Windows 3.

1x is a series of 16-bit operating systems produced by Microsoft for

use on personal computers. The series began with Windows 3.1, which was first
sold during March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0. Further editions were
released between 1992 and 1994 until the series was superseded by Windows 95.

Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 (originally codenamed Janus,
[citation needed]
of which two betas were
published), released on April 6, 1992, includes a TrueType font system (and a set
of highly legible fonts), which effectively made Windows a viable desktop
publishing platform for the first time. Similar functionality was available
for Windows 3.0 through the Adobe Type Manager (ATM) font system
from Adobe.
Windows 3.1 was designed to have backward compatibility with older Windows
platforms. As with Windows 3.0, version 3.1 had File Manager and Program
Manager, but unlike all previous versions, Windows 3.1 and later support 32-bit
disk access, cannot run in real mode, and included Minesweeper instead
of Reversi (though Reversi was included in some copies).
Windows 3.1 Multimedia PC Version (Beta only, released Nov 1992 codenamed
Bombay) included a media viewer, and the ability to play video files. It was
targeted to the newmultimedia PC and included sound and video integration with
CD-ROM support.



Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating
system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft,
[2][3]
and was a significant
progression from the company's previous Windows products. During development,
it was referred to as Windows 4.0 or by the internal codenameChicago.
Windows 95 integrated Microsoft's formerly separate MS-
DOS and Windowsproducts. It featured significant improvements over its
predecessor, Windows 3.1, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and
in its relatively simplified "plug-n-play" features. There were also major changes
made at lower levels of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly 16-bit
architecture to a pre-emptively multitasked 32-bit architecture.
In the marketplace, Windows 95 was a major success, and within a year or two

of
its release had become the most successful operating system ever producedIt also
had the effect of driving other major players (including OS/2) out of business,
something which would later be used in court against Microsoft. Some three years
after its introduction, Windows 95 was succeeded by Windows 98.
The initial design and planning of Windows 95 can be traced back to around
March 1992,
[4][5][6]
just after the release of Windows 3.1. At this time, Windows for
Workgroups 3.1 and Windows NT 3.1 were still in development and Microsoft's
plan for the future was focused onCairo. Cairo would be Microsoft's next-
generation operating system based on Windows NT and featuring a new user
interface and an object-based file system, but it was not planned to be shipped
before 1994 (Cairo would eventually partially ship in July 1996 in the form
of Windows NT 4.0, but without the object-based file system, which would later
evolve into WinFS).

Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system byMicrosoft.
It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was
released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998 and to retail on June 25, 1998.
Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a
hybrid 16-bit/32-bit
[2]
monolithic product with an MS-DOSbased boot
loader.
[3]
Windows 98 was succeeded by Windows 98 Second Edition on May 5,
1999, then by Windows Me (Millennium Edition) on September 14, 2000.
Microsoft support for Windows 98 ended on July 11, 2006.
Web integration and shell enhancements
Windows 98 includes Internet Explorer 4.01. Besides Internet Explorer, many
other Internet companion applications are included such as Outlook
Express, Windows Address Book, FrontPage Express, Microsoft Chat, Personal
Web Server and a Web Publishing Wizard,NetMeeting and NetShow Player (in the
original release of Windows 98) which was replaced by Windows Media
Player 6.2 in Windows 98 Second Edition.
The Windows 98 shell includes all of the enhancements from Windows Desktop
Update, an Internet Explorer 4 component, such as the Quick Launch toolbar,
deskbands, Active Desktop, Channels, ability to minimize foreground windows by
clicking their button on the taskbar, single click launching, Back and Forward
navigation buttons, favorites, and address bar in Windows Explorer, image
thumbnails, folder infotips and web view in folders, and folder customization
through HTML-based templates.



Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (pronounced as an abbreviation,
"M-E"), is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000
by Microsoft,
[3]
and was the last operating system released in theWindows
9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006.
[2]

Windows Me was the successor to Windows 98 and was targeted specifically at
home PC users.
[3]
It included Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows Media Player 7, and
the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and
was designed to be easy to use for home users. Microsoft also updated the
graphical user interface, shell features, and Windows Explorer in Windows Me
with some of those first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a
business-oriented operating system seven months earlier. Windows Me could be
upgraded to Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (but not to SP2 (SV1) or Internet Explorer
7), Outlook Express 6 SP1 and Windows Media Player 9 Series. Microsoft .NET
Framework up to and including version 2.0 is supported, however versions 2.0
SP1, 3.x, and greater are not. Office XP was the last version of Microsoft Office to
be compatible with Windows Me.
Windows Me is a continuation of the Windows 9x model, but with restricted
access to real mode MS-DOS in order to speed up system boot time.
[4]
This was
one of the most unpopular changes in Windows Me, because applications that
needed real mode DOS to run, such as older disk utilities, did not run under
Windows Me (although the system could be booted into real mode DOS using a
bootable Windows Me floppy disk).
Compared with other releases of Windows, Windows Me had a short shelf-life of
just over a year; it was soon replaced by the Windows NT-based Windows XP,
which was launched on October 25, 2001.

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first
version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-
based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with
features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement consumer versions of
Windows that were based on MS-DOS. NT was the first fully 32-bit version of
Windows, whereas its consumer-oriented counterparts,Windows
3.1x and Windows 9x, were 16-bit/32-bit hybrids. Windows 2000,Windows
XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Home Server,Windows
Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are members of
the Windows NT family, although they are not branded using the name "Windows
NT".
Naming
It is popularly believed that Dave Cutler
[2]
intended the initialism "WNT" as a pun
on VMS, incrementing each letter by one. However, the project was originally
intended as a follow-on to OS/2 and was referred to as "NT OS/2" before receiving
the Windows brand.
[3]
One of the original NT developers, Mark Lucovsky, states
that the name was taken from the original target processorthe Intel i860, code-
named N10 ("N-Ten").
[4]
Various Microsoft publications, including a 1998
question-and-answer session with Bill Gates, reveal that the letters
wereexpanded to "New Technology" for marketing purposes but no longer carry
any specific meaning.
[5]
The letters were dropped from the name of Windows
2000, though Microsoft described the product as "Built on NT technology".


Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal
computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First
released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001,
[4]
it is the second most
popular version of Windows, based on installed user base.
[5]
The name "XP" is
short for "eXPerience",
[6]
highlighting the enhanced user experience.
[7]

Windows XP, the successor to Windows 2000 and Windows Me, was the first
consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on
theWindows NT kernel. Windows XP was released worldwide for retail sale on
October 25, 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006.
[8]
It
was succeeded by Windows Vista in January 2007. Direct OEM and retail sales of
Windows XP ceased on June 30, 2008. Microsoft continued to sell Windows XP
through their System Builders (smaller OEMs who sell assembled computers)
program until January 31, 2009.
[9][10]
On April 10, 2012, Microsoft reaffirmed that
extended support for Windows XP and Office 2003 would end on April 8, 2014
and suggested that administrators begin preparing to migrate to a newer
OS.
[11]

[12]

[13]

The NT-based versions of Windows, which are programmed in C, C++,
andassembly,
[14]
are known for their improved stability and efficiency over
the 9xversions of Microsoft Windows.
[15][16]
Windows XP presented a significantly
redesigned graphical user interface, a change Microsoft promoted as more user-
friendly than previous versions of Windows. A new software management facility
called Side-by-Side Assembly was introduced to ameliorate the "DLL hell" that
plagued 9x versions of Windows.
[17][18]
It is also the first version of Windows to
use product activation to combat illegal copying.
During Windows XP's development, the project was codenamed "Whistler",
afterWhistler, British Columbia, as many Microsoft employees skied at
the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort.
[19]

According to web analytics data generated by W3Schools, from September 2003 to
July 2011, Windows XP was the most widely used operating system for accessing
the w3schools website, which they claim is consistent with statistics from other
websites. As of May 2012, Windows XP market share is at 26.8% after having
peaked at 76.1% in January 2007.
[5]














Windows Server 2003 (sometimes referred to as Win2K3) is a server operating
system produced by Microsoft, released on April 24, 2003. An updated version,
Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Its
successor, Windows Server 2008, was released on February 4, 2008.
According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2003 is more scalable and delivers better
performance than its predecessor, Windows 2000.
[2]

