell instead of Explorer.
33 minutes of tragic beep boop music and text? You're out of your actual mind
,xal8
a8
8😮
@@쉬릿-0_o what
beep boop baap
I don't know what you mean by they're out of their mind
What did you expect? The video does what it says on the tin. Every single version of Windows is covered. Of course it's going to take a while you god damn dumbass 💀
You actually improved WindowsME 😂
These videos are somewhat entertaining
The vibe of old windows... I like it
14:07 It should be rename-able if you start cmd.exe, then kill explorer.exe e.g. from Task Manager. You don't need Linux for it. But of course you need admin rights, just like in all Windows NT-based versions :)...
By the way, in all versions at least from Win3.x you can define a different shell than progman.exe or explorer.exe, and then you eliminate the need for that EXE completely. And in safe mode you can boot to command prompt, then explorer.exe isn't needed as well. In fact Windows Server Core (e.g. Windows Server 2022) for example doesn't even install explorer.exe at all :). So it never was a necessary component, just the default shell.
Oh and the reason why login screens always work in Windows NT based OS is of course thats before the shell even loads ;)...
17:48 Actually Windows XP logs on just as fast as Win2000 here, however the login screen has a waiting routing, it waits for the shell to come up to switch to the new virual desktop (login/security dialog are on a different virtual desktop than the users desktop, and thats from day #1 of Windows NT 3.1). Thats just a visual effect. It has a timeout so it finally switches over at some point (in the registry you can set the number of seconds after which it times out). You can press Ctrl+Alt+Del before that timeout and it will respond immediatly, and after "Cancel" you are on the actual (blank) desktop.
its interesting to see the fail-safes windows has when something like this happens
Me from around 30 years ago totally would've done the replace ProgMan with Winfile trick at 3:30 if I knew about it 😁 99% of my time I would exclusively ran applications through the file manager and it would've sped up my creaky machine by just starting what I wanted when launching windows.
I used to just start Linux from the command line and load the few Linux native games from there. I felt I got better performance not having a GUI.
I like how all Windows versions above vista reveal their old code of stacking all folded apps into blocks along eachother in the bottom even though they don't do that normally
I probably suggest not to do it on your main PC because it may causes problems
"It's just a prank!"
The prank evolving through generations:
Next :
What happens if you rename explorer.exe in different *Beta Versions* of Windows?
😮i😮i
broo at 3:00 i was just thinking "dang i wish he would test with another exe like notepad" then like magic thats exactly what you do! i like you 🤠
3:36 windows 3.1 + 2.0 hybrid
I really like to remember Windows nostalgia, how Windows used to be, otherwise a very nice video, I give it a thumbs up.
missed opportunity to rename progman.exe to pregman.exe
Noobgman.exe
postgman.exe
frogman.exe
🫃.exe
cartman.exe
Not gonna lie but I never imagined that we could do something like that to our Window computers to change it in to a different version of Windows from past and present! This is very interesting!👍
im half asleep rn and the msuic is making me ascend wtf
2:08 why does progman sound like a superhero lol
I love your videos, Stefan!
Huh, that "Tasks" thing is an interesting fallback that I've never seen before. And it's weird they just got rid of it after only one iteration of Windows. An emergency, "option-of-last-resort" shell like that seems like it should have hung around. I guess Task Manager from 2000 onwards kind of serves that purpose but at least for 9x they could have simply left that code alone.
You've skipped Windows 9
windows 9 will not exsist you are so stupid
9 doesn't exist idiot
He also skipped windows 6.9
He skipped windows 90@@AiminionPolish
he also skipped windows 96
Very interesting and entertaining videos! subbed =D
I remember that exact thing happened on my pc in past when explorer patcher for windows 11 got bugged out.
I get deal with the problem by boot up Oculus Link, boot up Steam(VR) from Oculus, boot up browser of steam, then reinstalled explorer patcher. Ah, classic.
It is really cool to see the evolution of internet explorer.
Mom! World of OSes uploaded a new video!
@@BOB-vl7ffsmile face
Fun fact: Replacing Program Manager with File Manager, it's easy to open files.
What would happen if Windows 10 explorer.exe was replaced in Windows 11?
omg that ubuntu version
So waht you're telling me is the easiest way to prank my tech support buddy is to rename explorer.exe
Wow, I haven't thought about running programs from Notepad's Open dialogue, but it's a neat trick, just in case :)
A winrar glitch happened to me once, where I could set an .exe program inside winrar file explorer to launch as another program, I accidentally set all .exe programs to start with winrar.exe. Once I rebooted my PC everything, every process, every program that started with windows 7 started as a winrar window. It was crazy, I didn’t know how to reverse this so I just backed up everything and formatted my computer lol
I had a trojan that did this to me back in 2012, except every file would open the trojan instead, asking for money. F you "WinHomeSecurity".
