The popularity of DOS/4GW made Windows 95 game compatibility a little easier, but with higher stakes

By far, the most popular so-called DOS Extender in the early 1990’s was DOS/4GW. MS-DOS game compatibility occupied a very large portion of my time during Windows 95 development, so I saw a lot of DOS Extender banners, most frequently the DOS/4GW banner.

Now, you might wonder, “How did these games even run in Windows 95 if they came with a DOS Extender? Wouldn’t the extender try to enter protected mode and fail, because Windows was already managing protected mode?”

When Raymond Chen speaks, we listen. That’s the rules.

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