Did microsoft vista launch

The Windows Server name made its debut with the release of Windows Server and continues with the current release, Windows Server Home Server allowed users to share files such as digital photos and media files, and also automatically backed up home networked computers. A version of the Windows operating system was designed for small devices such as personal digital assistants PDAs or Handheld PCs in the Microsoft vernacular. The mobile operating system for smartphones and mobile devices from Microsoft was based on the Windows CE kernel and designed to look and operate similar to desktop versions of Microsoft Windows.

Unlike Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 was targeted more to the consumer market than the enterprise market. Its successors included Windows Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile. Webopedia is an online information technology and computer science resource for IT professionals, students, and educators.

Webopedia focuses on connecting researchers with IT resources that are most helpful for them. Webopedia resources cover technology definitions, educational guides, and software reviews that are accessible to all researchers regardless of technical background. Property of TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation.

This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace. Sign in. Log into your account. Forgot your password? Password recovery. Recover your password. Home Operating Systems. Vangie Beal. Built on the Windows NT 4. Windows File Protection prevented unauthorised programs from modifying critical system files. Unlike Windows 95 and 98, it lacked real-mode DOS support, but did include the useful System Restore feature, which allowed users to take the system back to a previous stable configuration.

Just as well, because the hurriedly released Windows ME was notorious for being buggy and crash-prone. It could address up to 1. With a couple of Service Packs under its belt, XP - for 'eXPerience' - proved to be one of Microsoft's most successful Windows releases ever: extended support for this durable OS finally ended on April 8 -- an unprecedented 12 and a half years after its launch.

The XP user interface featured an updated two-column Start menu, task-grouping support on the taskbar and the ability to lock the taskbar, among other enhancements -- all presented in a new default Luna visual style. Key new features included Active Directory enhancements; the Manage Your Server tool for administrating server roles; version 6.

Windows Vista had a convoluted gestation, a delayed birth, and a relatively short life, and retains a reputation as a particularly ill-conceived Windows release. The main complaints centred on security features, digital rights management, hardware requirements and performance, and software compatibility.

Despite an extensive beta test program, general availability of Vista came too late for the key Christmas PC-buying period. Features that did ship included the Aero interface, which with the right hardware displayed transparent windows and other visual effects, and a redesigned Start menu. NAP checks that PCs connected to the network are compliant with IT policies, and takes appropriate action if they are not.

Windows 7 is widely regarded as the operating system that Vista should have been. It quickly made inroads into Vista's and XP's market share. Windows 7's main new interface feature was the redesigned taskbar, featuring the translucent Aero look, thumbnail previews with live content, Jump Lists of recently-opened files and Aero Peek for minimising open application windows to view the desktop.

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.

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 graphics card 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.

WDDM also provides video content playback that rivals typical consumer electronics devices. It does this by making it easy to connect to external monitors, providing for protected HD video playback and increasing overall video playback quality.

For the first time in Windows, graphics processing unit GPU multitasking is possible, enabling users to run more than one GPU-intensive application simultaneously.

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. Improved security was a primary design goal for Vista. Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, which aims to improve public trust in its products, has had a direct effect on its development.

This effort has resulted in a number of new security and safety features. UAC is a security technology that makes it possible for users to use their computer with fewer privileges by default, with a view to stopping malware from making unauthorized changes to the system. This was often difficult in previous versions of Windows, as the previous "limited" user accounts proved too restrictive and incompatible with a large proportion of application software, and even prevented some basic operations such as looking at the calendar from the notification tray.

Regular use of the computer such as running programs, printing, or surfing the Internet does not trigger UAC prompts. User Account Control asks for credentials in a Secure Desktop mode, in which the entire screen is dimmed, and only the authorization window is active and highlighted.

The intent is to stop a malicious program misleading the user by interfering with the authorization window, and to hint to the user the importance of the prompt. Symantec used over 2, active malware samples, consisting of backdoors, keyloggers , rootkits, mass mailers, trojan horses, spyware, adware, and various other samples.

Each was executed on a default Windows Vista installation within a standard user account. UAC effectively blocked over 50 percent of each threat, excluding rootkits. Internet Explorer 7 's new security and safety features include a phishing filter, IDN with anti-spoofing capabilities, and integration with system-wide parental controls. For added security, ActiveX controls are disabled by default. Also, Internet Explorer operates in a protected mode, which operates with lower permissions than the user and runs in isolation from other applications in the operating system, preventing it from accessing or modifying anything besides the Temporary Internet Files directory.

Microsoft's anti-spyware product, Windows Defender , has been incorporated into Windows, providing protection against malware and other threats.

Changes to various system configuration settings such as new auto-starting applications are blocked unless the user gives consent. Whereas prior releases of Windows supported per-file encryption using Encrypting File System , the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista include BitLocker Drive Encryption which can protect entire volumes, notably the operating system volume. However, BitLocker requires approximately a 1. In normal circumstances, the only time this partition is accessed is when the computer is booting, or when there is a Windows update that changes files in this area which is a legitimate reason to access this section of the drive.

The area can be a potential security issue, because a hexadecimal editor such as dskprobe. However, as with other full disk encryption technologies, BitLocker is vulnerable to a cold boot attack, especially where TPM is used as a key protector without a boot PIN being required too.

A variety of other privilege-restriction techniques are also built into Vista. An example is the concept of "integrity levels" in user processes, whereby a process with a lower integrity level cannot interact with processes of a higher integrity level and cannot perform DLL—injection to a processes of a higher integrity level. The security restrictions of Windows services are more fine-grained, so that services especially those listening on the network have no ability to interact with parts of the operating system they do not need to.

Obfuscation techniques such as address space layout randomization are used to increase the amount of effort required of malware before successful infiltration of a system. Code Integrity verifies that system binaries have not been tampered with by malicious code. As part of the redesign of the network stack, Windows Firewall has been upgraded, with new support for filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic.

Advanced packet filter rules can be created which can grant or deny communications to specific services. The bit versions of Vista require that all device drivers be digitally signed, so that the creator of the driver can be identified. While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities has highlighted the new user-interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft also adding new deployment and maintenance features:. Windows Vista includes a large number of new application programming interfaces.

Chief among them is the inclusion of version 3. Version 3. These technologies are also available for Windows XP and Windows Server to facilitate their introduction to and usage by developers and end users.

There are also significant new development APIs in the core of the operating system, notably the completely re-architected audio, networking, print, and video interfaces, major changes to the security infrastructure, improvements to the deployment and installation of applications "ClickOnce" and Windows Installer 4. There are some issues for software developers using some of the graphics APIs in Vista.

Games or programs which are built solely on the Windows Vista-exclusive version of DirectX , version 10, cannot work on prior versions of Windows, as DirectX 10 is not available for previous Windows versions. Also, games which require the features of D3D9Ex, the updated implementation of DirectX 9 in Windows Vista are also incompatible with previous Windows versions.

However, hardware overlay is not supported, because it is considered as an obsolete feature in Vista. The "Hardware profiles" startup feature has also been removed, along with support for older motherboard technologies like the EISA bus, APM and Game port support though on the bit version game port support can be enabled by applying an older driver.

Windows Vista does not include the " Luna " visual theme, created in for Windows XP, or most of the classic color schemes which have been part of Windows since the Windows 3. Also the caption buttons are changed. Only Windows Classic can still be found in that operating system. Windows Vista ships in six different editions. These are roughly divided into two target markets, consumer and business, with editions varying to cater for specific sub-markets.

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