My favorite operating system is still Windows7 Ultimate... still runs like a one... don't need anything else.. Thank you
Will replacing explorer.exe in Win11 with explorer.exe from Win10 give me the old (better) look of Win10?
No, you also need to changes things likr the ui themes in the dlls
Impressive! Very nice! Let's see what happens if I replace Explorer with Notepad
7:47 of cource it can't because file name is too long for DOS
Instead of win11 UI, they should make a modern win3.1 ui
0:53 WHAT HAPPENED
He just ended the session
Looks like it had a corrupted blue screen
@@late6824there was another screen that flashes for like less than a second but it looks like what i said above.
Oh, you're right! Sorry, didn't see that one there!
This is ordinary behavior for Windows 1.0 and part of it's initialization
I like the song at 8:57. Sounds like some kind of creepy cybernetic apocalyptic thing
24:03 sas💀💀
That's a video game provided by my school back it 2011, it was supposed to improve my social skills.
www.secretagentsociety.com/
9:00 Bro, this is literally a remix of the aperture song XD
I wonder what happens if the names of critical files were swapped with each other in different OS versions.
Obviously, don't do this on a machine you care a lot about.
i love the music you use in your videos
Windows 11 goes more to an mobile interface
Cool video idea but it is a bit longer than it should be imo. I feel not many people will actually sit through the whole thing where as if it was around 10 minutes more people might stick around.
in description: Razihel is now RAIZHELL.
The title called "RAIZHELL - Faster" instead, not "Razihel".
Linux Parts:
*START!*
1: 7:51
*Windows 95*
1: 10:39 2: 11:23
*Windows 98*
1: 12:35 2: 13:11
*Windows ME*
1: 14:18
*Windows NT 4.0*
1: 16:06
*Windows 2000*
*END!*
Linux Parts:
I think on win95 or 98, if you had explorer exe in the root of C drive, windows would prioritize launching that instead of explorer in windows directory. I remember reading someone's story about how a game with an exe that was named explorer that they placed in the C:\ made their windows not work (until they got into DOS and fixed it)
I tried finding this story, but oh well, no dice.
in Windows 3.0, MSDOS.exe is the Msdos executive, and the kernel is gone. in Windows 3.1, they removed the Msdos executive and reversi
No way bro not the reversi😢 can't believe Steve Balmer lied to us :(
@@jet-it9crSteve baller
That actually looks cool but if i try it my family members might get upset. (Especially sara)
Still in love with Vista/7's UI design
22:40 win + tab view better than today's win + tab design
It's still really surprising to me that modern day windows since vista, and especially since 10, does not have an automatic "oh fluff where's this core file I need?" and run its dism+sfc stuff automatically, even though it does try to when it has a more catastrophic "can't load at all" issue. Then again, I'm surprised windows nowadays doesn't periodically do a dism+sfc for maintenance every so often, given how many times those saved my butt from a lot of headaches from "natural" issues that crop up over time, and the fact that requirements for windows 10/11 are so high even low end systems could do it relatively transparently.
The reason you were not able to rename Explorer to Explorer1 in Msdos mode for win95 is the 8 character limit of msdos. You basically tried to rename Explorer to Explorer, the 1 got cut off.
As a PC user since 1993, I have to say that I have never seen Windows 8 in action until this day. I guess it wasn't very popular if nobody I know ever had it.
I love how explorer is a vital organ to each OS and will make the OS DIE if messed with
I remember some kind of Windows version, but the folders were arranged in a sort of rectangle in the style of an open file cabinet with a little triangle in the top right corner of each folder and that little triangle was yellow, lilac or cyan. I don't know what that version of Winodws is called.
10:49
I was listening and i was like “hmm that’s familiar” and i just realized that was one of my intro songs
on windows 8, 8.1, 10, and 11, if you go to recovery mode/ advanced startup, explorer.exe does not exist, so you have to turn it on in command prompt.
Have you tried to run the renamed "explorer1" at win 8.1, 10 and 11? Same result as vista, 7 and 8.0? And if you rename back to "explorer" it just fixes it, or messed at the reg lvl?
Thank you for the video and for doing all this effort. It is very clear now: first is that every version of Windows is seriously dumb (meaning unadaptable and unaware of the changes in its FS environment) and second is that the launch of NT Task Manager was a true milestone for Windows. This also explains why it would take one minute to code a script that can compromise a Winows OS. What we really need is a new generation of smart (environment aware) OS's that are more dynamic in nature and do not rely on file names and such. Such OS can be more core-centric and use AI and other core tools to self-check the FS structure during boot and make corrections on-the-fly to its dependencies, optimising the user experience every time. But wait, we are only in 2024...
My grandma said, if i get good grades then she will buy anything i want! (Except Car and Airplane) I will try to ask her if i could get a laptop!! I really wanted to make experiments on windows!
Remember to do these experiments in a virtual machine
@@Gatorade69 yes I will do it in a vm