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I know, WOW. I got a tower with Windows 95 installed on it, and a lot of stuff. This sweet older woman has been waiting for her grandson to get her a computer for about 8 months and he's a computer tech. All she does is play some old games. I would like to remove all I can so she can run her games. I know nothing about Windows 95. How can I remove everything except Windows 95 so she can play her games? And her old computer that does not work anymore also has 32 MB RAM that I hope can also be installed to give her 64 MB of ram, maybe?

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Good luck finding a 32MB RAM stick these days. ;) – Sasha Chedygov Sep 2 '09 at 0:28
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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

32 MB is perfectly fine for Windows 95. IIRC my first Windows 95 box had a massive 8 MB RAM :)

Since this computer is only for playing old games, you don't need any antivirus software (modern antivirus programs simply don't work with 32 MB RAM anyway). However, you can download an up-to-date version of F-Prot for DOS for free, this will do the trick if you wish to check for any viruses.

Other than that, not much has changed since the old days:

you remove programs in Windows 95 via Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs.

CCleaner works with Windows 95, it will delete the temporary files piled up over the years and do a basic registry cleanup.

Then defragment the drive (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools) and she's good to go. :)

In case you need MSCONFIG (which was only introduced with Windows 98), you can download it here.

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8GB is quite massive even by today's standards.. :) – Andrew Coleson Sep 2 '09 at 2:09
oopsie daisy :) edited. – Molly7244 Sep 2 '09 at 2:13
and yes, you can still buy 72pin SIMMs, 16 GB for $19, sounds ridiculous when you get 1024 MB DDR2 RAM for that money. but hey, compared to the price 15 years ago it's a STEAL :) upgradecomputermemory.com/ram.cfm/memory/C/Compaq/… – Molly7244 Sep 2 '09 at 2:24
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I would kill for 16GB for $19. :) – Dan Walker Sep 2 '09 at 3:16
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will i ever get this right today? LOL – Molly7244 Sep 2 '09 at 4:09
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up vote 2 down vote

Windows 95 will run, but for an older computer I would put a light Linux distribution that will be a lot faster anyway. Almost no games will run except some that you can have on Linux (clone of the same game or almost ...) and most applications are now made for Windows XP by thinking like everyone has 512 MB of RAM ...

DistroWatch should be a good start and even if you have to learn a little, Linux will be the future, you just have to check the must-have applications topics to see that most of them are open source or at least Linux friendly (can be used on Wine at least).

Windows is now affraid of Linux and Mac OS X has made a part of their OS open source for that reason. Proprietary software now fight to survive and some of them turn the open source part to survive longer, but it is just bringing more help for the open source to grow, so Chrome will help Firefox to grow and VMware slowly goes down cause VirtualBox beat it ...

All this is mostly a good thing for the people, but it slowly kill the proprietary software.

Suggestion: Check for Damn Small Linux, Puppy, SliTaz ... (limited a little, but they are better than Windows 95 and virus free).

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I've never dealt with linux, I have not even seen it. Thank you for your answer and maybe I'll check out Linux so time soon. – Mr. Bill Sep 3 '09 at 14:36
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