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Windows 95D is a heavy modification of Windows 95 which integrates many of the essential updates for Windows 95 along with a wide selection of drivers for systems manufactured as late as 2002 (as a safe margin). It was formerly known as Windows 95D Lite; the "lite" branding has been dropped in acknowledgement of how large the project has become. The "D" indicates it is a step ahead of the last official release of Windows 95 from 1997, denoted as Windows 95C or OSR2.5. As of writing this (October 15th), Windows 95D's acccessibility has been hampered due to various ongoing circumstances. Therefore, I have published an unfinished version of Windows 95D here, which bears the moniker "Final" - meaning eventually, the operating system must be permanently finalized and never updated again. Some messages seen during Setup indicate this, but since this is an inadvertent beta release, more will have to be done to polish it up. So far, it includes several new improvements, and so it could be more robust than previous releases. I do not expect Windows 95D to be finalized until sometime in 2025. Basically all of the software updates have already been in place long ago, apart from this build's more recent switch to the use of patcher9x for allowing Windows 95 to run on faster CPUs rather than FIX95CPU. The express installer has also been enhanced to allow you to select a time zone upfront, and it lets you eject the CD-ROM much sooner. Using the express method, it reboots into a temporary DOS environment on the hard disk to automatically run the setup program. It may have a bug in which the 15 second delay before rebooting lasts only a split second, though I recall this was only prevalent in emulation. If possible, I would like this release to cover more ground in the way of drivers, anything which could be of use, no matter how obscure. However, modems and printers are still ruled out unless I can find a compelling reason to add them in for those who could benefit from such drives in these classes (and if they're not too hard to add in). I certainly don't have any old working printers I can test. To reiterate, although this build descends from a working release, it is NOT FINALIZED, and may contain some holes as a result. More builds may be released in the distant future prior to the release of Windows 95D Final; these will have updated documentation to reflect the current state of this distribution of Windows 95, as there are still some relics in here which I don't have time to go back and correct right now. The later builds will also include a package to install gradient title bars in Windows 95, as well as the "un-IE'd" splash with the smoother progress gradient as an option, as seen in the original Windows 95D release from 2019. Windows 95D needs to have the exceeding level of quality which Windows 95 itself did, and your experience will help to make this possible. So, it might be worth giving this a spin...
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