Why the World Went Nuts for Windows 95 | Nostalgia Nerd

1. 

   @Nostalgianerd

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   If you enjoyed this, then you may also enjoy these Microsoft/Windows 95 themed videos;
   Why Did Weezer Come with Windows 95: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOl94fO78nk
   When Netscape Almost Destroyed Microsoft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huFRTqxb5BE
   Did Microsoft steal Disk Compression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3xp1xNwvM
   Microsoft vs Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXGAiTjFiMA
   Window's Hidden Self Destruct Code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIfNIWn2Ad4
   When Microsoft said Don't Buy a Console: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3bqb3P1QwU

2. 

   @Danielle1988i

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   WIndows 95 came out and was our first computer i was 7 years old and some of the first games i played on pc was that game on encarta where you answer questions and go through a maze thing through rooms and at school i used to get the games from the catalog scholastic which had all of those sim games and used to play Sim City and Sim farm which got me into city builders and i remember playing carmen sandiago and using the internet for the first time.

   I was naughty though and searched sex in the search thing to see what would happen then my dad got on the computer and there was millions of pop ups constantly appearing after all those pop up i never did that again lol and my dad got really mad at me for infecting the computer with all these pop ups. And i remember using a thing called Clear Net to access the web. That first computer got me fascinated in computers and i have had computers ever since.

3. 

   @Stev-z4v

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   BAsiconjagateshawwEN2&&FolDir😅

4. 

   @WilliamHobbs-n1c

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   I don't think I've ever seen any much more hilarious than all them guys at the intro dancing they have absolutely no rhythm they don't even know what they're listening to it sucks anyway

5. 

   @jerry1986-u3d

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   wow, you put slovenian edition of win95 for thumbnail ☺ greetings from slovenia – pozdravi iz slovenije.

6. 

   @wutdafeezi

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   The epitome of white people dancing 😂

7. 

   @ViktorKruger99

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   you know
   in hindsight I dont think we appreciate Steve Ballmer enough back in the day
   as a hype man I mean, not so much as a business man

8. 

   @KingLarbear

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   Wild times

9. 

   @KingLarbear

   January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

   The 90s was a wild time

10. 

    @jooch_exe

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I still get excited when i think about Windows 95 days. I would boot up the system just to look at it, i would later learn that a lot of my friends also did this.

11. 

    @Freak80MC

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    As someone who was born in the late 90s and who's first version of Windows was probably XP, it's weird watching a video like this and it just giving me a feeling of "The past was more real/vivid".

    Idk, I think it's part of my depression talking, since I also feel this way a lot about my own life. But this video also just gives me the feeling that things were maybe smaller back then, so any new big thing like this was a massive event that brought people together in ways nothing really does anymore.

    Also I guess I feel like I missed out on living the most important years of our modern world's technological development, it must have been amazing seeing the foundations of the future be built before your very eyes.

    And I guess I also miss the idea of a smaller world where things aren't running a mile a minute, as someone with ADHD and who sometimes feels like all the stimuli of the modern world is a not necessarily a good thing.

    I'm conflicted on if my feelings are even valid or just some weird nostalgia for a time I didn't live. But I thank you for making this video and trying to capture this moment in time the best you can. It's why I appreciate your channel and am subbed!

    2026-01-01

12. 

    @baldrick98007

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    27:22 I know the guy with the beard. Either that's Henry, or he had a twin also working at Microsoft.

13. 

    @belphegor_dev

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Fuck Bill Gates and billionaires. The day they face the wall can't come soon enough.

14. 

    @livphobia

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    imagine if they did all that for windows 11 today

15. 

    @VinnieMelo

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    OK, I feel old

16. 

    @ikjb8561

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Windows was never a good OS. Period.

17. 

    @MikuHatsune-np4dj

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    hearing separate tone difference 300bps, 14.4kbps, 28.8kbps, 38.4kbps

18. 

    @wyattwalker2746

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I liked it when I booted to DOS and started Windows when and if I needed Windows. To come to think of it, do we even need Windows? Even today we could have more secure and efficient system by running only what needed

19. 

    @sbalogh53

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    34:58 Hungarian version of bootup. 🙂

20. 

    @FelizNaveedsBalls

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    And what's Bill Gates doing today? Pushing mosquitos that lace humans with sterilizing chemicals and encouraging the extermination of 90% of humanity.. All the while being the pedophile he's always been.

21. 

    @genius1a

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    As someone who had grown up at the time, It think this introduction of Windows 3.0 is far to shallow. On the surface – if you didn't care about drivers and peripherals – it was just a fancy "window" Gui to click on Icons. Neat. But you could have that a a fraction of the cost (financially and computer wise) from far smaller, faster and cheaper programs like ERGO or Norton commander. What set Windows apart from every competitor, was its huuuuuuuge list of drivers inlcuded for each and every PC peripheral around. It had every common printer, graphics card, screen resolution, mouse manufacturer of the present and the past already included on the installation floppy discs. We are talking hundreds of drivers at that point in time!
    What you showed here as Windows 3 was the default VGA graphics driver, which no nerd of the time would have used for more than the installation of the dedicated graphics card driver. Most graphics cards and monitors at the time (1990) could already do more than that! More resoulution, more colors. Even more so 2 years later.

