Development of Windows 95

In March 1992, the development of Windows 95 began just after Windows 3.1 was released to the public, and at the same time, Windows NT 3.1 was still in development. Windows 95 was later released manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and for public in August.

 Background 
During initial design planning of Windows 95 in 1992, Microsoft aimed to have the next generation high-end OS, and another lower end consumer designed OS as a better Windows 3.1. The latter was to develop a 32-bit  kernel and filesystem with 32-bit protected mode device drivers in Windows for Workgroups 3.11, to be used as the basis for the next version of Windows, code named "Chicago". Cairo would be Microsoft's next-gen operating system based on Windows NT featuring a new UI and an object-based file system, but it was not planned to be shipped before 1994. (Cairo would never actually be shipped, however certain elements of Cairo would show up in Windows NT 4.0.)

Alongside Windows 3.1's release, IBM started releasing OS/2 2.0. Microsoft realized they needed of an updated version of Windows that could support 32-bit applications and multitasking, but could still run on low-end hardware (Windows NT, requiring 12 MB RAM and 75 MB disk space, did not). Initially, the "Chicago" team did not know how the product would be packaged. Initial thoughts were there would be two products, MS-DOS 7, which would just be the underlying OS, an evolution of the Windows for Workgroups 3.11 kernel, with a character mode OS on top, and a fully graphical Windows OS. But soon into the project, the idea of MS-DOS 7 was abandoned and the decision was made to develop only a fully graphical OS Windows "Chicago".

 References 

Category:Computer programming