Changes
The following features are new to Windows Server 2003:
Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0
Significant improvements to Message Queuing
Manage Your Server a role management administrative tool that allows an
administrator to choose what functionality the server should provide
Improvements to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from
theschema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM)
Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration
Provides a backup system to restore lost files
Improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of
files, allowing the backup of open files.
Improved scripting and command line tools, which are part of Microsoft's
initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows
Support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if
the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time.
[3]

The ability to create rescue disk was removed in favor of Automated System
Recovery (ASR)
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations
byMicrosoft for use on personal computers, including home and businessdesktops,
laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Prior to its announcement on July 22,
2005, Windows Vista was known by its codename"Longhorn".
[4]
Development was
completed on November 8, 2006, and over the following three months, it was
released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business
customers and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released
worldwide
[5]
and was made available for purchase and download from Microsoft's
website.
[6]
The release of Windows Vista came more than five years after the
introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, the longest time span between
successive releases of Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems. It was
succeeded by Windows 7, which was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009
and released worldwide for retail on October 22, 2009.
Windows Vista contained many changes and new features, including an
updatedgraphical user interface and visual style dubbed Aero, a
redesigned searchfunction, multimedia tools including Windows DVD Maker, and
redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista aimed to
increase the level of communication between machines on a home network,
using peer-to-peer technology to simplify sharing files and media between
computers and devices. Windows Vista included version 3.0 of the .NET
Framework, allowingsoftware developers to write applications without
traditional Windows APIs.
Microsoft's primary stated objective with Windows Vista was to improve the state
of security in the Windows operating system.
[7]
One common criticism of
Windows XP and its predecessors was their commonly exploited security
vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows.
In light of this, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a
company-wide "Trustworthy Computing initiative," which aimed to incorporate
security into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft
stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows
Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion. Even
though Windows Vista's security flaws were fixed, hackers made an array of new
viruses that bypassed its security features.
[8]

While these new features and security improvements have garnered positive
reviews, Vista has also been the target of much criticism and negative
press.Criticism of Windows Vista has targeted its high system requirements, its
more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new digital rights
management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital
media, lack of compatibility with some pre-Vista hardware and software, and the
number of authorization prompts for User Account Control. As a result of these
and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates
lower than Windows XP.
[9]
However, with an estimated 330 million Internet users
as of January 2009, it had been announced that Vista usage had surpassed
Microsofts pre-launch two-year-out expectations of achieving 200 million
users.
[10][11]
At the release of Windows 7 (October 2009), Windows Vista (with
approximately 400 million Internet users) was the second most widely used
operating system on the Internet with an approximately 19% market share, the
most widely used being Windows XP with an approximately 63% market
share.
[12]
As of May 2010, Windows Vista's market share had an estimated range
from 15% to 26%.
[13][14]
As of October 2011 Vista market share was 11%.
[15]



Windows 7 is the current release of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating
systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and
business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, and media centerPCs.
[6]
Windows
7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009,
[7]
and reached general retail
availability worldwide on October 22, 2009,
[8]
less than three years after the release
of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows
Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.
Unlike Windows Vista, which introduced a large number of new features,
Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the
Windows line, with the goal of being compatible with applications and hardware
with which Windows Vista was already compatible.
[9]
Presentations given by
Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows
shellwith a new taskbar, referred to as the Superbar, a home networking system
called HomeGroup,
[10]
and performance improvements. Some standard applications
that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows,
including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker,
andWindows Photo Gallery, are not included in Windows 7;
[11][12]
most are instead
offered separately at no charge as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch
and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance
on multi-coreprocessors,
[14][15][16][17]
improvedboot performance, DirectAccess,
and kernelimprovements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple
heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-
adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center,
[18]
a Gadget for Windows
Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows
PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities
including Programmer andStatistics modes along with unit conversion for length,
weight, temperature, and several others. Many new items have been added to
the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration
Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and
Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and
Display.
[19]
Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center
(Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds), which
encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer. ReadyBoost on 32-
bit editions now supports up to 256 gigabytes of extra allocation. The default
setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing
untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges without a prompt by
exploiting a trusted application.
[20]
Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark
Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that malware can also
compromise a system when users agree to a prompt.
[21]
Windows 7 also supports
images in RAW image format through the addition of Windows Imaging
Component-enabled image decoders, which enables raw image thumbnails,
previewing and metadata display in Windows Explorer, plus full-size viewing and
slideshows in Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Media Center.
[22]