Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products. During development it was referred to by the internal codename Chicago.

Windows 95 was intended to integrate Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products. It featured significant improvements over the popular Windows 3.1, most visibly the graphical user interface (GUI) whose basic format and structure is still used in later versions such as Windows Vista. There were also large changes made to the underlying workings, including support for 255-character mixed-case long filenames and preemptively multitasked protected-mode 32-bit applications. Whereas the previous versions of Windows were optional "operating environments" requiring the MS-DOS operating system (usually available separately), Windows 95 was a consolidated operating system, which was a significant marketing change.

Windows 95 followed Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with its lack of support for older, 16-bit x86 processors, thus requiring an Intel 80386 (or compatible) processor running in protected mode.