Information Sheet No.

5
The PC Hierarchy and Popular OS

Learning Objectives:
After reading this INFORMATION SHEET, YOU MUST be able to:
1. Identify the different OS Features
2. Use MS-DOS properly
3. Correctly install MS-Win98,
4. Install MS Win2000
5. Install MS Win2003
6. Install MS WinXP
7. Install MS Vista,7, 8

Understanding Your Computer: Operating Systems

The operating system is the most fundamental

program that runs on your computer. It serves as the
basis for how everything else works.

What is an operating system?

An operating system (OS) is the main program on a computer. It performs a
variety of functions, including

 determining what types of software you can install

 coordinating the applications running on the computer at any given time
 making sure that individual pieces of hardware, such as printers,
keyboards, and disk drives, all communicate properly
 allowing applications such as word processors, email clients, and web
browsers to perform tasks on the system (e.g., drawing windows on the
screen, opening files, communicating on a network) and utilize other
system resources (e.g., printers, disk drives)
 reporting error messages

The OS also determines how you see information and perform tasks. Some
operating systems use a graphical user interface (GUI), which presents
information through pictures (icons, buttons, dialog boxes, etc.) as well as
words. Other operating systems can rely solely on text.
How do you choose an operating system?
In very simplistic terms, when you choose to buy a computer, you are usually
also choosing an operating system. Although you may change it, vendors
typically ship computers with a particular operating system. There are multiple
operating systems, each with different features and benefits, but the following
three are the most common:

 Windows - Windows, with versions including Windows Me, Windows

2000, and Windows XP, is the most common operating system for home
users. It is produced by Microsoft and is typically included on machines
purchased in electronics stores or from vendors such as Dell or Gateway.
The Windows OS uses a GUI, which many users find more appealing and
easier to use than text-based interfaces.
 Mac OS X - Produced by Apple, Mac OS X is the operating system used
on Macintosh computers. With the exception of a different GUI, it is
similar to the Windows interface in the way it operates.
 Linux and other UNIX-derived operating systems - Linux and other
systems derived from the UNIX operating system are frequently used for
specialized workstations and servers, such as web and email servers.
Because they are often more difficult for general users or require
specialized knowledge and skills to operate, they are not very popular
with home users. However, as they continue to develop and become
easier to use, they may become more popular on typical home user
systems.

What is MS-DOS ?

DOS (Disk Operating System)

In July 1980 IBM assigned Microsoft to develop a 16-bit operating system

for the personal computer for the fee of 186,000 dollars. Although the
company Digital Research of Gary Kildall allready had with CP/M 86 such a
16-bit version,but by circumstances no contract has been established with
IBM. Microsoft did not have yet any operating system, Microsoft licensed
CP/M from Digital Research in November 1977 for 50,000 dollars. Since
Microsoft could not sell licenses, a corresponding agreement with the
company Seattle Computer Products was reached for QDOS. QDOS is a 16-
bit clone of CP/M and was finished by Tim Paterson in April 1980. At first
Microsoft licensed QDOS for 25,000 dollars. After a licence agreement with
IBM was signed, Bill Gates bought QDOS for 50,000 dollars in July 1981.
How proved this was a very lucrative business. IBM delivered it on all IBM
computers as PC DOS for the first time on the IBM 5150 PC, for all other
ones the name MS-DOS was for OEM partner. MS DOS 1.0 consists of
about 4,000 lines assembler code.
The command interpreter is integrated in the file command.com with the
internal commands for MS-DOS. Together with the file io.sys for simple
device routines like the access to the monitor, keyboard, fixed storage disks
and interfaces as well as the booting code these form the base operating
system. DOS works very hardware near.

In 1982 MS-DOS becomes the binary standard for all compatible systems
when 50 companies licensed MS-DOS. Software and hardware
manufacturers build on this standard at this time. In 1983 the success of
the PC system was clear the desire for a graphical surface was rising.
Microsoft corresponded to the trend and announced a graphical user
interface named Windows in 1983. Many other systems lost her market
relevance at this time. In 1984 the number of PC and MS-DOS resellers
increased to over 200. IBM published the AT computer in August, this one
should refine the market for personal computer with MS-DOS 3.0/3.1. MS-
DOS is already spread worldwide on Intel x86 computers in 1985. The easy
extendibility of the computer by numerous plug-in cards of third party
manufacturers, relatively low acquisition costs and a strongly growing
amount of applications was a reason for it.

