It should be possible to boot & run Win 3.1 from a CD Rom. The same CD should also be able to hold most of the apps that you use.

Win NT and XP are not candidates because they make extensive use of a registry, but an OS like Win 3.1 does not have this problem. If this idea sounds impossibe, then you need to see this page:
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

The free Knoppix CD Rom boots and runs a full Linux KDE gui with over a GB of apps on the same CD. It automatically configures sound cards, video, USB, NIC's and most other peripherals. And it is fast!

I'm not suggesting that Win 3.1 will ever be able to handle this complement of I/O, but a similar type of bootable CD should be able to deliver all of the existing Win 3.1 functionality.

Knoppix is great, and I'm not trying to open a debate of the relative merits of the two OS's. I would like some hardcore, technical feedback about doing this with Win 3.1.

Does anyone know if such a CD has been created, and what problems might be encountered.

i was thinking about this a while back and this is what I came up with...I used the dr-dos bootable cd(with a full dos version) and added a small hard drive to my pc (644 mb) and installed windows 3.1 on it and then from win98 backed up that hard drive as a bootable image...and it worked, I have word 6, works 6, internet explorer 3.03 on it...and it worked to dial up my prodigy account, so i am certain it is probably possible in a less convoluted way

works 3 rather

Thanks for the response. It seems that bootable CD's with Win98 and 95b may also be possible:
http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/11/206/

It's not a simple procedure, but the end result would be awesome. Considering that the article is about 3 years old, I'm surprised that I haven't seen this done anywhere else.

well, in fact win3x works quite different...to make a bootable disk all you need is a DOS version that runs from disk with an image of an installed windows and it will run...but it takes using a small hard drive and a cd burner to backup the small drive with...I am not sure if this is what you are getting after.