Installing Windows 3.1 DosBox

I don't know about you, but the majority of us run windows on our desktop.  Be it XP or Vista, the majority of people in America and around the world run Windows.  Windows has been around for a very long time, so, in the interest of getting an idea of what life was like in the good old days, I have installed Windows 3.1 on to my computer.

Installing Windows 3.1 is not as hard as it may seem.  Windows 3.1 is only a whopping 8mb in size and does a clean install in less then a minute.  Here is the list of software I used to install Windows 3.1:

• Dos Box (This will create a dos system that allows me to install Windows 3.1 on to it)
• Windows 3.1 iso (for legal purposes I cannot link to it, but if you don't already have it, then do a search for it)
• Alcohol 52% (this will mount the iso for me.  If I wanted to I could of just burned it onto a CD, but this saves the effort).

Most of these are free software (all except Windows 3.1, your on your own trying to find a copy).  Please don't get scared by all these steps.  You only have to run through them once and most are very simple.

1. Start up Dos Box
2. Mount the iso image of Windows 3.1 using Alcohol 52%, remember the drive letter that it is mounted as.
3. Create the folder that you want to use for your C drive.  This folder can be anywhere on your computer.  I placed mine in my Documents folder with the name Windows31, but it doesn't matter where you put it.
4. Mount the cd drive in Dos Box
   
5. Mount the c drive the same way (use command Z:\>mount c C:\Users\Clegs\Windows31)
6. Navigate to the d drive (use command Z:\>D:)
7. Type "Setup" and press Enter
   
8. When the setup screen comes up press Enter, then Enter again on the next screen.  You will have to wait for the Setup to copy some files.
9. A screen will appear asking you to enter your name, put your name down there and press Continue.  Verify that you entered it correct and press Continue again.
10. Windows will then copy some more files.
11. When asked for a printer just click "No Printer Attached" and press Install.
12. An option then comes up asking whether or not you want to run the Tutorial.  Choose whatever you want.  For the sake of the setup, I pressed Skip Tutorial.
13. When given the option to Reboot or Return to MS-DOS, press Reboot.  (When I did this Dos Box froze and I had to press the X in the corner and restart Dos Box)
14. WINDOWS 3.1 IS NOW SUCCESSFULLY INSTALLED!!!!
15. But wait, when you start Dos Box up again it does not automatically load into windows.  You need to edit the configuration file for Dos Box.
16. Open file explorer and go the the location where you installed Dos Box (C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72 on my system).
17. Double-click "dosbox.conf".
18. A window will come up asking you what you want to do.  Check Select a program from a list and press OK.
     
19. When the list comes up double click Notepad or WordPad, it doesn't matter.
    
20. Scroll to the very bottom of the document and add these lines of code:
    
21. Restart Dos Box and you are done!!!  Every time you open Dos Box Windows 3.1 will boot!!!

Now you have Windows 3.1, one of the earliest versions of Windows, running in a window on your computer!