Behind the Windows Start Menu - Insider Secrets

Dave takes you on an insider tour of the creation of the Windows Start Menu. For information on my book, "Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire": amzn.to/3diQILq
My other channel, join now so you're there for episode 01 of my AudioBook!
/ @davepl
Get the shirt (not sponsored): www.geeksoutfi...
Discord Chat w/ Myself and Subscribers: / discord
Primary Equipment (Amazon Affiliate Links):
Camera: Sony FX-3 - amzn.to/3w31C0Z
Camera Lens: 50mm F1.4 Art DG HSM - amzn.to/3kEnYk4
Microphone: Electro Voice RE 320 - amzn.to/37gL65g
Teleprompter: Glide Gear TMP 100 - amzn.to/3MN2nlA
SD Cards: Sony TOUGH - amzn.to/38QZGR9
Dave's Garage Mug:
tinyurl.com/aj...
Easter Egg:
www.bleepingco...

[@RenderingUser]

They added ads to the start menu. Look how they massacred the wonderfully efficient start menu

[@bubaks2]

Yes. Its sad :’)

[@1964catt]

You can open the registry and disable them and the stupid bing search thing

[@LanceMcCarthy]

I wonder what the look on Dave's face was when he first tried Windows 8's full screen only start menu

[@_GhostMiner]

Just rip them out?

[@NotMarkKnopfler]

​@@1964cattyou're missing the point: you shouldn't have to! I divorced windows 6 years ago! 100% Linux since then.

[@livefreeprintguns]

It's so rare to get behind-the-scenes firsthand accounts from the actual people involved... thank you for making these!

[@fredashay]

It's interesting, but there's more to the story that he's not telling. For example, Phil Katz wrote the original PKARC program in the DOS days as a compression module when BBSes were everywhere. This was followed by a bit of controversy over who owned the rights to the compression algorithm, so Katz wrote a new algorithm called PKZIP. There's some who claim that Microsoft stole ARC from Katz, which is why he wrote ZIP and Katz's name fell into obscurity. Regardless who's side you take, Dave should have at least mentioned Katz and given Katz at least some of the credit instead of making it seem like he wrote ZIP.

[@thiekus]

​@@fredashay Wrong, there's already ZIP file program implementations others than PKZIP back in early 90's like open-sourced Info-ZIP. Sure he's not invented ZIP file, but it is not impossible to anyone to write ZIP parser as Dave claimed, since Phill Katz's PKWARE have published ZIP file specification in early day. Also can you give evidence if Microsoft stole Katz's code as you claimed? The only information is the ARC author (Thom Henderson) is the one who accused PK, not Microsoft. Then if you don't have enough strong evidence, don't spread lie by misinformation. What a irony...

[@thiekus]

​@@fredashay What? Dude are you okay typing that not on high? 😂🤣 Just because you can search on google doesn't mean you right. In the fact after I researching again on google as you said, I didn't find your claim. May you misunderstand history but Microsoft even never involved on ARC/ZIP feud, in the fact it's feud between ARC author & Phil Katz. Or may you got "trust me" source and you just blatantly agree? You even said Dave is lie and can't provide any source of claim how he lied. Sorry, I'm not defend Microsoft, since I have rather than use Linux distros and free alternative for now, I just debunk your nonsense claim. I don't feed trolls like you and I'm sure others readers won't agree for you at all

[@macsnafu]

@@fredashay He didn't say that he wrote ZIP. He said he wrote a ZIP-file parser (indicating that ZIP compression already existed) that eventually became his shareware program Visual ZIP. And that was later incorporated into Windows.

[@macsnafu]

@@fredashay Did you even watch the video? He didn't take all the credit. He didn't talk about Phil Katz or PKZip because it was irrelevant to what he was talking about.

[@S3Kglitches]

"Software is like a sausage, maybe you just don't wanna know how it's made" Gold

[@MsDuketown]

Problem is that the Coca Cola doesn't need to explain itself to anyone beyond shareholders; it a secret recipe meant for business. Open source and Linux are more like a cookbook.

[@kustomnetworks]

I personally like the behind the scenes stories about product development that Dave Produces

[@DavesGarage]

For those that are curious about the green window: the windows behind me are powered by NightDriverLED.com and for some reason the green window kept losing WiFi and I couldn't tell until edited because it was all behind me... so I added the "No WiFi" logo when the window quits :-)

[@calebbell5018]

Thank you, i thought it was a easter egg but I didn't understand it!

