Although the interface changed in Windows 95, Program Manager remained an option for a while (PROGMAN.EXE was included in Windows 95/98, NT 4.0 and 2000). See File Manager. See Win 3.1/9x differences.

If starting in MS-DOS, the setup program would install and boot a minimal version of Windows 3.1 and then fire up a 16-bit Windows app to do much of the heavy lifting. The same 16-bit app would launch ...