Windows 11 still hides a Windows 95 memory manager inside

Windows 11 still carries a working piece of the Windows 95 kernel: a compatibility shim called EmulateHeap redirects old apps' heap calls to a recompiled copy of the Windows 95 heap manager. The code loads from disk only when the shim is enabled for an app.

• EmulateHeap redirects HeapCreate, LocalLock and GlobalReAlloc calls to a Windows 95 emulation
• Microsoft recompiled the Windows 95 heap manager source and added it to the compatibility framework
• The shim appears in Compatibility Administrator from Windows ADK, whose September 2026 release supports Windows 11 26H2
• The practice began with SimCity, which Microsoft patched around in Windows 95