Four editions of Windows were released, listed here in increasing ranking: Professional , Server , Advanced Server , and Datacenter Server. While each edition of Windows was targeted at a different market, they shared a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications.
Support for people with disabilities has been improved over Windows NT 4. The Windows Server Family has additional features, including the ability to provide Active Directory services a hierarchical framework of resources , Distributed File System a file system that supports sharing of files and fault-redundant storage volumes.
Windows can be installed through either a manual or unattended installation. Unattended installations rely on the use of answer files to fill in installation information, and can be performed through a bootable CD using Microsoft Systems Management Server , by the System Preparation Tool.
Microsoft marketed Windows as the most secure Windows version ever at the time; however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda. Beta 1 of NT 5. On October 27, , Microsoft announced that the name of the final version of the operating system would be Windows , a name which referred to its projected release date.
Windows NT 5. During development, there was a build for the Alpha which was abandoned some time after RC1 after Compaq announced they had dropped support for Windows NT on Alpha.
From here, Microsoft issued three release candidates between July and November , and finally released the operating system to partners on December 12, The public could buy the full version of Windows on February 17, Three days before this event, which Microsoft advertised as "a standard in reliability," a leaked memo from Microsoft reported on by Mary Jo Foley revealed that Windows had "over 63, potential known defects.
However, Abraham Silberschatz et al. Much of this reliability came from maturity in the source code, extensive stress testing of the system, and automatic detection of many serious errors in drivers. Windows was first planned to replace both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4. However, that changed later. Instead, an updated version of Windows 98 called Windows 98 Second Edition was released in and Windows Me was released in late While Windows was designed for businesses, Windows Me was designed for home use.
Close to the release of Windows Service Pack 1, Microsoft released Windows Datacenter Server, targeted at large-scale computing systems with support for 32 processors, on September 29, Microsoft issued the following statement:. As such, it is illegal to post it, make it available to others, download it or use it. Despite the warnings, the archive containing the leaked code spread widely on the file-sharing networks. On February 16, , an exploit "allegedly discovered by an individual studying the leaked source code" for certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer was reported.
The most notable improvement from Windows NT 4. Similar to Windows 9x , Windows supports automatic recognition of installed hardware, hardware resource allocation, loading of appropriate drivers, PnP APIs and device notification events.
The addition of the kernel PnP Manager along with the Power Manager are two significant subsystems added in Windows Windows introduced version 3 print drivers user mode printer drivers.
Driver Verifier was introduced to stress test and catch device driver bugs. Windows introduces layered windows that allow for transparency, translucency and various transition effects like shadows, gradient fills and alpha blended GUI elements to top-level windows. Menus support a new Fade transition effect. The Start Menu in Windows introduces personalized menus , expandable special folders and the ability to launch multiple programs without closing the menu by holding down the SHIFT key.
A Re-sort button forces the entire Start Menu to be sorted by name. The Taskbar introduces support for balloon notifications which can also be used by application developers. Windows Explorer has been enhanced in several ways in Windows This feature was abused by computer viruses that employed malicious scripts, Java applets, or ActiveX controls in folder template files as their infection vector.
Other features new to Explorer include customizable toolbars, auto-complete in address bar and Run box, advanced file type association features and a Places bar in common dialogs. The "Web-style" folders view, with the left Explorer pane displaying details for the object currently selected, is turned on by default in Windows For certain file types, such as pictures and media files, the preview is also displayed in the left pane.
Until the dedicated interactive preview pane appeared in Windows Vista , Windows had been the only Windows release to feature an interactive media player as the previewer for sound and video files, enabled by default. However, such a previewer can be enabled in previous versions of Windows with the Windows Desktop Update installed through the use of folder customization templates.
The default file tooltip displays file title, author, subject and comments; this metadata may be read from a special NTFS stream, if the file is on an NTFS volume, or from an OLE structured storage stream, if the file is a structured storage document.