[@batorerdyniev9805]

No

[@wishusknight3009]

Now that I am going back and watching it, and seeing the logo pop on and off as Dave is calmly talking through his video is quite entertaining. The subtle humor is great. What was with the green box though? I understand glen cant read it but there must be a backstory.

[@unclerojelio6320]

Sweet! This is the first I've seen of the installation wizard. There goes my three day weekend. Can we get an update on the Mesmerizer board?

[@obd6HsN]

@@calebbell5018 I was about to try and work out the hidden message.

[@PaulLoveless-Cincinnati]

It was possible to change "START" to "STOP" or any other string 5 characters or less. The string is stored in explorer.exe which could be modified using a hex editor for instance. You had to copy explorer, rename it, edit it, delete the original and save the modified copy as explorer.exe. Upon reboot i was the coolest kid in 7th grade!

[@seremptos]

what about languages with a longer string ? You could add even more characters right ?

[@Aviertje]

Cooler still were the win95 days (I think iut was fixed in 98+) where if you put the keyboard focus on the Start button (I think you had to dismiss the menu), and then did alt+space, it gave you the system menu that you'd usually expect from regular windows. Now, you might think that if you hit 'close' you closed the shell.. and you'd be wrong. All it would accomplish was that your start button would entirely disappear from the taskbar. It was a very fun way to troll friends back in the day.

[@PaulLoveless-Cincinnati]

@@seremptos my memory is that the string was 5 characters long so you had to fill the unused characters with spaces if the word you were replacing START with had less than 5 characters. I believe if you added more than 5 characters the checksum of explorer.exe would be wrong and the program would not execute. Edit- Everyone is saying that the checksum would change with any edit and that sounds right. All I know is that if you changed the file too much it would not run.

[@PaulLoveless-Cincinnati]

@@Aviertje now that is something I never knew about!

[@Mellence]

I remember doing a hexedit on explorer and I did it wrong and explorer would no longer work. That is when I learned that you could run a program from task manager

[@ARitzCracker]

Blue...Folders...are...compressed. after nearly 20 years, I finally have the answer. It was a question from my childhood that was never truly answered. Thank you. I can now rest easy

[@LanceMcCarthy]

Msft is about to change that in the next insiders release. They'll be pulling a bunch of legacy File Explorer options.

[@tharaxis1474]

Being a teenager around the 95/NT era, I remember looking at NT3 and NT4 with excitement and awe. I would read magazines and articles about these powerful operating systems, imagining running them on my computer and using their tools. Operating Systems were exciting in a way they seldom are (if not entirely aren't) anymore.

[@surject]

I used NT to run my BBS (PCBoard) with 2 nodes because Win95 failed miserably regarding multitasking/background process resource management. Used Win95-98SE only for gaming/multimedia. Was pretty happy when XP came around covering both worlds.

[@Ragnar8504]

I really got into computers around the time Windows 98 was around but had access to plenty of machines that were way too old and slow to run 98 or 95 in any usable way, so I got knee-deep into DOS and Windows 3.1 territory trying to make these old machines somewhat usable. My neighbour gave me a big pile of late-80s DOS magazines that were quite helpful trying to mess with old hardware, one of them contained a massive table with config data for hundreds of MFM hard drive models. Some manufacturers, like Seagate, migrated even their oldest data to the internet and made it available free of charge by the late 90s but for some more obscure models you had to rely on paper data from back in the day. At school we had IBM PS/VP 486 DX2/66 machines with a stunning 8 MB of RAM and 250 MB hard drives that were completely overwhelmed by Win 95 and Office 97 so - with the admin's consent - I downgraded ours to DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 running Word 6.0. Together with a free Epson dot matrix printer and a bunch of DOS games it was quite useful well into the early 2000s. I'm surprised we never got any noise complaints about that printer, our classroom was on the third floor and you could hear the printer by the front door on the ground floor, even with the classroom door closed.

[@jaydekaytv]

I loved the computer magazines back then - and the Best Buy ads! We got a decent computer in 1997 - I was in my mid teens. Got it at Sam’s Club 😆. I’ve been a UI designer for over 20 years - it all started with MS Paint on my friend’s computer several years before my family got one.

[@bchristian85]

I used to do the same thing. Windows was exciting around that era. I remember dreaming of having a computer of my own that could run Windows 95, as I still had a hand-me-down running 3.1 at that time. I'd say the excitement continued into the XP era. I think Vista's failure not only ended hype for Windows releases but made people dread them. I think in terms of usability and stability, 7 was as good as it gets on the desktop.