    And every program written for windows 3.0 could make perfect use of it, because these drivers also had the settings windows perfectly included for each thing. This was possible, because windows was designed to be a framework. All memory, fonts, printers, could easily be used either from stock (the included list of drivers), or by easy installation from a manufacturer provided driver disk. Only ONE driver, completely untied for which program it would be used.
    Sounds like nothing special? At the time (1990) Hercules had offered a painfully expensive full slot size Graphics card, that did 1024×768 at 16 Mio colors, or 1600×1200 at 16 colors. And 1920×1200 by 4 colors (greyscale). I had a monitor capable of that ^^. Every windows program could simply use it. One driver installation for every program you could imagine. CAD? Photo Editing? Corel Draw? Excel Spreadsheet? Word for windows? It just worked.

    Which was not the case for Dos programs. Most graphical intense programs had a few drivers included, but if you were not on the list, you had to be very lucky and the hardware manufacturer had made a driver for this program. If not (and that was common for hardware newer than the program) you were stuck with the VGA compatible mode. Which was the reason for games sticking to 320×200 pixels at 256 colors for years, when even cheap graphics cards could already do 800×600 at 256 colors. That was for example only the VGA compatible 640×480 at 16 colors for a great Dos based Vector drawing program named Haravard graphics. Corel draw on the other side was initially written for Windows 3.0 and did any resolution your graphics card (and thus windows) offered. And it could use any device that had a windows driver included at its full specs. Like a high resolution mouse.

    Gaming on Windows 3.0 was not a thing. Too slow, too complicated to care for different resolutions. That immediately changed with Windows 95. It offered Direct X to the programmer, very fast changing the world of gaming. As a programmer you did not write multiple graphics drivers anymore, you simply gave windows the basics, and direct X gave it to the grapics card directly or simulated it for weaker graphics cards. You only had to care for Direct X, and all current and future graphics cards were covered.

22. 

    @awakenotwoke1973

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    It was a golden age of computing change. I was using AutoCAD 11 on DOS in '93.

23. 

    @giandujavettorello6184

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Bellissima la presentazione ufficiale con tanto di schermata blu. 😂😂😂😂😂

24. 

    @ValJedi

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Is/Was Ballmer possessed during that shoot?

25. 

    @Ctrl_Alt_Sup

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Je m'étais acheté un PC avec un pentium 90Mhz quelques mois avant. L'arrivée de Windows 95 a été un super bon moment. Tous les mois j'achetais PC Expert, on trouvait des démos de jeu sur CD-ROM… une époque magnifique !

26. 

    @troupsterT

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    The worst part of the launch event was Jay Leno. He wasn’t funny and was just annoying as hell at this event, like he always is.

27. 

    @corepunch

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Now we have Microsoft Teams and Office 365, while back in the day Microsoft was exciting

28. 

    @unknow_303

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Bill Gates dancing moves… Awesome… No Judgment! haha

29. 

    @DM-wp9vq

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    When my family first got a computer in the summer of 96' (we just had a Panasonic Word Processor before that 😂), Windows95 was a God Send! I grew up with the Apple 2e in school (O'dell Lake, Gertrude's Secret, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, Number Munchers, and of course Oregon Trail ftw!) and I had barely messed with any PC's before that point. Peak Win95 is Mechwarrior 2 with a full-on Logitech joystick! Then Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries after that. A Deadlock, Fast Attack, Diablo, Microsoft Flight Simulator95 and Duke Nukem 3D were also epic. I miss being able to look up anything online without getting flagged by the NSA..dumb bastards think everyone is out to cause havoc, when some of us just wanna make some "fireworks" and test them on some stumps out in the woods while having a nice day of recreational shooting (at targets and such). We didn't have Tannerite back then, but at least it's made in my home state of Oregon! Windows95 changed the whole game, and Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator helped make it easy. Searching for stuff on Excite or Yahoo or Metacrawler or just going to 37.com and not the as yet to be made google.

30. 

    @benjaminbritsch1749

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Win98 was way better!

31. 

    @dt1056

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I remember installing that thing from floopy because I didn't have a CD Rom on my 486.
    Me and ,y bud did a test run – broke a few things on that Friday evening (modem wouldn't work – sound card wasn't detected…)
    So reverted back to Win 3.11 for a few weeks – to prepare (getting drivers and new IRQ settings)
    On the second run – all went well. Pizza and beer did help!

32. 

