Two editions of Windows 2.10 were released; Windows/286 and Windows/386, both of which could take advantage of the Intel processor for which they were designed.

Windows/386 is much more advanced. It introduced a protected mode kernel, above which the GUI and applications run as a virtual 8086 mode task. It allows several MS-DOS programs to run in parallel in "virtual 8086" CPU mode, rather than always suspending background applications. Each DOS application can use as much low memory as is available before Windows is started, minus a few kilobytes of overhead.

In March 1989, Windows 2.11 was released in Windows/286 and Windows/386 editions, with some minor changes.

Windows 2.11 was superseded by Windows 3.0 in May 1990.