Windows 2.x 2.0

Windows 2 changes from Windows 1.x consist mainly of visual improvements. Windows 2 adds overlapping windows, menu keyboard shortcuts, VGA support, and other user interface changes influenced by IBM standards. Windows 2 is the last version that supports installation to a floppy disk, and to be available as an application run-time. Later editions of Windows 2 added support for 286 high memory, and running applications in a 386 VDM. The versioning is a little confusing. 2.x and 2.x/386 were released side-by-side. When it reached 2.1x, the regular 8088 version was renamed to Windows 2.1x/286. This is all unified in Windows 3.0.

For a brief time during the Windows 2.x era, Microsoft considered dropping Windows in favor of OS/2. After a fallout between Microsoft and IBM, development refocused on Windows 3.0 and what would become Windows NT.

Wanted: Supposedly, Microsoft had a beta program manager and file manager for Windows 2 downloadable from their BBS.

Other Windows Versions:
| 1.0 | 2.x | 3.x | NT 3.x | 95 | NT 4.0 | 98 | 2000 | ME | All |

Screenshots

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Installation instructions

To run under DOS 5.0 or later, make sure there is a SETVER entry for "WIN200.BIN" to report DOS version "3.40".