[@jaydekaytv]

@@bchristian85 Same here! I also dreamed of having my own computer. I also looked forward Comp USA, and Circuit City ads in the Sunday newspaper. Today I still open up the Microcenter emails even though I don’t need anything. 😆 I eventually built a computer to call my own which I needed for design school circa 2000. A little later I got a Toshiba laptop which I also loved dearly - I was inspired by Eric Jordan’s laptop (founder of 2advanced studios a popular web design company) which was a Toshiba. XP was my fav windows OS and I used it for a long time until switching to Mac for my main computer. Been using Macs mainly since 2007. In 2016 I built a beastly PC for special 3D rendering work. It’s a dual Xeon 20 core machine with four Evga GTX 1070 FTW Hybrid water cooled GPUs. It’s a pretty exotic machine and weighs about 50lbs. It runs on a ASUS workstation motherboard with error correcting server class RAM. 64GB of RAM in that PC, my Mac has 72GB of RAM. I’m happy to have been a part of the early mainstream days of the internet, it was an exciting time and very different from today! 😍 Cheers! 🍻

[@Liriq]

Dave, man, this stuff is fascinating! The origins, the war stories, the history. And you deliver it all so entertainingly.

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

[@adambed]

I'm an engineer and I really admire people who create daily use things. It was great to see how one of them has been developed. Most people are unaware how much technical knowledge and effort is underneath all those solutions. Thanks for sharing this great story!

[@satunnainenkatselija4478]

Yep, developing with native win32 C api is so nitty gritty that most people wouldn't believe how much code you have to write to just make a window.

[@skylerdeckard]

As a kid in 1999, I had two things; a computer and a broken leg. That time stuck inside lead me to peruse a career in computers/software engineering. These videos are terrific at peeling back all the layers of things I used as a kid, but had no idea about. And the fact it’s from YOU Dave, it feels like I’m getting real inside baseball. Thank you for making these.

[@keithsink1742]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane Dave. I worked in building 17 for three years, having been transferred from Charlotte, NC to Seattle to work on the AnswerWizard(clippy). I was there from '94--98. I had forgotten about SLM until you mentioned it. I still remember going through one of the buildings and seeing all the versions of alternatives to Clippy that the animators had made for all the other languages of MS Office. The dolphin and secretary from the Japanese version always come to mind. And the different easter eggs for the Word and Excel versions were fun. I remembered the teams always tried to outdo each other to make the best ones with the least memory.

[@AaronOfMpls]

Yah, I've seen some of the Clippy alternatives, though mostly just in the options of the US versions. And the app- and function-specific easter eggs were kinda fun, too! I do think Clippy was a bit of a lost opportunity, though. With a bit more thoughtful effort, he could've been a much more useful assistant, rather than something so many of us turned off once we already kinda knew how to use our Office apps.

[@mrt456]

You're a brave man admitting to being one of the people behind the annoying as hell Clippy :D

[@CapTVchilenaShootingStarMax]

The Japan-only assistants were nice! Kairu the dolphin, Sun Wukong and Saeko-sensei, the secretary (or “OL”, office lady, in Japanese).

[@keithsink1742]

@@CapTVchilenaShootingStarMax i found that the secretary animation looked horrible when it was downsized.

[@waverly7761]

Oh man, clippy brings back memories. Although it was infamous at the time, now after all these years I think the idea behind it was a noble one. It was an attempt to make computers less intimidating to the average 30-40 year old who didn't grow up with computers and were scared to death of pressing the wrong button or "breaking" something. My first job was on-call tech support, and I couldn't believe how many people would tell me they were scared of their computer.

[@scriptles]

Dave, thank you for my childhood. Thank you for my adulthood watching these videos. Your legacy lives on and your hard work is truly appreciated. Thank you for everything.

[@NomadicDmitry]

Literally all the components that you have created are really important.. Start menu, Task bar, the "run" dialog. Thank you, I am the child of the 90s and been raised with the computers in some small city in the southern Russia :) Traveled the world a lot since then, but your memories make me feel like that curious kid from the 90s once again :)

[@HamishPrendergast]

I'm so very glad I discovered your channel. It's refreshing to hear from senior developers involved in architecture we depend on. I'm autistic myself. I often hear that we make natural programmers. Unfortunately, I'm struggling. Take good care.