1988 was MS-DOS established and had reached measured on the market
share a monopoly in the DOS market. The number of the MS-DOS
installations grew worldwide to about 60 million and surpassed all other
systems with that amount. Almost every software company offered standard
applications like word processing, calculation or also special solutions like
measurement tools, CAD (Computer Aided Design) or image processing for
MS-DOS. The PC manufacturers designed her systems compatible to MS-
DOS except for few manufacturers.

Update: With the release of Windows 95 up to Windows ME MS-DOS has

only a minory roll. It is installed for compatibility reasons for MS-DOS
programs and makes Windows 95 up to ME start able. DOS programs being
executed in the DOS box or directly in MS DOS before Windows start. Today
it finds application for boot disks or similar purposes.

Small reference of internal DOS commands

del, erase - delete files

rd, rmdir - delete directories
dir - show content of directories
cd, chdir - change current directory
cls - clear the screen
md, mkdir - create a directory
copy - copy of one or several files
ren, rename - rename of files or directories
type - shows the content of text files
set - shows the DOS environment variables or defines a
new one
ver - shows the DOS version number
vol - shows the name of the storage drive

Small reference of external DOS commands

attrib - shows the attributes of files or set one of those

fdisk - partitioning or modify of the hard disk
move - move of files
mem - shows the occupancy of working memory
tree - shows the directory structure
format - format of storage drives

Field of Application
- booting system for storage media
- File management
- For single user systems only
- Network client (NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, TCP/IP)
- batch processing

Structure information
- 16-bit operating system, (formerly 8-bit)
- Single tasking
- command interpreter for internal and external commands
- external driver software imbedding for periphery devices possible

System environment
- minimum: 512 kbytes RAM, 5 mbyte harddisk storage (depends on version
for full installation)
- FAT file system
- executable with every x86 compatible CPU
- low RAM and fixed storage disk needs
Microsoft Windows 95

Introduction:
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based
operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft,[2] 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 codename Chicago.

Windows 95 was intended to integrate Microsoft's formerly separate MS-

DOS and Windows products and includes an enhanced version of DOS,
often referred to as MS-DOS 7.0. It features significant improvements
over its predecessor, Windows 3.1, most visibly the graphical user
interface (GUI) whose basic format and structure is still used in later
versions such as Windows Vista. There were also large changes made to
the underlying workings, including support for 255-character mixed-case
long filenames and preemptively multitasked protected-mode 32-bit
applications. Whereas its predecessors are optional "operating
environments" requiring the MS-DOS operating system (usually available
separately), Windows 95 is a consolidated operating system, which was a
significant marketing change.

Long file names

32-bit File Access is necessary for the long file names feature introduced
with Windows 95 through the use of the VFAT file system. It is available
to both Windows programs and MS-DOS programs started from Windows
(they have to be adapted slightly, since accessing long file names requires
using larger pathname buffers and hence different system calls).
Competing DOS-compatible operating systems released before Windows
95 cannot see these names. Using older versions of DOS utilities to
manipulate files means that the long names are not visible and are lost if
files are moved or renamed, as well as by the copy (but not the original),
if the file is copied. During a Windows 95 automatic upgrade of an older
Windows 3.1 system, DOS and third-party disk utilities which can
destroy long file names are identified and made unavailable (Microsoft
Anti-Virus for Windows indicated that the upgrade program was itself a
computer virus). When Windows 95 is started in DOS mode, e.g. for
running DOS games, low-level access to disks is locked out. In case the
need arises to depend on disk utilities that do not recognize long file
names, such as MS-DOS 6.x's defrag utility, a program called LFNBACK
for backup and restoration of long file names is provided on the CD-
ROM. The program is in the \ADMIN\APPTOOLS\LFNBACK directory of
the Windows 95 CD-ROM.

Microsoft Windows 98

Windows 98 is a widely-installed product in Microsoft's evolution of the

Windows operating system for personal computers. Windows 98 was code
named "Memphis" during development and was, at one point, called
"Windows 97" based on an earlier production schedule. Windows 98
expressed Microsoft's belief that users want and should have a global view
of their potential resources and that Web technology should be an important
part of the user interface. Although building Microsoft's own Web browser
into the user desktop was one of the defining issues in the U.S. Justice
Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s, Windows 98 was
released as planned with its tightly integrated browser.

