Windows 95 may not run Microsoft's latest application software, but many people including myself still use it. A while back I noticed my system resources would keep dropping after opening and closing lots of file folders and I would eventually have to reboot because of it. I tracked it down to the common control library version 5.80 (comctl32.dll) that some program had installed. I quickly switched back to version 4.72 and all was well again. Curious I tested this on numerous other Windows 95 systems and discovered the exact same thing.

To reproduce this behavior on an affected system, just select a bunch of file folders somewhere and open them all at once. Close them (using ALT-F4 on the keyboard is faster). Repeat this a few dozen times and check your system resources. This affects both the classic and IE 4 webby desktop.

Microsoft appears to have sabotaged their own operating system! This file (comctl32.dll 5.8x) is installed and required by many newer Windows 95 applications. As far as I can tell there is no newer version for Windows 95 that fixes the problem. Perhaps Microsoft did this to sell more copies of Windows 98?

Luckily I don't have IE or any other programs that required that version of the DLL, but computers that have IE 5.x or various other programs must have the 5.x version.

Just by chance I came across an early version of the comctl32.dll file, version 5.00.0910.1306 to be exact, which shipped
with an early beta version of IE 5. This version does not have this "bug"! (I suppose it could have others, but I have not encountered any).

If you are affected and want to make your Windows 95 machine stable again, download file below. Extract it, exit to DOS, rename the old file,  and copy the new comctl32.dll. (Example, "rename c:\windows\system\comctl32.dll comctl32.old" and then "copy c:\temp\comctl32.dll c:\windows\system\comctl32.dll")

Disclaimer: Try this at your own risk.
 

Back to Files