    @trilltron2885

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Every commercial from 1989 to 2001 is the greatest thing ever

33. 

    @shirakawamaseru

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    "Why was it the iPhone Launch of its time" that is way more accurate than you might think.

    Windows 95 introduced nothing new. Pretty much everything that was possible on Windows 95 was already possible, better, on most other Operating Systems. But Consumer didn't know that because consumer need marketing.

    If you give them technical descriptions, they don't understand and don't care. Consumer buy emotions, you need to sell products by emotions. It doesn't matter if its really good. One reviewer called Windows 95, i quote, "More crashes than in a Nascar Race" and that was true. You got an bluescreen when removing an CD while it was accessed. Unthinkable today and… unthinkable back then too. DOS was the only OS that had this primitive issue and Windows was nothing more than a GUI for DOS. While other OS had support for Multi Core CPU, 64bit and Virtual Desktops (an feature that was introduced in Windows 10), consumers didn't know anything of that.

    Most Consumers didn't even remember that the first iOS neither had an App Store nor any other option to install additional apps. It was an traditional mobile phone with a touch screen interface. You couldn't even arrange the icons on the home scren. There have been Smartphones before the iPhone that had more features and just a few months later came Android which had more features too including multiple desktops and an app store to install additional apps.

    So this analogy is perfect. The weakest smartphone with the least features took over the market by its company selling emotions and buzzwords. The weakest ""OS"" (Windows 95 is just a GUI for DOS, its not an OS) took over the market by doing the exact same thing.

    Even Microsoft had, at this time, a much more powerful OS, they had Windows NT and also they have been developing Xenix, their own UNIX OS.

34. 

    @Raven-Creations

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I don't know where you got your information for this, but it was full of errors.

    The world didn't go nuts over W95, it's just that all previous versions were absolutely dreadful. Clamouring to buy something that was ten years late is not "going nuts" over something. They were effectively clamouring to get out of a burning building, not clamouring to enter a shiny new one.

    You kept referring to Windows versions as "operating systems" – they were nothing of the sort. The operating system was still MS-DOS. Prior to W95 they were what was referred to as a DOS extender. They had to "thunk" in order to enter protected mode to page in memory beyond 1Mb. This was a very slow process, so any process requiring large amounts of memory were SLOW. W95 was the first Windows running on a 32-bit kernel, but it still wasn't an operating system It was DOS which ran explorer.exe which ran the Windows desktop. Windows XP was the first Windows which could be called an operating system, being built on the NT kernel. Only then was DOS something which Windows ran.

    Because it was running in protected mode, W95 was the first version which used a 32-bit flat memory model, instead of the horrible 16-bit segmented model. It was the first version which was able to properly use the power of the protected mode, so those people who had bought Pentium PCs could finally run software which used their CPU's full potential.

    W95 was the first version which had pre-emptive multi-tasking. You claimed Windows 2.0 had pre-emptive multi-tasking. It did not. It only had cooperative multi-tasking. This required programs to call one of a number of kernel IO functions in order to relinquish control, and many programs didn't for long periods of time, so while your spreadsheet was recalculating, you had to go and get a coffee.

    These were things which the Amiga had successfully implemented ten years earlier, at the same time as the woeful Windows 1.0. Ten years in a rapidly developing computer industry is an enormous amount of time to wait for something. It's not surprising that people were clamouring for it.

    Everyone who owned a Windows PC was desperate to ditch the godawful 3.11, so of course W95 sold well. The PC world was like a champagne bottle waiting to pop. People had bought Pentium PCs, but they were crippled by running 16-bit software. When people got W95 their ardour quickly faded. It was unreliable, frequently crashing. W95 was famous more for its blue screen of death.

    You couldn't even get the name of "Start ME Up" right.

35. 

    @MarvelDcImage

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Windows 95 is when I switched from an Apple to a PC and never went back not because it was better than Apple it just made home computing affordable and was superior for PC gaming.

36. 

    @WhooptyDoo

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    15:12 My disappointment when the other project wasn't called Dazzle is quite big

37. 

    @zekiozturk2084

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Windows was a hilarious waste of money and time. It should have been stopped but the governments didn't intervened. Today we would all have super stable and beautiful Linux

38. 

    @tomnanD3

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    Plug and pray. ROFLMFAO!! 😂😂😂

39. 

    @tomnanD3

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    How absurd we are! 😂

40. 

    @tomnanD3

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I used an Apple Lisa at my job in 1983.

41. 

    @jamesrose6751

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    ICQ

42. 

    @jamesrose6751

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    I used to carry around a win95 laptop with a CRT monitor because the screen was broken, to program PLC's 😂. Still got it

43. 

    @kurt479

    January 15, 2026 at 2:54 am

    It was ignorance that made people think this was a groundbreaking product. It wasn’t. It was lack of understanding that made people believe this was revolutionary.

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