Windows XP
Windows XP
Introduction
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including
home and business desktops, laptops, and media centers. It was first released in August 2001, and is
currently one of the most popular versions of Windows. The name "XP" is short for
"eXPerience."Windows XP introduced many features not found in previous versions of Windows.
With the introduction of Windows XP, GDI was deprecated in favor of its successor, the C++ based GDI+
subsystem. GDI+ adds anti‐aliased 2D graphics, textures, floating point coordinates, gradient shading,
more complex path management, intrinsic support for modern graphics‐file formats like JPEG and PNG,
and support for composition of affine transformations in the 2D view pipeline. GDI+ uses ARGB values to
represent color. Use of these features is apparent in Windows XP's user interface (drop shadows for icon
labels on the desktop, shadows under menus, translucent blue selection rectangle in Windows Explorer,
sliding task panes and taskbar buttons), and several of its applications such as Microsoft Paint, Windows
Picture and Fax Viewer, Photo Printing Wizard,
With Windows XP, the taskbar and the Start button have been updated to support Fitt's law. To help the
user access a wider range of common destinations more easily from a single location, the Start menu
was expanded to two columns; the left column focuses on the user's installed applications, while the
right column provides access to the user's documents, and system links which were previously located
on the desktop. Links to the My Documents, My Pictures and other special folders are brought to the
fore.
3. Windows Explorer
There are significant changes made to Windows Explorer in Windows XP, both visually and functionally.
Microsoft focused especially on making Windows Explorer more discoverable and task‐based.
The task pane is displayed on the left side of the window instead of the traditional folder tree view when
the navigation pane is turned off. It presents the user with a list of common actions and destinations
that are relevant to the current directory or file(s) selected.
Search
Microsoft introduced animated “Search Companions” in an attempt to make searching more engaging
and friendly; the default character is a puppy named Rover, with three other characters (Merlin the
magician, Earl the surfer, and Courtney) also available. These search companions powered by Microsoft
Agent technology, bear a great deal of similarity to Microsoft Office’s Office Assistants, even
incorporating “tricks” and sound effects.
Image handling
Windows XP improves image preview by offering a Filmstrip view which shows images in a single
horizontal row and a large preview of the currently selected image above it. “Back” and “Previous”
buttons facilitate navigation through the pictures, and a pair of “Rotate” buttons offer 90‐degree
clockwise and counter‐clockwise rotation of images. Filmstrip view like any other view can be turned on
per folder. Aside from the Filmstrip view mode, there is a 'Thumbnails' view, which displays thumbnail‐
sized images in the folder and also displays images a subfolder may be containing (4 by default) overlaid
on a large folder icon. A folder's thumbnail view can be customized from the Customize tab accessible
from its Properties.
Windows XP's Display Properties allows users to save their customizations as Themes. This
feature was previously available for earlier Windows operating systems by installing Microsoft
Plus!.
Windows XP includes Clear Type sub‐pixel font anti‐aliasing, which makes onscreen fonts
smoother and more readable on liquid crystal display (LCD) screen.
con support for 24‐bit color depth with an 8‐bit alpha channel.
Use of black dots instead of asterisks in password fields of a Textbox control e.g. ●●● instead of
***.
Performance improvements
The Windows XP kernel is completely different from the kernel of the Windows 9x/Me line of operating
systems. Although an upgrade of the Windows 2000 kernel, there are major scalability, stability and
performance improvements to the end user.
3 Windows XP Characteristics
The paged pool limit of 470 MB has been lifted from the Memory Manager in Windows XP, and data
structures are allocated only for parts of a file that have active views, with unmapped views reusable by
the memory manager depending on pool usage. Windows XP supports a larger system virtual address
space (1.3 GB, of which the contiguous virtual address space that can be used by device drivers is 960
MB).
The registry is reimplemented outside of the paged pool; the registry hives are memory mapped by the
Cache Manager into the system cache, eliminating the registry size limit.
The ability to boot in 30 seconds was a design goal for Windows XP, and Microsoft's developers made
efforts to streamline the system as much as possible; The Prefetcher is a significant part of this; it
monitors what files are loaded during boot, optimizes the locations of these files on disk so that less
time is spent waiting for the hard drive's heads to move and issues large I/O requests that can be
overlapped with device detection and initialization
A common issue in previous versions of Windows was that users frequently suffered from DLL hell,
where more than one version of the same dynamically linked library (DLL) was installed on the
computer. As software relies on DLLs, using the wrong version could result in non‐functional
applications, or worse. Windows XP solved this problem for native code by introducing side‐by‐side
assemblies. The technology keeps multiple versions of a DLL in the WinSxS folder and runs them on
demand to the appropriate application keeping applications isolated from each other and not using
common dependencies.
1. CD burning
Windows XP includes technology from Roxio which allows users to directly burn files to a compact disc
through Windows Explorer. Previously, end users had to install CD burning software. In Windows XP, CD
and DVD‐RAM (FAT32 only for DVD‐RAM) burning has been directly integrated into the Windows
interface; users burn files to a CD in the same way they write files to a floppy disk or to the hard drive.
On old versions of Windows, when users upgrade a device driver, there is a chance the new driver is less
stable, efficient or functional than the original. Reinstalling the old driver can be a major hassle and to
avoid this quandary, Windows XP keeps a copy of an old driver when a new version is installed. If the
new driver has problems, the user can return to the previous version.
Users can log into Windows XP Professional remotely through the Remote Desktop service. It is built on
Terminal Services technology, and is similar to "Remote Assistance", but allows remote users to access
local resources such as printers. Any Terminal Services client, a special "Remote Desktop Connection"
client, or a web‐based client using an ActiveX control may be used to connect to the Remote Desktop.
2. Remote Assistance
Remote Assistance allows a Windows XP user to temporarily take over a remote Windows XP computer
over a network or the Internet to resolve issues. As it can be a hassle for system administrators to
personally visit the affected computer, Remote Assistance allows them to diagnose and possibly even
repair problems with a computer without ever personally visiting it.
Windows XP introduces Fast User Switching and a more end user friendly Welcome Screen which
replaces the Classic logon prompt. Fast user switching allows another user to log in and use the system
without having to log out the previous user and quit his or her applications. Previously (on both
Windows Me and Windows 2000) only one user at a time could be logged in (except through Terminal
Services), which was a serious drawback to multi‐user activity. Fast User Switching, like Terminal
Services, requires more system resources than having only a single user logged in at a time and although
more than one user can be logged in.