All Microsoft Office documents since Office 4. File shortcuts can also store comments which are displayed as a tooltip when the mouse hovers over the shortcut. The shell introduces extensibility support through metadata handlers, icon overlay handlers and column handlers in Explorer Details view.
The right pane of Windows Explorer, which usually just lists files and folders, can also be customized. For example, the contents of the system folders aren't displayed by default, instead showing in the right pane a warning to the user that modifying the contents of the system folders could harm their computer.
It's possible to define additional Explorer panes by using DIV elements in folder template files. This degree of customizability is new to Windows ; neither Windows 98 nor the Desktop Update could provide it. The Indexing Service has also been integrated into the operating system and the search pane built into Explorer allows searching files indexed by its database.
Windows supports disk quotas , which can be set via the "Quota" tab found in the hard disk properties dialog box. Microsoft released the version 3. Sparse files allow for the efficient storage of data sets that are very large yet contain many areas that only have zeros.
Reparse points allow the object manager to reset a file namespace lookup and let file system drivers implement changed functionality in a transparent manner. Volume mount points and directory junctions allow for a file to be transparently referred from one file or directory location to another.
It allows any folder or drive on an NTFS volume to be encrypted transparently by the user. To date, its encryption has not been compromised.
EFS works by encrypting a file with a bulk symmetric key also known as the File Encryption Key, or FEK , which is used because it takes less time to encrypt and decrypt large amounts of data than if an asymmetric key cipher were used. The symmetric key used to encrypt the file is then encrypted with a public key associated with the user who encrypted the file, and this encrypted data is stored in the header of the encrypted file. To decrypt the file, the file system uses the private key of the user to decrypt the symmetric key stored in the file header.
It then uses the symmetric key to decrypt the file. Because this is done at the file system level, it is transparent to the user. For a user losing access to their key, support for recovery agents that can decrypt files is built in to EFS. A Recovery Agent is a user who is authorized by a public key recovery certificate to decrypt files belonging to other users using a special private key. By default, local administrators are recovery agents however they can be customized using Group Policy..
Windows introduced the Logical Disk Manager and the diskpart command line tool for dynamic storage. All versions of Windows support three types of dynamic disk volumes along with basic disks : simple volumes , spanned volumes and striped volumes :. In addition to these disk volumes, Windows Server , Windows Advanced Server , and Windows Datacenter Server support mirrored volumes and striped volumes with parity :.
With Windows , Microsoft introduced the Windows 9x accessibility features for people with visual and auditory impairments and other disabilities into the NT-line of operating systems. It also has support for many different locales. Windows included version 7. Microsoft published quarterly updates to DirectX 9. The majority of games written for versions of DirectX 9.
The Windows Computer Management console can perform many system tasks. It is pictured here starting a disk defragmentation. Windows introduced the Microsoft Management Console MMC , which is used to create, save, and open administrative tools. Each of these is called a console , and most allow an administrator to administer other Windows computers from one centralized computer. Each console can contain one or many specific administrative tools, called snap-ins.
These can be either standalone with one function , or an extension adding functions to an existing snap-in. In order to provide the ability to control what snap-ins can be seen in a console, the MMC allows consoles to be created in author mode or user mode. Author mode allows snap-ins to be added, new windows to be created, all portions of the console tree to be displayed and consoles to be saved.
User mode allows consoles to be distributed with restrictions applied. User mode consoles can grant full access to the user for any change, or they can grant limited access, preventing users from adding snapins to the console though they can view multiple windows in a console.
Alternatively users can be granted limited access, preventing them from adding to the console and stopping them from viewing multiple windows in a single console. The main tools that come with Windows can be found in the Computer Management console in Administrative Tools in the Control Panel.
