First some unusual screen shots of Windows 95 and various programs I have gotten to run under it.

Why? Because I can!

Windows 95 running at 1440*900 on a new "wide screen" flat panel monitor.

The video card used is a 3DFX Voodoo 5, which can do many different resolutions.

To get this resolution available to me I added the registry values:

REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0001\MODES\8\1440,900] @="" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0001\MODES\16\1440,900] @="" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0001\MODES\32\1440,900] @="" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0001\TIMINGS\1440,900] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0001\TIMINGS\1440,900\60Hz] @="1904,1520,1672,932,901,904,4,106470000,6000,8,24492" "Supported"="BPP+8+16+32,DDRAW"

Update: I have updated the timing line so it should 100% match the standard timings now.  Additionally, to get a resolution of 1680x1050 that some other monitors use, replace "1440,900" above with "1680,1050" and use the timings "2256,1784,1968,1087,1051,1054,4,147140000,6000,8,29926" see the next page for more details.

Once I plugged the monitor in, it was recognized as a "Plug and Play monitor" and the resolutions were available to me. This mode will even display on my old CRT, albeit squished.

My Windows 95 looks great and sharp now, but what exactly is the obsession with these "wide screen" monitors anyway? It is actually becoming difficult to find monitors that are not "wide screen". For editing documents or other typical apps I would really prefer a taller screen. Perhaps it is because more people are using their computers to watch movies that are increasingly in "wide screen" format? Although I have never understood the obsession with wide screen movies anyway - move theaters evolved that way because screens were once built in over stages that used to be about that size. It always seemed to me the TV size and aspect ratio would win out in the long run.

And I might add that these "wide screen" 1440*900 monitors always seem to want to stretch any lower resolution to fill the entire screen! That is technically WRONG! If I have an app running at a lower resolution, and it is displaying something that is supposed to be a circle, it will appear as an oval on these monitors. On 1280*1024 LCD monitors the aspect ratio was already off, but not by as much, so at least old games wouldn't look totally squished vertically.

And for another sick Windows trick, let's see how many emulators and OSes/GUIs I can run at the same time under Windows 95!!!

It is a challenge to find useful apps that run under 95 or can be made to run with some tweaking.

So what have I gotten to run? (I always include typical updates like DCOM95 and DUN1.4)

SeaMonkey 1.1.x: It just works. And works great! I use it all the time under 95. The only glitch I ever ran in to was that a fresh install from an "installer" build might fail to start up, but downloading a "zip" build and extracting that to the folder where it was installed always seems to fix that. Also requires the file "Rsabase.dll" if you installed without IE like I did. (Update: The final version, 1.1.19, has a bug making HTTPS connections under NT 3.51, 95, and NT 4. To work around this problem, either use 1.1.17 or use this modified DLL: freebl3.zip see my browsing fixes page for more details.)
Opera 10.10: Works well. I set Opera to use the classic theme so it looks more sane.
Firefox 2.0.0.x: Not designed to run under 95, but delete the files "nsSafebrowsingApplication.js" and "nsSearchService.js" and it will mostly work.
Flash 7: Works great, and was designed for 95. But flash 8/9 won't work though.
FileZilla 2.2.7a and WinSCP 3.8.3 work perfectly under 95.

Surprisingly Windows 95 can still be very useful.

MS Office 97: I don't know why anyone would need a newer version of MS Office. Windows 95 can also run MS Office 2000 if you care to install MSIE, which I don't.
Paint Shop Pro 4: An old app, but it does everything I need for graphics. I never bothered with newer versions.
Kompozer: A more up to date fork of the Mozilla HTML editor, that surprisingly seems perfectly happy running under 95.
OpenOffice 2.4: None of the 2.x versions officially run on 95 but I got it to run by making the following binary edits: In sal3.dll replace "IsDebuggerPresent" with "ReadFile" and in vcl680mi.dll replace "EnumDisplayMonitors" with "EnumDesktopsA". (zeroing out what text is not written over). I also had to locate and add msimg32.dll. The Java Runtime 1.4.2_15 I have installed seems to be enough to make the wizards work.

Multimedia all the way!

Intervideo WindDVD 1.3.5c2. Runs freaking great. It came "free" with a DVD rom drive. Designed to run under Windows 9x and NT 4. (Simulated picture due to technical limitations - not business or licensing BS)
VLC media player 0.8.6d: is currently the most recent version that reliably runs in Windows 95. Since people keep asking, here is a direct download link: vlc-0.8.6d-win32.exe
Winamp 2.6.2 may be old but it plays MP3s great.