[@jimmeade2976]

I fully appreciate Dave's explanation of dealing with RISC processors. In the mid 1990s, my team (we developed railroad and rail transit control systems) ported our application from DEC machines to the Alpha processor, Having to deal with 64-bit words as well as data alignment, and weirdly interruptible- and non-interruptible groups of instructions, was a major effort. Though most of our code was in C, we had some assembly routines (mostly for performance), and it was a good 2 years before we found and fixed all the bugs we could find. Many of those fixes were at the customer site, following some failure or weird operation of the system, some of which brought all trains to a halt for several minutes, not good when the main goal is to safely move people.

[@SisterIdaKnow20]

Brilliant. I was a young help desk tech helping people through their computing experience.

[@michaelsparks3703]

please continue this "Insider Secrets" series. First hand history lessons like this are fantastic!

[@mholzer54]

Hi Dave. I am one of the young men who built an IMSAI 8080. I still have it and I finished building it on July 4, 1975 in a cabin up in Big Bear. My questions are: 1. Do you remember Dr. Dobbs Journal of Calisthenics and Orthodontia (running light without over-byte)? Since I only had 56K ram, a 2K basic interpreter was too good to pass up. They had published a Tiny Basic, which I typed into my home-brew monitor which was stored into a 2708 EPROM. Oh my, how things have changed. 2. A by the way, I got a copy of MS Basic, at a time when I did not know who Microsoft was yet. The thing I was most impressed with was that it coded just like Basic Plus 2, for which I was developing utilities for our network (1 MBps DecNET) of PDP 11s. After watching your story about the early incarnation of MS Basic, now it all makes sense. 3. You mentioned the way to get the credits from the authors, but you did not mention how to invoke it in Windows 11. Would you be able to fill us in? 4. If you would be interested in my IMSAI (the real deal, not a simulator), I could be cajoled into parting with it for a small price. I have not powered it on in quite some time. It has 56K ram and an 8K EPROM board. A Tarbel Cassette interface, a home built (yes wire-wrapped) that interfaced with a printer that used a TTL parallel interface without buffering. I wrote what turned out to be "double buffering" since the printer would stop accepting data during CR-LFs, before I knew the term double buffering. The IMSAI brought me to a career spanning from 1975 until this year as I retired. Thanks for all your most curious stories, Marc

[@DavesGarage]

Hi Marc! My IMSAI is a clone, it would be great to have an original! Drop me a note at the channel email from the About page and we can chat on what it'd take to get you to part with it! Very cool that you were involved that early. I would only have been about 7 years old at the time :-) I've run MSBASIC and CPM on mine, but haven't spent a great deal of time with it. I imagine you've seen the video I did on it? If not, check it out (I bought the computer from wargames, I think it's called). The credits screen is only in Windows NT 4, as far as I know. Win95 had a different one, NT 3.51 had a screensaver one, and so on. But you won't be able to get this one on Win11!

[@billgates3699]

Dave, there are thousands of people that have stories like your in tech and programming but you are the ONLY one that is gracious enough to SHARE!!!

[@NateTheMeh]

These videos are an incredible look into such a cool and important part of tech history. Thanks so Much for making these!!

[@Einken]

I grew up on space cadet pinball. Thank you for many hours of joy and encouraging many years of pinball joy to come.

[@nicknorthcutt7680]

I have so much respect for developers like yourself. I can't code to save my life but I've had a love for computers all my life. It's just crazy how much discipline and mental energy it takes to write programs like yourself. Love your content!

[@toby9999]

I think you need a passion for it, that way you'll invest the time and energy to make it happen. I was originally hobbyist back in the 70s, then worked on my Bachelors in Computer Science then subsequently entered into programming as a professional 23 years ago. I never tire of it provided that the project is an interesting one. Writing reports, documentation etc not so much.

[@pyp2205]

I also think you should have a passion for it. Because from my experience, I would make programs based on what I need for some other project, or just for fun which then I would make some open source for anyone to use. Before I started my freshman year of high school almost 4 years ago, I tried to learn a language like C++ and C# but couldn't understand anything. Then I took a Python programming class, and I remember the stuff I did at home would be exactly what I need to do in class the next day. Now I graduated highschool almost a week ago, and moved onto other programming languages and made a lot of projects during those times. One of which was made for a networking lab, that not only impressed my teacher but also got some people asking for the program. Which I of course gave it to them, after I had to fix an unnoticed bug because I copied and pasted functions without changing some variable names.

