Windows 95

For pre-release wallpapers and pictures, see Chicago. Windows 95, codenamed Chicago, is an operating system released by Microsoft in 1995. It is the successor to Windows 3.1. It features a new set of tiles, as well as one full screen wallpaper, Clouds. It was succeeded by Windows 98 in 1998.

Wallpapers
Windows 95 has a set of tiles in Bitmap format, as well as one full screen wallpaper, Clouds. No information is available on who produced any of the wallpapers, but the pixel art tiles were likely either designed in-house or outsourced to an external graphic designer. Some of the high color ones featuring photos may have utilized stock photos, but no origins have been found. All of these were reused in Windows 98 and Me.

The filenames on the disc generally differ from the names given after installation; these names are listed here too.

Fun stuff folder
The "funstuff" folder on the CD includes a folder named pictures, which features Clouds as well as another branding wallpaper called win95, featuring the Windows 95 logo over the same clouds. This wallpaper greatly resembles the bootscreen, although the Windows flag is larger here. None of the contents of the funstuff folder are installed during setup, so these can only be found by browsing the CD.

Patterns
Windows 95 also includes a set of 8x8 patterns, which are tiled across the desktop. These are not in Bitmap format and are instead rendered through binary values. They can be applied in conjunction with a wallpaper; if the wallpaper is set to be centered, the pattern will be visible on the space surrounding the wallpaper. Due to their simplistic nature, they do not use as much memory and are thus a good option on computers with low RAM.

Setup background
The setup background features a collage of tech-related images with a 2 color blue-black gradient map applied over it, including a keyboard, mouse, cables and CDs. It is known to have been produced in-house (along with the photos), but it is unknown who designed it. The keyboard was owned by Kevin Kennedy, who lent it to the designer. A higher quality version is also used on the first time run startup screen, although it is squashed to 640x400 but stretches out to the resolution of the monitor.

Unlike setup backgrounds in Windows NT releases, this is selectable as a wallpaper as it is included in C:/WINDOWS along with the other wallpapers. Windows NT 4.0 features a very similar setup background, although it uses different cable and CD images, while the mouse image is in a slightly different position.