For those who are not aware, even though Windows was not released until 1985, it actually made its first appearance at the Fall 1983 COMDEX show, and later the December 1983 issue of Byte magazine.

This is an early alpha release, from January 1985, not too long after Developer Release 5. As such, it looks very similar, but changes a few things and adds an EGA driver (although still monochrome only), which is what I used for these screenshots.
The same as DR5, this release requires DOS 2.x or 3.x to run; it performs an internal check so even using SETVER won't work. There are also only native drivers for serial or bus mice, although allegedly the alpha works with a DOS driver and whatever mouse you wanted; this was removed from later releases.

Also as with DR5, you copy the wininst.bat file to C:\ and run from there.

The MS-DOS Executive, which looks mostly unchanged from DR5. Note the presence of all the .PIF files, and the lack of the .RES files, suggesting a change in the executable format. I am not sure if these newer executables are binary compatible with the final release.

Some of the included programs, showing window tiling again. It should be possible, but I could not get any tiling arrangement other than this top-to-bottom arrangement to work.

Like DR5, most messages were output near the top of a window as opposed to in a popup dialog box.

A look at menus. I believe this is the first time "greyed out" menu options were a thing in Windows. Previously inaccessible items simply didn't appear.

Some programs now use new dialog boxes, which appear closer to the final release.

And finally, the control panel, which is still a blatant ripoff of Mac OS.

Exiting Windows.