[@kipp14]

Between task manager and zip folders you have made life so much easier for a metric ton of people.

[@EddieBurke]

Everything you make is extremely historically significant. Thank you so much for making these.

[@thelovertunisia]

my firts use of Windows was 3.11 and then 98 these were amazing days. Great channel. Greetings from Tunisia.

[@Eyetrauma]

12:08 “I’m never quite sure how my humor is received by some folks, so…” Too real Dave 😆

[@jimlthor]

Dang. Every video is a nostalgia trip. Things i hadnt thought about since i was a teen. I kinda miss the days when Windows was much simpler. But at least these days I don't have everyone and their aunt bringing their computer to my house to fix it or install a driver for them

[@johnwhyte1488]

You Sir, are history; in the nicest possible way. What a wonderful story told so humbly. Also, love the binary shirt! All the best to you and yours.👍👍👍

[@plastic_helmet]

I always loved the sideways banner. Great work on that!

[@lonndawg7554]

Dave,... Conveying stories like this are very insightful, it also helps to attach some knowledge of how things were created, for those who are computer enthusiasts picking up knowledge and history like this is important because it provides a foundation and completes a more rounded education. I enjoy the stories.... and from another point of view..... You are documenting some history that may never be in textbooks. :-) Please, continue to bring us more behind-the-scenes stories.

[@mattwatson3407]

Dave's channel is the best channel on youtube. Maybe one of the most valuable too.

[@GingerJohnnyOR]

Once again, in my c. 1800s rocker, tea in hand, and I get the alert: a drop from The Garage is available. Oh boy! Win Start Menu...sure...let's watch. Turns out, I'm no vegetarian...and as a retired developer, I want to know what's in the sausage. Thanks Dave!

[@MasatoKay]

The more videos I watch of yours, the more I realize you are what's good about windows

[@dsuess]

Amazing episode as always, Dave! Thank you for sharing yet another chapter in the history archives

[@tallsock3852]

Thank you for being apart of Microsoft Pinball, it was my favorite game growing up.

[@wngimageanddesign9546]

Great behind the scenes stories! Using Windows all these decades, it's fun to discover you created a lot of the stuff we use.

[@TheTechRevivalist]

Hi Dave, This not a comment regarding the video! I started watching the channel a few weeks ago. Which is really quite a coincidence as up until last week I was waiting for the official diagnosis for ADHD. And to my surprise I get told that I actually have more symptoms of ASD! So watching your channel these past weeks has helped me a lot and I'm quite inspired. However, what brought to write the comment was the coincidence, or maybe it just the algorithm knowing me better than me! Thanks

[@Neeboopsh]

win95 osr1 you could click on the start button, and it would put a select box on it (as you see in the NT demonstration here). alt+space would pull up the right click menu, though right clicking would not pop it up. but the alt+space would open it, and the close option would be there. so, at bestbuy or whatever, we would screenshot demo machines, then make the screenshot as the wall paper, close the start button, and hide the task bar, and move all the icons out of frame (make a folder far away from the icons, then select all, drag till everything but the folder is off screen, then delete just the folder, but the folders still look like they're there. from the screenshot wallpaper. including the start button, which is closed. ;) very fun

[@SynDragon-xe1xb]

It's nice to hear stories like these from the actual creators

[@stachowi]

This is amazing... being a behind the scenes look into the tech that influenced my life and made me want to get into tech 20 years ago. Thank you.

[@mickebarnes]

Dewd! that shirt is awesome and I'm totally not trying to transcribe it to ASCII in my head.

[@ObligedTester]

Hey David! Thank you so much for sharing these stories. Wonderful to hear about development during the 90s era!

[@VirusForPrez]

Been using your creations every day now for decades without really giving a thought who was behind them ,I guess now is the time to say Thank you for all you brought to the community ! Thank you

[@Ragnar8504]

I find these videos fascinating for several reasons. Firstly, I really enjoy looking behind the scenes and seeing how things were/are made. This video struck another chord with me though. I'm an avid fiction reader and although there are dozens of books I love, the one I consider my absolute favourite is Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and that book is set at Microsoft HQ in 1994. This video gave me a deeper look into the place where the characters in my heart, Dan, Michael, Susan, Karla, Bug and all the others worked.

