Have you seen anybody still run Windows 3.1/95?

In my wildest imagination, I can't imagine a company still run Win3.1/95 for some rare reason, but just wanted to ask. Until 2005, I knew a few companies who did.

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Paul Boz

2/5 of the clients that I visit have at least one windows NT.4 system in use. Typically these are check imaging servers, oooooooold ATMs, and legacy banking processor servers. These are the cream of the crop of penetration testing targets because the software has been end of life for so long that they don't even patch it any more so new vulnerabilities (and many old ones) are 100% valid forever. If I see a NT.4 system I know for a fact I'll have good results for my report because you can own the systems in three clicks or less using metasploit no matter what.

I've never seen someone using 3.1 for Workgroups in a production environment. I've also never seen someone with Windows 95 deployed. I have had access to pentesting labs with Windows 95 virtual machines but I think those are more for fun than profit.

Daniel333

Sorry, havn't seen either in a long while.

Last DOS based machine I've seen.. 8 months or so ago. Windows ME

disi

There is one machine in the house, running Windows 98. It has a label printer attached to it and that is all it does

Works still fine...

It uses a special (old) software, where the guys can create a layout for the cabeling and then let the software print the labels for each cable. I tested other OS and the label printer or the software just won't work

the machine is stand alone btw.

vCole

We have an old Windows 95 machine that we use for our ColorMatch software/Moisture Analyzer machine. We're working on getting that updated to XP.

CompuTron99

Until recently, we had several Win98SE systems running as Thin Clients for our Citrix ICA. Due to layoffs, we were able to replace them with HP 5520 Thin Clients.

laidbackfreak

didnt we just have a thread about this ?

We've still got NT4 and Win98 machines in the field.

brad-

A few months ago I replaced a department's windows 95 laptops.

At the last company i worked for though, some of our larger clients still ran our hardware and software on NT.

tiersten

Last server was a NT4 box running a document archiving system but I reverse engineered the simple database format and migrated it to a new system. The actual last NT4 box was the PBX but that got converted to Linux during a software upgrade.

pwjohnston

About a year to a year and a half ago I had a client who's entire network was still running on 1 NT server. That was awsome and by awsome I mean awful.

snadam

About a year ago, I also had a client with an NT box among a Server 2003 environment that was too old to run on the x86 server designated. It would fail each time they tried to install NT. Typically these boxes linger around because it runs some legacy app, as was the case here. We ended up going the VM route. That was the last time Ive seen NT implemented.

95/98/ME? Not since my Dad Upgraded to each OS at home growing up; I have never seen it in production.

JDMurray

There are a lot of point-of-sale and kiosk systems that still use Windows 95/98. The software they run doesn't change much (if at all), and there's a mistaken opinion that if an OS is discontinued/unsupported it must therefore also be free of licensing costs.

arwes

Our Baton Rouge office has a Windows 98 SE machine for a fax server. We use the same software here in Monroe, only it's about 4 versions later. The funny thing is the main interface hasn't changed a bit.

Hyper-Me

Every site at work had 3 Dell PE 4400s running NT 4 Server until we virtualized them all, only long enough to roll out a single AD domain and as we get to sites we archive the old NT4 VMs.

Super99

We have two computers running 95. I hate it so bad. Its not by choice either.

petedude

One Windows 98 PC at my office for a special printing application, until it gets upgraded this year or next. . .

Me, I usually end up firing up Win31 for kicks once a year or so at home. Win9x? Last time was when I played The Crow: City of Angels on a Virtual PC VM about a year and a half ago.

veritas_libertas

I worked for a factory that had the following: Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows XP. They had a bunch of proprietary software that wouldn't work on anything newer.

binarysoul

One motive for this thread was whether I should exclude Windows 9x on my resume! So I will leave it as is.

There may be an HR rep somewhere who may disqualify me when he/she doesn't see Windows 9x that the company runs!

stephens316

I know a company that still runs a a DOS 5.0 Program that makes the bottles for Pepsi Co.

Darthn3ss

Theres a computer on campus here that runs DOS. fun.

gorebrush

We've still got a Windows 95 machine in production that prints labels that go inside our boxes.

That machine gives me nightmares from time to time, because I am damn sure that the labels they've produced have not been exported to our domain (for one this server is a standalone)

I think I might bring it in for "maintenance" and swipe a copy of the hard disk, you know, in case "something happens"

jojopramos

We have 1 machine that's running Windows 98. It is already disconnected from the network as our antivirus doesn't support it at all. They are using this for an old application that can't be installed/migrated to newer MS OS.

jibbajabba

Yea, some old PC died in some labarotory and they needed Windows 3. re-installed. Naturally you suggest upgrading to something "newer" - however, the PC in question runs some electronic microscope jobby where the interface is running on Windows 3. Apparently upgrading the infrastructure to something more recent costs them $120k which they could not get any funding just yet

So they still run Windows 3.1 as of today ...

bellhead

We have a couple of win 95 laptops we need for microwave circuit testing. The software written only works on a 95 stand alone laptop.

We have 2 in case one takes a **** because it is that important.

disi

binarysoul wrote: »

One motive for this thread was whether I should exclude Windows 9x on my resume! So I will leave it as is.

There may be an HR rep somewhere who may disqualify me when he/she doesn't see Windows 9x that the company runs!

Just have closer look on those bluescreens in ATM machines. They run often some Windows 95/98/NT system

veritas_libertas

disi wrote: »

Just have closer look on those bluescreens in ATM machines. They run often some Windows 95/98/NT system

Hm, the ones I often see are Windows 3.1

mikedisd2

I wish we were still running Win3.11; it all seemed a lot simpler back then.

Plantwiz

Handful of clients still using WIn9x. Mostly due to the proprietary software they run and they don't want to shell out the $20K or so to upgrade it..but even some of those 3rd party apps are finally telling folks they need to upgrade, so we'll see how this year goes...might be a few more coming up to at least XP

petedude

I still have a couple old apps I'm fond of, though.

I've got Lotus Write 2.0, that was developed for Win31. GREAT word processor, and sold cheap. Too bad Lotus didn't market it well. Very user friendly and capable-- would probably meet the needs of most folks. I've got Wordstar for Windows on floppies, too-- it's not bad.

I have an old Peanuts calendar program for Win31, on CD no less. Haven't used it in a while, but since I'm a Schulz fan, I'm hanging on to it.

I've got a copy of Turbo Pascal for Windows stashed away. I keep hoping I'll have time to fire it up and play with OWL development at some point in the future, just for fun.

The one old app I threw away I'm regretting at the moment is the PFS Multimedia Works suite for Win31. But then, my CD boxes are too crowded at the moment anyway.

rfult001

I think we cover the entire spectrum on campus. A few labs run old software on just about every version of Windows. We just got rid of all the NT4 and 2000 servers when they got around to upgrading to Active Directory on Server 2003, which they are now moving to 2008. OS/2 is still used in Meteorology and Hurricane Research. I installed 3.1 in VMWare a couple months back just for the heck of it and rediscovered the joys of Solitaire.