History of Microsoft windows 3 / 3.1

On may 22^nd 1990 Windows 3.0 was announced,this brought about the third generation of windows and Microsoft was finally able to rival the Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga as a GUI interface.


Microsoft made better use of the memory management of the Intel chips both for the 80286 and 80386 as well as an improved and revamped user interface.

Windows 3.0 was a major step between their humble beginnings to being one of the biggest software companies in the world. 3.0 was a fully functioning backwards compatible operating system the whole operating system was designed for almost ever user.


With the ability to run in real time for the older chip below the 80286, to run in standard mode for 80286 chips and corresponding to its protected mode. For those who had the high end systems of the day windows 3.0 was able to run in 386 Enhanced Mode which could corresponding to it protection mode and virtual 8086 mode.


Windows 3.0 saw the utilization of the recently much improved graphics of the time VGA, along with the increasing availability of CD-ROM drives and sounds cards this led to the release of window 3.0 with multimedia Extensions 1.0 which many consider to be the first release of 3.1, and was the precursor to many of the multimedia features we see today.


Windows 3.1


With the relationship between IBM and Microsoft ending and the impending release of OS/2 2.0 Microsoft release windows 3.1 which was primarily bug fixes and support for multimedia, however several new features was to be included true type Scalable fonts which was developed jointly with apple. 3.1 also saw the introduction of minesweeper in replace of Reversi although Reversi was ship with some copies.


Windows 3.1 also saw the introduction of program manager which was the shell of windows at the time and was later replaced with Windows explorer. File manager was also introduced in windows 3.1 along with the some optional download for WfW(Windows for Workgroups) including the “Wolverine” this was the TCP/IP protocol stack which allowed for easy access to the Internet through corporate networks.

With two version of Workgroup for Windows 3.1 and 3.11, 3.11 ran in 386 enhanced mode only and required at least an 80386sx processor in order to run. With windows 3.0 and 3.1 impressive sales, the windows API was fast becoming the standard for consumer software.

The history of Microsoft windows 2.0 can be found Here

The history of Microsoft windows 95 can be found Here