[@Assembled-Saints]

I used win 3.5 and 95 as a kid. I cannot tell you how much happier I was for the win 95 menu bar lol

[@Rcomian]

Briefcase ... now that would be an interesting story, like, starting with what it was actually meant to be 😅

[@moffix]

I have used every Windows version including versions with the briefcase and never used it once. I guess in early laptops was supposed to be stuff you could copy and later sync or something - baffles me to this day. Never met anyone that found use for it.

[@kjisnot]

I managed to learn some networking stuff back in the 1980's. First I got certified on Novell Netware 3.12. Then my large company decided to commit to Windows server, at first 3.51. So I got my MCSE on 3.51/4 and then WIndows 2000 AD. I was always in awe of whoever was behind the scenes creating the stuff. Bottom line I fell into a career in IT managing large AD networks and Exchange systems. I had no college education. Guys like Dave made these kinds of jobs possible. I raised a family and am now comfortably retired. THANK YOU!

[@raphamejias]

Congrats! This old histories are very good! When I see on the internet any Win NT stuff, I always think the NT box was beautiful, with this theme day becoming night, different from the cloud day from w98. I never understood why this, now I think NT was supposed to run at night on servers and w98 for the day on workstations😅

[@DavesGarage]

I'm not sure on the origin of the branding. It could be a clever play on being "above" the Win95 sky background, in a way. That's also a live gradient painted in the start menu code - it fades to a sold color when then takes over if the menu is taller.

[@gentuxable]

And then with Windows 2000 and ME I also found the squares of 2000 to be more beautiful than the play bricks in Me. There must be a theme of NT being superior to 9x.

[@Aranimda]

The Windows 95 shell update that came with MSIE 4.0 was magnificent. I loved the hover interface.

[@MsDuketown]

Yeah, that's when and how the prompt became emulated. I believe the process finished with Win 98 SP2, and between IE5 and IE6. And interface? What is that for ridiculous naming? Are you a manager? Support? After-sales?

[@glauco_rocha]

What I like is that Dave is kinda like our cyber grandpa, with all due respect to him and his real life family. I really like the storytelling. This channel is a treasure.

[@leosthrivwithautism]

I love these stories! To know that I’m working on a system this man and his team introduced long ago is fascinating to me. And when I was in my high school age I did take a few classes in Visual Basic. Among a few other programming languages so when I see code I can get the general gist of it. There are the most advance parts I can’t read but following the logic and reading the functions I can sort of almost understand. All of this is awesome stuff when I think about it. Keep up the great work on these videos! And I’ll keep coming back to watch again. 👍

[@Horus9339]

Thank you Mr Plummer, I for one would enjoy to hear more of these stories. Have a great day Sir.

[@Michael_19056]

Love the history Dave. As an inventor of data compression algorithms, I love the story of Zip folders in particular. It makes me look fondly back three decades to a time when everything felt so very new. Thanks again!

[@stgigamovement]

I'm the writer of BWTC32Key, a file compression program

[@shehanhere]

They say people can be nostalgic for times and places they've never been to. And my god i am so nostalgic for times when software engineering was a lot closer to the metal underneath compared to the layers of abstraction we now work on top of. Not that i know how to, or was even born when it was this challenging. Hats off to all the giants who came before us.

[@DavesGarage]

You might enjoy microcontroller programming! I do a lot of it as a hobby. On the ESP32, you're pretty close to the metal with a thin OS veneer of memory and task management overlaid. So it's a modern opportunity to be writing code for the bare metal, more or less. Check out NightDriverLED.com if you're looking for something to work on!

[@tanmay9928]

Damn it’s so satisfying to learn about things we’ve all been using since our childhood. I just finished watching the task manager video. Great video Dave!

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks! Glad this kind of content is appreciated! I've only got so many stories, and might do a few shorts as well, but will share what I remember!

[@jporritt]

It’s amazing to hear how it was just developers responding to a requirement and it wasn’t being run by a design team. It’s just what would work the quickest.

[@grottyboots]

I would love to hear your experiences with the changes to the file system as MS moved from 8.3 to todays long filenames. Seems to me there must be plenty of interesting stories. Cheers!

[@phatputer]

DOS through early versions of Windows was my youth, your videos have been so fascinating to watch, a unique perspective and insight into things others on the outside looking in could never provide.

[@DukeofEarl1961]

Love the binary shirt. Any chance of a link to where you got hold of it?

[@sharmashivanand]

It's so beautifully nostalgic... I used to work for Dell desktop support... 20 years have flown by... ❤

[@jasonrubik]

where in the hell is that dollar bill today ?!?!