System requirements

 486DX-2/66 MHz or higher processor (Pentium processor

recommended)
 16MB of RAM (24MB recommended)
 At least 500 MB of space available on HDD. The amount of space
required depends on the installation method and the components
selected, but virtual memory and system utilities as well as drivers
should be taken into consideration.
  Upgrading from Windows 95 (FAT16) or 3.1 (FAT): 140-400 MB
(typically 205 MB).
 New installation (FAT32): 190-305 MB (typically 210 MB).
 Note: Both Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE can have
significant problems associated with hard drives that are over
32 Gigabytes (GB) in size. This issue only occurs with certain
Phoenix BIOS settings. A software update has been made
available to fix this shortcoming.[2]

 VGA or higher resolution monitor

 CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
 Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device (optional).[3]

The first edition of Windows 98 was also available in a floppy disk version
that required a floppy drive rather than a CD-ROM drive, however this
version was and is quite rare.

Like its predecessor, Windows 95, and its successor, Windows Millennium
Edition (Me), users can bypass hardware requirement checks with the
undocumented /nm setup switch. This allows installation on computers
with processors as old as the 80386.

Microsoft Windows 2000

Windows 2000 (W2K) is a est commercial version of Microsoft's evolving

Windows operating system. Previously called Windows NT 5.0, Microsoft
emphasizes that Windows 2000 is evolutionary and "Built on NT
Technology." Windows 2000 is designed to appeal to small business and
professional users as well as to the more technical and larger business
market for which the NT was designed.
The Windows 2000 product line consists of four products:

 Windows 2000 Professional, aimed at individuals and businesses of

all sizes. It includes security and mobile use enhancements. It is the
most economical choice.
 Windows 2000 Server, aimed at small-to-medium size businesses. It
can function as a Web server and/or a workgroup (or branch office)
server. It can be part of a two-way symmetric multiprocessing system.
NT 4.0 servers can be upgraded to this server.
 Windows 2000 Advanced Server, aimed at being a network
operating system server and/or an application server, including those
involving large databases. This server facilitates clustering and load-
balancing. NT 4.0 servers with up to eight-way SMP can upgrade to
this product.
 Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, designed for large data
warehouses, online transaction processing (OLTP), econometric
analysis, and other applications requiring high-speed computation
and large databases. The Datacenter Server supports up to 16-way
SMP and up to 64 gigabytes of physical memory.

Windows 2000 is reported to be more stable (less apt to crash) than

Windows 98/NT systems. A significant new feature is Microsoft's Active
Directory, which, among other capabilities, enables a company to set up
virtual private networks, to encrypt data locally or on the network, and to
give users access to shared files in a consistent way from any network
computer.

Microsoft Windows 2003

Windows Server 2003 (also referred to as Win2K3) is a server
operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on April 24, 2003
as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by
Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of
business server products. An updated version, Windows Server 2003
R2 was released to manufacturing on 6 December 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]

Web Edition
Windows Server 2003, Web Edition is mainly for building and
hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML Web services. It is
designed to be used primarily as an IIS 6.0 Web server and
provides a platform for rapidly developing and deploying XML Web
services and applications that use ASP.NET technology, a key part
of the .NET Framework. This edition does not require Client Access
Licenses and Terminal Server mode is not included on Web
Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available
on Windows Server 2003, Web Edition. Only 10 concurrent file-
sharing connections are allowed at any moment. It is not possible
to install Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange software in
this edition. However MSDE and SQL Server 2005 Express are
fully supported after service pack 1 is installed. Despite supporting
XML Web services and ASP.NET, UDDI cannot be deployed on
Windows Server 2003, Web Edition. The .NET Framework version
2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003, Web Edition, but
can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.

Windows Server 2003 Web Edition supports a maximum of 2

processors with support for a maximum of 2GB of RAM.
Additionally, Windows Server 2003, Web Edition cannot act as a
domain controller.[7] Additionally, it is the only version of Windows
Server 2003 that does not include client number limitation upon
Windows update services as it does not require Client Access
Licenses.

Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition is aimed towards small to
medium sized businesses. Standard Edition supports file and
printer sharing, offers secure Internet connectivity, and allows
centralized desktop application deployment. This edition of
Windows will run on up to 4 processors with up to 4 GB RAM. 64-
bit versions are also available for the x86-64 architecture (AMD64
 and EM64T, called collectively x64 by Microsoft). The 64-bit
version of Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition is capable of
addressing up to 32 GB of RAM and it also supports Non-Uniform
Memory Access (NUMA), something the 32-bit version does not do.
The 32-bit version is available for students to download free of
charge as part of Microsoft's DreamSpark program.

Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition is aimed towards
medium to large businesses. It is a full-function server operating
system that supports up to eight processors and provides
enterprise-class features such as eight-node clustering using
Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) software and support for up to 32
GB of memory through PAE (added with the /PAE boot string).
Enterprise Edition also comes in 64-bit versions for the Itanium
and x64 architectures. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions support
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA). It also provides the ability to
hot-add supported hardware..

Microsoft Windows XP

Windows XP is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft

for use on personal computers, including home and business
desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. The name "XP"
stands for eXPerience.[2] Windows XP is the successor to both
Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Me, and is the first
consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be
built on the Windows NT kernel (version 5.1) and architecture.
Windows XP was first released on October 25, 2001, and over 400
million copies were in use in January 2006, according to an
estimate in that month by an IDC analyst.[3] It is succeeded by
Windows Vista, which was released to volume license customers on
November 8, 2006, and worldwide to the general public on January
30, 2007. Sales of Windows XP will cease on June 30, 2008.[4]
 The most common editions of the operating system are Windows
XP Home Edition, which is targeted at home users, and Windows
XP Professional, which has additional features such as support for
Windows Server domains and two physical processors, and is
targeted at power users and business clients. Windows XP Media
Center Edition has additional multimedia features enhancing the
ability to record and watch TV shows, view DVD movies, and listen
to music. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is designed to run ink-
aware applications built using the Tablet PC platform. Two
separate 64-bit versions of Windows XP were also released,
Windows XP 64-bit Edition for IA-64 (Itanium) processors and
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for x86-64.

Windows XP is known for its improved stability and efficiency over

the 9x versions of Microsoft Windows. It presents a significantly
redesigned graphical user interface, a change Microsoft promoted
as more user-friendly than previous versions of Windows. New
software management capabilities were introduced to avoid the
"DLL hell" that plagued older consumer-oriented 9x versions of
Windows. Windows XP has also been criticized by some users for
security vulnerabilities, tight integration of applications such as
Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player, and for aspects of
its default user interface.

System requirements
System requirements for Windows XP Home and Professional editions as
follows:

Minimum Recommended

Processor 233 MHz 300 MHz or higher

Memory 64 MB RAM1 128 MB RAM or higher

Video adapter and monitor Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution

Hard drive disk free space 1.5 GB or higher

Drives CD-ROM drive or DVD drive

Keyboard. Microsoft Mouse or compatible

Input devices
pointing device

Sound Sound card. Speakers or headphones

Microsoft Windows Vista

Windows Vista (pronounced /ˈvɪstə/) is a line of operating systems

developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and
business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Prior to its
announcement on July 22, 2005, Windows Vista was known by its
codename "Longhorn". Development was completed on November 8, 2006;
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, and was made
available for purchase and download from Microsoft's website. 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.

Windows Vista contains many changes and new features, including an

updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero,
improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as
Windows DVD Maker, and redesigned networking, audio, print, and display
sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication
between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to
simplify sharing files and digital media between computers and devices.
Windows Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to
make it significantly easier for software developers to write applications than
with the traditional Windows API.

Microsoft's primary stated objective with Windows Vista, however, has been
to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system.[5] One
common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors has been 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 aims to incorporate security work 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.

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 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 certain pre-Vista hardware and
software, and the number of authorization prompts for User Account
Control. As a result of these and other issues, Vista has seen adoption and
satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP.

Core technologies
Windows Vista is intended to be a technology-based release, to provide a
base to include advanced technologies, many of which are related to how
the system functions and thus not readily visible to the user. An example is
the complete restructuring of the architecture of the audio, print, display,
and networking subsystems; while the results of this work are visible to
software developers, end-users will only see what appear to be evolutionary
changes in the user interface.

Vista includes technologies such as ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive which

employ fast flash memory (located on USB drives and hybrid hard disk
drives) to improve system performance by caching commonly used programs
and data. This manifests itself in improved battery life on notebook
computers as well, since a hybrid drive can be spun down when not in use.
Another new technology called SuperFetch utilizes machine learning
techniques to analyze usage patterns to allow Windows Vista to make
intelligent decisions about what content should be present in system
memory at any given time.

