How did Windows 95 decide that a setup program ran? - The Old New Thing

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Raymond Chen

A little while ago, I mentioned that Windows 95 had some defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older version. These defenses kicked in whenever it detected that a setup program had finished. But how does it know that a setup program was running?

It guesses.

If the name of the program contains the word "setup", "install", or some other magic words, then it is considered to be a setup program. Here’s the list of magic words.

Magic word<br>Notes

setup

install<br>Redundant

inst

imposta<br>Italian?

ayarla<br>Turkish?

felrak<br>Hungarian?

The entry for install is redundant with inst, because anything that contains "install" will also contain "inst". My guess is that "install" came first, and then later somebody found that a lot of setup programs were called "blahinst" for various values of "blah" so they added an entry for "inst", but failed to remove the redundant entry for "install".

If there are no matches on the program name, Windows 95 also checks whether the path to the executable contains the word "Setup".

In the above two cases, the file check is delayed until the next start, because some setup programs will realize that the file is in use and cannot be replaced, so they use Exit­Windows­Exec to exit Windows back to MS-DOS, run a batch file, and then start Windows back up. We have to wait until the restart of Windows to catch any files that were improperly modified by the batch file.

As a special bonus, Windows 95 does a live file check after any multimedia driver installs via an INF file. I guess the multimedia team discovered that a lot of drivers overwrite system DLLs in their INF files, so they asked for a cleanup pass afterward.

Category<br>Old New Thing

Topics<br>History

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Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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