[@RARufus]

Really great stories from the old days! It’s great that MS was supportive of their folks shipping their own software, developed on their own.

[@Rahmancarr]

Dude! I WANT THAT SHIRT! Please tell me where you got it!

[@grahamhickson4137]

Your stories of your time at MS as a neurodivergent are massively helpful in my fight against imposer syndrome from my ASD Dave. You improve my days indeed!

[@GlenHHodges]

11:15 what’s that funny box in the upper right? Asking for a friend….. Glen

[@MisterFastbucks]

You did well David. As a SysAdmin back in those days, I moved all PCs I managed directly from WFW 3.11 to NT 4.0 and never touched Windows 95 or 98. As a salaried employee I saved hundreds of hours of support time on systems that crashed about 95% less.

[@sjogosPT]

In entreprise world made much more sense to use NT unless you had any legacy application that still needed ms-dos to work.

[@MisterFastbucks]

I had a heck of a time justifying the extra cost of NT licenses. It was worth the effort though.

[@kraftwerknl]

Great video! I'm somewhat confused by one thing though, you describe the NT Cairo shell as being seperate from the earlier Windows 95 one and competing, but I'm fairly sure I've seen that same shell in the very earliest publicly available Windows 95 betas. I always figured the final Windows 95 shell one was simply an evolution from this early design, is this not the case?

[@WndSks]

Yes that screenshot is of what was then called the Tray. Cairo was supposed to blur the line between a filesystem and database. They tried again in Longhorn and failed, the end result was Libraries in Win7.

[@kraftwerknl]

@@WndSks I did some more googling and the screenshot apparently -is- from Cairo's GUI component which apparently came -before- Windows 95's taskbar which was based on the work done for Cairo, according to Wiki and Betawiki anyway. But if that's the case, I don't really understand the timeline mentioned in the video.

[@notnotjay]

Dude, you wrote pinball? I got banned from my school's computer lab for playing that on lab's computer.. good old times

[@davidwplummer953]

I wrote the version that ships in windows, but the game already existed for WIn95 from Maxis. So I'm by no means the creator of the game, just the programmer who made it all work on Windows NT/XP/2000/etc.

[@exqeriment]

Hey Dave, I found your channel today, and I'm obsessed! I'm autistic like you, and software development and the history of technology are part of my special interest. It's amazing to see both someone talking about these things, and evidence that someone like me can go so far in life! Thanks for your videos :^)

[@stgigamovement]

Same! I also have autism and am interested in technology!

[@jeremykelly7311]

Really appreciate the trip down memory lane. I spent a lot of time with sustained engineering work and debugging odd customer problems, but these stories were the fun part of the code. As odd as it sounds, I always rather enjoyed browsing the code to find those debug mode flags the devs left in the code in retail build. Definitely helpful for those "that is never supposed to happen" situations.

[@divide22]

I’m an IT infrastructure architect. I absolutely love these stories. Thank you so much!

[@louisfreudenburg]

The most impressive technology to me ever is the project function in windows (not a programmer so terminology may be incorrect). The fact that I can drag this youtube video halfway between any two monitors of different dimensions and it plays flawlessly blows my mind. I've tried to figure who is responsible for the project function in windows and have had no luck. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like such an impressive feat.

[@borisgalos6967]

Wow. I have not seen that "Cairo" start UI in 30 years. That takes me back.

[@jaybrown6174]

Another great video! You must have had an amazing career knowing that millions of people around the world have made use of your creations.

[@BernhardWeber-l5b]

Your videos are so well made and fascinating to watch! They will go down as real gems in computer history!

[@dustinsmous5413]

People either *love* or *hate* the Start Menu. It was such a departure from the common GUI interactions people were used to. Both Windows and Mac OS had applications in folders that each opened in a new window (by default)...

[@coffeeisgood102]

I enjoy these talks as I spent 2 years at Florida Computer & Business School studying Windows and computer repair. That was many years ago but your videos add the missing link of the human dimension that was not and could not be taught in those classes. Thanks for taking the time to record these videos.

[@shirokurokun]

Dave, I love your stories and the way you tell them. I wish to have thoughts as fluid as yours. Your words are precise, yet very memorable and comprehensible. You shame me as a story teller. I'm subscribed, looking forward to hear more of your microsoft insider stories.

[@DavesGarage]

Wow, thank you!

