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Did You Know Windows 11 Still Supports These 7 Ancient Features Muo

Bonisiwe Shabane
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did you know windows 11 still supports these 7 ancient features muo

Much of Windows is cobbled together from parts from the past. There are decades-old Windows tools that are still useful today, menus that haven’t changed since Windows 7, and choices all over the OS that reflect Windows' focus on backward compatibility. If you look closely enough, you’ll also find traces of decades-old technology in Windows 11. These have no practical use today, but are fun to explore and enjoy a nostalgia trip with. Once you’re connected via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, you likely don’t visit the internet settings in Windows 11 often unless you have a problem. You thus might have missed the Dial-up option under Settings > Network & internet, right alongside the modern options like VPN and Mobile hotspot.

That’s right—Windows 11 supports the old-school internet connection technology that everyone who had a computer in the 1990s will remember. Clicking Set up a new connection opens the old Control Panel box, which still has a Dial-up option. When I try this, Windows tells me it can’t detect a modem. While you can get USB modems on Amazon, you’ll also need a service provider to connect to. This year, the legendary AOL ended its dial-up service, which began in 1991. There are three main options remaining:

The Windows operating system has existed for over 40 years, and in that time, it's obviously evolved a lot, and it looks radically different from what debuted in 1983. But not every part of Windows can be abandoned or replaced when a new version releases, and sometimes, old code can be left lingering around for years or even decades. And even when it does change, some features are so important that they just stick around for generations and become landmarks of the software. Because of that, even in 2024, you can find pieces of Windows 95 (and earlier) in Windows 11. If you don't believe me, let me show you. File Explorer is one of the most integral parts of Windows, and it made its debut under its current name back in Windows 95.

Prior to this, Microsoft had initially shipped Windows with the MS-DOS Executive, and later replaced it with File Manager in Windows 3.x, but Windows 95 introduced the basic UI we know today, with large... Of course, since then, a ton of changes have come to File Explorer, but that concept of a file browser with large icons is still what we have today. It's just sharper, more colorful, and there's a lot more stuff around it. Now there's a navigation tree on the left side and a command bar with a lot of quick options at the top. Windows 11 even added support for tabs, so things have certainly changed a lot. You can even look beyond the UI, though.

Windows 95 was the first to feature support for ZIP files through a shell extension developed by Dave Plummer. Microsoft bought that extension and integrated it into Windows, and the code for handling ZIP files has been mostly unchanged for decades — though Microsoft recently added support for other archive types, too. Need to upgrade from Windows 10? Here's your guide to the lesser-known features, good and bad, of Windows 11 When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

TechRadar created this content as part of a paid partnership with Snapdragon. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of TechRadar. We've now reached the official Windows 10 End of Life, and there are a lot of people who haven't yet made the move to Windows 11. If you're among them, then you're going to need to do so soon – and you're going to need to know about the new OS. The good news is that we can help. Support for Microsoft's previous OS ended on October 14, 2025, but making the change to the new system needn't be a difficult experience.

Windows 11 is touted as a modern, user-friendly operating system. But if you dig just under the nicely designed skin, you can find features that have remained the same for decades. Here are some ancient Windows features you can still find and use in Windows 11. Some have been hanging around, unchanged, since the late 80s. The Command Prompt, or cmd.exe, was the default command-line tool in Windows. It was first introduced over 35 years ago, way back in 1987, with the Windows NT version introduced in 1993.

Although its look has much improved over the years, it is essentially the same tool that appeared in Windows XP. With Windows 11, Microsoft finally moved to combine Command Prompt with PowerShell. This new all-in-one Windows terminal tool is now the default when trying to run Command Prompt in the latest versions of the OS. Even so, the old Command Prompt remains and can still be used if you change a few settings in the Windows Terminal. Check out our beginner's guide to the Command Prompt to learn more about how to use this old, but venerable tool.

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