As part of the redesign of the networking architecture, IPv6 has been fully
incorporated into the operating system and a number of performance
improvements have been introduced, such as TCP window scaling. Earlier
versions of Windows typically needed third-party wireless networking
software to work properly, but this is not the case with Vista, which
includes more comprehensive wireless networking support.

For graphics, Vista introduces a new Windows Display Driver Model and a
major revision to Direct3D. The new driver model facilitates the new
 Desktop Window Manager, which provides the tearing-free desktop and
special effects that are the cornerstones of Windows Aero. Direct3D 10,
developed in conjunction with major display driver manufacturers, is a new
architecture with more advanced shader support, and allows the graphics
processing unit to render more complex scenes without assistance from the
CPU. It features improved load balancing between CPU and GPU and also
optimizes data transfer between them.[24]

At the core of the operating system, many improvements have been made to
the memory manager, process scheduler and I/O scheduler. The Heap
Manager implements additional features such as integrity checking in order
to improve robustness and defend against buffer overflow security exploits,
although this comes at the price of breaking backward compatibility with
some legacy applications. A Kernel Transaction Manager has been
implemented that enables applications to work with the file system and
Registry using atomic transaction operations.

Hardware requirements
Computers capable of running Windows Vista are classified as Vista
Capable and Vista Premium Ready. A Vista Capable or equivalent PC is
capable of running all editions of Windows Vista although some of the
special features and high end graphics options may require additional or
more advanced hardware. A Vista Premium Ready PC can take advantage of
Vista's "high-end" features. These two classifications are on the low side and
may be insufficient for adequate speed and responsiveness; some have given
their own unofficial viewpoint as to what they believe would be a
recommended system specification for smooth operation.

Windows Vista's "Basic" and "Classic" interfaces work with virtually any
graphics hardware that supports Windows XP or 2000; accordingly, most
discussion around Vista's graphics requirements centers on those for the
Windows Aero interface. As of Windows Vista Beta 2, the NVIDIA GeForce 6
series and later, the ATI Radeon 9500 and later, Intel's GMA 950 and later
integrated graphics, and a handful of VIA chipsets and S3 Graphics discrete
chips are supported. Although originally supported, the GeForce FX 5 series
has been dropped from newer drivers from NVIDIA. The last driver from
NVIDIA to support the GeForce FX series on Vista was 96.85. Microsoft
offers a tool called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to assist Windows XP
and Vista users in determining what versions of Windows their machine is
capable of running. Although the installation media included in retail
packages is a 32-bit DVD, customers without a DVD-ROM or customers
who wish for a 64-bit install media are able to acquire this media through
the Windows Vista Alternate Media program. The Ultimate edition includes
both 32-bit and 64-bit media. Beware that the digitally downloaded version
 of Ultimate includes only one version, either 32 bit or 64 bit from Windows
Marketplace.

Windows Vista system requirements

"Vista Capable" "Vista Premium Ready"

Processor 800 MHz 1 GHz

Memory 512 MB RAM 1 GB RAM

DirectX 9 DirectX 9 capable GPU with Hardware Pixel

Graphics card
capable Shader v2.0 and WDDM 1.0 driver support

128 MB RAM supports up to 2,756,000 total

Graphics
32 MB RAM pixels (e.g. 1920 × 1200) or 512 MB+ for greater
memory
resolutions such as 2560x1600

HDD capacity 20 GB 40 GB

HDD free
15 GB 15 GB
space

Other drives DVD-ROM DVD-ROM

Audio Audio output HD Audio output

Windows 7

are advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support

for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved
performance on multi-coreprocessors,[1] improved boot performance,
and kernel improvements.

 The hibernation file size is configurable in Windows 7

using powercfg.exe. It can be set from anywhere between 50% to 100% of
the total physical memory using the -size switch in powercfg.exe, so the
hibernation file is compressed and uses less disk space. The default size is
75%
 Windows 7 improves the Tablet PC Input Panel to make faster
corrections using new gestures, supports text prediction in the soft
keyboard and introduces a new Math Input Panel for inputting math into
 programs that support MathML. It recognizes handwritten math
expressions and formulas. Additional language support for handwriting
recognition can be gained by installing the respective MUI pack for that
language (also called language pack).