[@buddhavskungfu]

The comfy chair story is the warmth I hope to encounter in my fast past, tumultuous career.

[@waverly7761]

Thank you Dave, and the rest of the team for bringing us one of the most revolutionary OS's of all time. The first job I had out of college was tech support & domain administration on NT Server 4 & SCO Unix systems. I always felt lucky I got into the industry at that moment. I always loved the start menu on the NT systems, truly inspired work!

[@ryanoord6426]

As Microsoft engineer in the field for 30 years your channel has been awesome to watch. I have always wondered why some of things are the way there. I have been making a list. The top two on my list and ones that I have cussed for years and still don’t work is who built the download timer and file transfer timer. I have always said they must have been a weather man because it could be wrong every time and still have a job.

[@DavesGarage]

Check out my video "Blame Me: I worked on the Progress Dialog" for some good dirt on that one!

[@pokéman9924]

As a programmer and all out IT lover I would love a signature if this guy he's a bloody legend great job @DavesGarage

[@leinadster]

This brought a lot of memories! Thanks for putting this content out. It would be interesting if you can also talk a little bit about Windows XP and why is still relevant for some of us twenty years later.

[@KristopherNoronha]

Interestingly, it's not so much XP as windows 2000 that was ground breaking. XP started off as 2000 with a better looking shell. Windows 2000 even had a 64 bit edition!

[@blauw67]

Love the naming of that one folder on the desktop

[@eb37fnrcty19]

Genuinely enjoy these episodes, both on the task manager and this one on the start menu. I remember, I think it was back when the original age of empires was released (I think I was about 9 or 10), wondering who wrote the code for "all the things in windows". Feel good throwback. I think I ran AOE on our first pentium computer with windows 95 that could connect through modem to the internet. "ARE YOU ON THE INTERNET AGAIN" when someone in the household picked up the phone.

[@benbookworm]

11:54 brings a new meaning to "shovelware"

[@mofoq]

Definitely a blast from the past....I remember the ol' "-A" and "-W" functions during that transitional period with Unicode on Windows. 🤔

[@the1spyderryder]

Being a coder as well, watching your videos are like sitting around and talking shop. But in adition to writing code, i also did hardware design. I have product in some very interesting places here in the US as well as some other very large countries. Since I was both a hardware designer and the software engineer for my own projects i was also in the group that trouble shot hardware designs of other hardware engineers. A lot of my stuff was written in assembler. And speeking of Commodore, lol I used to know the 6502s, 6511s VIC 20 AND COMMODORE 64. I thought the raster interrupt and the VIC sound chip was awesome I actually built the SID chip into some other devices. But since they had phase 2 clocks getting them to play nice with intel microcontrollers was an interesting trick. Great Video!

[@vtreanor]

Dave, this is important stuff. It has a historical significance. If you and others in Microsoft don't leave a record of your work then it will become little more than folklore. I'm sure there are non-disclosure obstacles but we would still like to know. Go deep Dave and make our day.

[@stevea1708]

I wish I could say something significant. But all I got is thank you for making these videos.

[@brianlundsr1489]

Listening to this guy is like listening to someone speaking in a foreign language. Every once in a while, I hear a word that I am familiar with! Love the shirt though!

[@VioletDeVille]

Oh, the memories (nightmares?) of my brief time working with SLM back in my early days at MS as a contractor in BackOffice. I really enjoy these walks down memory lane and hearing the stories. 💜 Thank you for sharing!

[@jantestowy123]

So it was you! Nice to meet you, love your work :)

[@jasoneyes01]

Wow! Who would ever know WinZip was ultimately worth a red Corvette.

[@sharazjek338]

amazing! , i supported and have used systems from dos/3.1 all the way through all windows OS's to today, fascinating listening to someone who coded windows and the features ive used for decades, thanks for making these vids!! 😁👍

[@F30_Hellion]

I have absolutely no clue what all the programming jargon means but my dream is to become a programmer so I still really enjoy your videos. I found your channel via the task manager video and I'm guessing you're very likely to gain many many more followers through these 'behind the scenes' videos. Thanks!

[@PsRohrbaugh]

zip folders is one of my favorite windows features of all time. I remember my jaw literally dropping the first time I saw it used.

[@michaelb7071]

Thanks for sharing, Dave! Love to listen to those stories about things we saw and used nearly every day.

[@ceezar]

@DavesGarage Pinball was the first PC game I have ever played as a kid. Thank You!