You'll see that despite having the old interface, Windows NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 are quite close. If an app asks for a missing DLL, taking that DLL from NT4 sometimes work. NT 3.5 and below are a whole different story. Also, one thing I wanna point out, about the boot floppes included in the Windows 9x box with the CD. The floppy included with the CD is different than the boot floppy you can create with the tool in the "Add/Remove Programs" thing. 2 major differences : The one that comes with the CD offers you to start the installation from the CD directly. It doesn't create any RAMDRIVE if you choose to load DOS. The one you can create with the "Add/Remove Programs" thing doesn't offer to start the installation from the CD. It creates a RAMDRIVE with the content of EBD.CAB (that contains the DOS tools, like format, fdisk...). It's very easy to differentiate since it has findramd.exe and setramd.bat files. So far I have no idea if the OEM boot floppies and Retail boot floppies are different. I don't think so tho.
Some floppies might have access dates by default, but of course something from 2021 is nonsense here.
Yes the access dates for my 3.51 disks are all 1995 and with the same time stamp so I know are untouched. Earlier disks from before around 1994 tend not to have access time stamps as the Windows versions from that era and earlier didn't write them. Regarding your other post about Win9x (CD) boot floppies, the OEM ones do differ from the Retail ones (where provided). The Win98 FE and SE ones tend to be complete and have generic CD drivers installed, but the Win95 RTM and OSR2 ones do not and have template autoexec.bat and config.sys files where you (the OEM) need to add your own CD driver sys file. I have an original untouched image of the Win95 OSR2 CD boot floppy which are hard to come by as all the ones on the internet are versions that have already been customised by the OEMs.
Thanks for the diff, I did not check disk 3 , indeed there is dates from 2021. Yours is better, for timestamps, the serial differs but that's not necessarily a bad thing imho. I have a understanding how "MSDOS5.0" floppy serial is calculated, reversing that is a hole different animal... I'll keep them both for now.
It means that imagine you find a set of floppies, all with MSDOS5.0 except one modified with IHC tag. You might want to change it back to MSDOS5.0... Keeping in mind it is very likely the correct answer, but not 100% sure. That's why working with floppies is tough. Also having 2 sets of floppies, same software, same version, same language, same everything, but end of floppies is different (not filled with 0xF6 for instance). So many weird things happening. Few things I can tell you : There was 2 versions of Windows for Workgroups 3.11. The original and 3.11a, only RASMAC.386 change between these. WINSETUP.EXE change between Retail and OEM. MOUSE.CO_ and MOUSE.SY_ aren't present in OEM medias. For Windows 3.1 it's USER.EXE that changes between OEM and Retail (different text in the about Windows tab). No idea about WIndows 3.11 and Workgroups 3.1 tho The label of the floppy seems to be a hidden file with no size but a last modified date, that seems to change between OEM and Retail floppies for Windows NT 4.0 boot floppies.
@Babass_ I'm very happy we share same thoughts about this... I have no deeper insight on file level fyi. (i can spot them, that's about it) I'll be AFK ("nap time" ) Yap, gotcha, had to read and understand... that is a nifty one, i have something similare, can pm it later. Send me a screenshot if you like and i'm pretty sure i can spot it. Hint: If txt is green it should be at bottom in root directory.
Code: e2de403caac0890b80d892cfaa5d734f10888921 *Windows ME Thai Edition.iso PowerISO - Image master time: 2025-10-31 Thai (LCID: 0x041E) type 101 - Retail CD FPP Added MSBATCH.INF + 2 separate cd key files - all are License Type: Microsoft Select Retail - CID 270 And bootable.