 As opposed to the blank start-up screen in Windows Vista, Windows 7's

start-up screen consists of an animation featuring four colored light balls
(one red, one yellow, one green, and one blue). They twirl around for a few
seconds and then join together to form a glowing Windows logo. This only
occurs on displays with a vertical resolution of 768 pixels or higher, as the
animation is 1024x768. Any screen with a resolution below this displays the
same startup screen that Vista used.

 The Starter Edition of Windows 7 can run an unlimited number of

applications, compared to only 3 in Windows Vista Starter. Microsoft had
initially intended to ship Windows 7 Starter Edition with this limitation, but
announced after the release of the Release Candidate that this restriction
would not be imposed in the final release.

 The ClearType Text Tuner which was previously available as a powertoy

for earlier Windows versions has been integrated into Windows 7.

 For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support

for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET
based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times,
reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation
packages,[89] and improved globalization support through a new Extended
Linguistic Services API.

 A new font, "Gabriola", is included.

The new Action Center which replaces Windows Security Center

 When a user right-clicks a disc image file, such as an ISO file, the user
can click "Burn disc image" to write the image to any compatible disc.
 Support for image verification is included. In previous versions of Microsoft
Windows, users had to install third-party software to burn image discs.

 If an application crashes twice in a row, Windows 7 will automatically

attempt to apply ashim. If an application fails to install a similar self-
correcting fix, a tool that asks some questions about the application
launches.

 Windows 7 includes an optional TIFF IFilter that enables indexing of

TIFF documents by reading them with optical character recognition (OCR),
thus making their text content searchable. TIFF iFilter supports Adobe TIFF
Revision 6.0 specifications and four compression
schemes: LZW, JPEG, CCITT v4, CCITT v6

 Windows 7 includes power-saving features, such as adaptive display

brightness, which dims a laptop's display when the laptop has not been
used for a while. Powercfg.exe /Energy generates an HTML report of the
computer's power-saving efficiency and checks which devices are preventing
the computer from entering the sleep state. Windows 7 can individually
suspend USB hubs and supports selective suspend for all in-box USB class
drivers

 Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn
opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aeroapplied. Instead,
they remain translucent.

 The Windows Console now adheres to the current Windows theme,

instead of showing controls from the Windows Classic theme.

 Games Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers,

which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7.

 Users can disable many more Windows components than was possible in
Windows Vista. The new components which can now be disabled
include: Handwriting Recognition, Internet Explorer, Windows DVD
Maker, Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Gadget Platform Windows Media
Center, Windows Media Player, Windows Search, and the XPS Viewer (with
its services).[97]

 Windows XP Mode is a fully functioning copy of 32-bit Windows XP

Professional SP3 running in a virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC (as
opposed to Hyper-V) running on top of Windows 7. Through the use of the
RDP protocol, it allows applications incompatible with Windows 7 to be run
on the underlying Windows XP virtual machine, but still to appear to be
part of the Windows 7 desktop,thereby sharing the native Start Menu of
 Windows 7 as well as participating in file type associations. It is not
distributed with Windows 7 media, but is offered as a free download to
users of the Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions from Microsoft's
web site. Users of Home Premium who want Windows XP functionality on
their systems can download Windows Virtual PC free of charge, but must
provide their own licensed copy of Windows XP. XP Mode is intended for
consumers rather than enterprises, as it offers no central management
capabilities. Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (Med-V) is available
for the enterprise market.

 Native support for Hyper-V virtual machines through the inclusion of

VMBus integration drivers.

 Windows 7 introduces support for location and other sensors. As a

demonstration of these sensors, location can be determined reasonably
accurately by a machine connected to the Internet by Wi-Fi without
a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver by downloading Geosense for
Windows (not from Microsoft), which uses "a hybrid mix of geolocation
service providers and geolocation methods to pinpoint the most accurate
location information possible – including but not limited to WiFi
triangulation, cell tower triangulation and IP address lookup".

