Windows 95 provides enhanced functionality and easy configuration for display adapters, in addition to resolving many problems inherent in Windows 3.1 display drivers. By using a mini-driver architecture for display drivers, Windows 95 provides better support for a wide range of hardware and provides more stable and reliable drivers.
Windows 95 Setup automatically detects the display adapter in the computer and installs the correct display driver, upgrading to a new driver if a new version is available.
Windows 95 contains a universal display driver called the device independent bitmap (DIB) engine. The DIB engine provides 32-bit graphics code for fast, robust drawing on high-resolution and frame buffer-type display adapters. Windows 95 display mini-drivers use the DIB engine for all in-memory graphics operations and on-screen operations that do not pass to the adapter for hardware acceleration. This architecture makes it easy for hardware developers to write drivers for a new controller type and to add hardware acceleration features incrementally.
To ensure broad support for display adapter devices in Windows 95, Microsoft developed many of the display drivers in cooperation with the major display-controller hardware manufacturers. The Microsoft development team also worked closely with hardware manufacturers to write additional display drivers and assisted in optimizing drivers to enhance display speed for improved graphic performance.
Windows 95 also includes mechanisms to ensure that incompatible display drivers cannot prevent a user from accessing the system. If a display driver fails to load or initialize when Windows 95 is started, Windows 95 automatically uses the generic VGA display driver. This ensures that you can start Windows 95 to fix a display-related problem.
For displays, colors are described in bits per pixel (bpp). The following table lists the bpp-to-colors conversion.
Bits per pixel | Color conversion |
1 bpp | Monochrome |
4 bpp | 16 colors |
8 bpp | 256 colors |
15 bpp | 32,768 (32K) colors |
16 bpp | 65,536 (64K) colors |
24 bpp | 16.7 million (16.7M) colors |
32 bpp | 16.7 million colors |
Resolutions are described in horizontal number of pixels multiplied by (x) vertical number of pixels — for example, 640x480.