It contains Disk Management and Removable Storage snap-ins, a disk defragmenter as well as a performance diagnostic console, which displays graphs of system performance and configures data logs and alerts. It also contains a service configuration console, which allows users to view all installed services and to stop and start them, as well as configure what those services should do when the computer starts. REGEDIT has a left-side tree view of the Windows registry , lists all loaded hives and represents the three components of a value its name, type, and data as separate columns of a table.
REGEDT32 has a left-side tree view, but each hive has its own window, so the tree displays only keys and it represents values as a list of strings. It is a command line utility that scans system files and verifies whether they were signed by Microsoft and works in conjunction with the Windows File Protection mechanism. It can also repopulate and repair all the files in the Dllcache folder.
The Recovery Console is run from outside the installed copy of Windows to perform maintenance tasks that can neither be run from within it nor feasibly be run from another computer or copy of Windows It is usually used to recover the system from problems that cause booting to fail, which would render other tools useless, like Safe Mode or Last Known Good Configuration, or chkdsk. Windows introduced Windows Script Host 2.
Screenshot of Windows Server When users try to access a network share off the DFS root, the user is really looking at a DFS link and the DFS server transparently redirects them to the correct file server and share. Domain-based DFS roots exist within Active Directory and can have their information distributed to other domain controllers within the domain — this provides fault tolerance to DFS.
DFS roots that exist on a domain must be hosted on a domain controller or on a domain member server. A new way of organizing Windows network domains , or groups of resources, called Active Directory, is introduced with Windows to replace Windows NT's earlier domain model.
Active Directory's hierarchical nature allowed administrators a built-in way to manage user and computer policies and user accounts, and to automatically deploy programs and updates with a greater degree of scalability and centralization than provided in previous Windows versions.
It is one of the main reasons many corporations migrated to Windows User information stored in Active Directory also provided a convenient phone book-like function to end users. Active Directory domains can vary from small installations with a few hundred objects, to large installations with millions. Active Directory can organise and link groups of domains into a contiguous domain name space to form trees.
Groups of trees outside of the same namespace can be linked together to form forests. Active Directory services could always be installed on a Windows Server , Advanced Server , or Datacenter Server computer, and cannot be installed on a Windows Professional computer. However, Windows Professional is the first client operating system able to exploit Active Directory's new features.
As part of an organization's migration, Windows NT clients continued to function until all clients were upgraded to Windows Professional, at which point the Active Directory domain could be switched to native mode and maximum functionality achieved. The amount of time the operating system has been on the market has allowed Microsoft to fix any issues that arise for the newer Windows versions which is why some users choose to keep the older Windows version.
Microsoft Corporation is betting that its new Windows for business and soon to be released Windows Millennium for consumers will meet those needs with flying colors. Microsoft no longer supports Windows Professional as of July 13, , So, updates, hotfixes, and phone support are no longer offered for this product, The users with Windows on a machine may encounter an issue that cannot be fixed, Windows users should consider upgrading to avoid loss of support features.
Windows requires the users to log on using a name and password, and it uses that log-on authentication to control the file access, and the hardware compatibility and system requirements make Windows an iffy choice for antiquated hardware, and just because the hardware is new, It does not make it compatible with Windows The users can not uninstall Windows Professional like Windows 98, If the installation does not work, their only recourse is to wipe out everything by reformatting the disk drive and reinstalling the operating system and all their applications.
The users who want Windows should purchase a computer that comes with it and all the necessary peripherals installed, Those who want better performance should invest in a faster processor or a memory upgrade. Windows 10 advantages and disadvantages. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Windows 7? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Windows XP? The advantages and disadvantages of Windows 8. Windows Vista operating system features, advantages and disadvantages.
May 6, August 19, May 3, You must be logged in to post a comment. Uses of the concave mirror and the convex mirror in our daily life. Advantages and disadvantages of using robots in our life. Robot teachers uses, advantages and disadvantages. The Environment. The positive and negative effects of cars. Motorola Moto E4 Plus review , advantages , disadvantages and specifications.
0コメント