 The memory manager is optimized to mitigate the problem of total

memory consumption in the event of excessive cached read operations,
which occurred on earlier releases of 64-bit Windows.
 AVCHD camera support and Universal Video Class 1.1
 Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA) for TV tuner cards, first
implemented in Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 for Windows Vista.
 Support for up to 256 logical processors
 Fewer hardware locks and greater parallelism
 Timer coalescing: modern processors and chipsets can switch to very low
power usage levels while the CPU is idle. In order to reduce the number of
times the CPU enters and exits idle states, Windows 7 introduces the
concept of "timer coalescing"; multiple applications or device drivers which
perform actions on a regular basis can be set to occur at once, instead of
each action being performed on their own schedule. This facility is available
in both kernel mode, via the KeSetCoalesableTimer API (which would be
used in place of KeSetTimerEx), and in user mode with
the SetWaitableTimerEx Windows API call (which
replacesSetWaitableTimer).
 Multi-function devices and Device Containers: Prior to Windows 7, every
device attached to the system was treated as a single functional end-point,
known as a devnode, that has a set of capabilities and a "status". While this
is appropriate for single-function devices (such as a keyboard or scanner), it
 does not accurately represent multi-function devices such as a combined
printer, fax machine, and scanner, or web-cams with a built-in microphone.
In Windows 7, the drivers and status information for multi-function device
can be grouped together as a single "Device Container", which is presented
to the user in the new "Devices and Printers" Control Panel as a single unit.
This capability is provided by a new Plug and Play property, ContainerID,
which is a Globally Unique Identifier that is different for every instance of a
physical device. The Container ID can be embedded within the device by the
manufacturer, or created by Windows and associated with each devnode
when it is first connected to the computer. In order to ensure the
uniqueness of the generated Container ID, Windows will attempt to use
information unique to the device, such as a MAC address or USB serial
number. Devices connected to the computer via USB, IEEE
1394 (FireWire), eSATA, PCI Express,Bluetooth, and Windows Rally's PnP-X
support can make use of Device Containers.

 User-Mode Scheduling: The 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Server

2008 R2 introduce a user-mode scheduling framework. On Microsoft
Windows operating systems, scheduling of threads inside a process is
handled by the kernel. While for most applications this is sufficient,
applications with large concurrent threading requirements, such as a
database server, can benefit from having a thread scheduler in-process.
This is because the kernel no longer needs to be involved in context
switches between threads, and it obviates the need for a thread
pool mechanism as threads can be created and destroyed much more
quickly when no kernel context switches are required.

 Windows 7 will also contain a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully
supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates.

 The ability to join a domain offline.

 Service Control Manager in conjunction with the Windows Task
Scheduler supports trigger-start services.

System Requirements:

 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
 DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Windows 8 and 8.1
is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoftas part
of Windows NT family of operating systems. Development of Windows 8 started
before the release of its predecessor, Windows 7, in 2009. It was announced
at CES 2011, and followed by the release of three pre-releaseversions from
September 2011 to May 2012. The operating system wasreleased to
manufacturing on August 1, 2012, and was released for general availability on
October 26, 2012.
Windows 8 introduced major changes to the operating system's platform
anduser interface to improve its user experience on tablets, where Windows
was now competing with mobile operating systems,
including Android and iOS. In particular, these changes included a touch-
optimized Windows shell based on Microsoft's "Metro" design language,
the Start screen (which displays programs and dynamically updated content on
a grid of tiles), a new platform for developing apps with an emphasis
on touchscreen input, integration with online services (including the ability to
sync apps and settings between devices), and Windows Store, an online store
for downloading and purchasing new software. Windows 8 added support
for USB 3.0, Advanced Format hard drives, near field communications,
and cloud computing. Additional security features were introduced, such as
built-in antivirus software, integration withMicrosoft SmartScreen phishing
filtering service and support for UEFI Secure Boot on supported devices
with UEFI firmware, to prevent malware from infecting the boot process.
Windows 8 was released to a mixed reception. Although reaction towards its
performance improvements, security enhancements, and improved support for
touchscreen devices was positive, the new user interface of the operating
system was widely criticized for being potentially confusing and difficult to
learn (especially when used with a keyboard and mouse instead of a
touchscreen). Despite these shortcomings, 60 million Windows 8 licenses have
been sold through January 2013, a number which included both upgrades and
sales toOEMs for new PCs.
On October 17, 2013, Microsoft released Windows 8.1. It addresses some
aspects of Windows 8 that were criticized by reviewers and early adopters and
incorporates additional improvements to various aspects of the operating
system.
System Requirements:

 Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and
SSE2
 RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
 Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
 Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver