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108-617: Extensible Binary Meta Language ( EBML ) is a generalized file format for any kind of data, aiming to be a binary equivalent to XML . It provides a basic framework for storing data in XML-like tags. It was originally designed as the framework language for the Matroska audio/video container format. EBML is not extensible in the same way that XML is, as the XML schema (e.g., DTD ) must be known in advance. This markup language article

216-741: A web browser . The new service is an attempt at capitalizing on the growing trend, fostered during the COVID-19 pandemic , for businesses to adopt a hybrid remote work environment, in which "employees split their time between the office and home". As the service will be accessible through web browsers, Microsoft will be able to bypass the need to publish the service through Google Play or the Apple App Store . Microsoft announced Windows 365 availability to business and enterprise customers on August 2, 2021. Multilingual support has been built into Windows since Windows 3.0. The language for both

324-434: A byte frequency distribution to build the representative models for file type and use any statistical and data mining techniques to identify file types. There are several types of ways to structure data in a file. The most usual ones are described below. Earlier file formats used raw data formats that consisted of directly dumping the memory images of one or more structures into the file. This has several drawbacks. Unless

432-550: A change which Microsoft promised would provide better performance over its DOS-based predecessors. Windows XP would also introduce a redesigned user interface (including an updated Start menu and a "task-oriented" Windows Explorer ), streamlined multimedia and networking features, Internet Explorer 6 , integration with Microsoft's .NET Passport services, a " compatibility mode " to help provide backwards compatibility with software designed for previous versions of Windows, and Remote Assistance functionality. At retail, Windows XP

540-408: A company logo may be needed both in .eps format (for publishing) and .png format (for web sites). With the extensions visible, these would appear as the unique filenames: " CompanyLogo.eps " and " CompanyLogo.png ". On the other hand, hiding the extensions would make both appear as " CompanyLogo ", which can lead to confusion. Hiding extensions can also pose a security risk. For example,

648-520: A few bytes long. The metadata contained in a file header are usually stored at the start of the file, but might be present in other areas too, often including the end, depending on the file format or the type of data contained. Character-based (text) files usually have character-based headers, whereas binary formats usually have binary headers, although this is not a rule. Text-based file headers usually take up more space, but being human-readable, they can easily be examined by using simple software such as

756-448: A file based on the end of its name, more specifically the letters following the final period. This portion of the filename is known as the filename extension . For example, HTML documents are identified by names that end with .html (or .htm ), and GIF images by .gif . In the original FAT file system , file names were limited to an eight-character identifier and a three-character extension, known as an 8.3 filename . There are

864-401: A file format is to use information regarding the format stored inside the file itself, either information meant for this purpose or binary strings that happen to always be in specific locations in files of some formats. Since the easiest place to locate them is at the beginning, such area is usually called a file header when it is greater than a few bytes , or a magic number if it is just

972-416: A file unusable (or "lose" it) by renaming it incorrectly. This led most versions of Windows and Mac OS to hide the extension when listing files. This prevents the user from accidentally changing the file type, and allows expert users to turn this feature off and display the extensions. Hiding the extension, however, can create the appearance of two or more identical filenames in the same folder. For example,

1080-401: A formal specification document, letting precedent set by other already existing programs that use the format define the format via how these existing programs use it. If the developer of a format does not publish free specifications, another developer looking to utilize that kind of file must either reverse engineer the file to find out how to read it or acquire the specification document from

1188-399: A hierarchical structure, known as a conformance hierarchy. Thus, public.png conforms to a supertype of public.image , which itself conforms to a supertype of public.data . A UTI can exist in multiple hierarchies, which provides great flexibility. In addition to file formats, UTIs can also be used for other entities which can exist in macOS, including: In IBM OS/VS through z/OS ,

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1296-513: 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. Windows 7 has multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows shell with an updated taskbar with revealable jump lists that contain shortcuts to files frequently used with specific applications and shortcuts to tasks within

1404-442: A limited number of three-letter extensions, which can cause a given extension to be used by more than one program. Many formats still use three-character extensions even though modern operating systems and application programs no longer have this limitation. Since there is no standard list of extensions, more than one format can use the same extension, which can confuse both the operating system and users. One artifact of this approach

1512-414: A malicious user could create an executable program with an innocent name such as " Holiday photo.jpg.exe ". The " .exe " would be hidden and an unsuspecting user would see " Holiday photo.jpg ", which would appear to be a JPEG image, usually unable to harm the machine. However, the operating system would still see the " .exe " extension and run the program, which would then be able to cause harm to

1620-610: A modular, portable kernel with preemptive multitasking and support for multiple processor architectures. However, following the successful release of Windows 3.0 , the NT development team decided to rework the project to use an extended 32-bit port of the Windows API known as Win32 instead of those of OS/2. Win32 maintained a similar structure to the Windows APIs (allowing existing Windows applications to easily be ported to

1728-400: A new Windows 365 service in the following month. The new service will allow for cross-platform usage , aiming to make the operating system available for both Apple and Android users. It is a separate service and offers several variations including Windows 365 Frontline, Windows 365 Boot, and the Windows 365 app. The subscription service will be accessible through any operating system with

1836-408: A particular file's format, with each approach having its own advantages and disadvantages. Most modern operating systems and individual applications need to use all of the following approaches to read "foreign" file formats, if not work with them completely. One popular method used by many operating systems, including Windows , macOS , CP/M , DOS , VMS , and VM/CMS , is to determine the format of

1944-579: A program called "Interface Manager". The name "Windows" comes from the fact that the system was one of the first to use graphical boxes to represent programs; in the industry, at the time, these were called "windows" and the underlying software was called "windowing software." It was announced in November 1983 (after the Apple Lisa , but before the Macintosh ) under the name "Windows", but Windows 1.0

2052-510: A redesigned, object oriented user interface, replacing the previous Program Manager with the Start menu , taskbar , and Windows Explorer shell . Windows 95 was a major commercial success for Microsoft; Ina Fried of CNET remarked that "by the time Windows 95 was finally ushered off the market in 2001, it had become a fixture on computer desktops around the world." Microsoft published four OEM Service Releases (OSR) of Windows 95, each of which

2160-441: A sorted index). Also, data must be read from the file itself, increasing latency as opposed to metadata stored in the directory. Where file types do not lend themselves to recognition in this way, the system must fall back to metadata. It is, however, the best way for a program to check if the file it has been told to process is of the correct format: while the file's name or metadata may be altered independently of its content, failing

2268-465: A special version with integrated peer-to-peer networking features and a version number of 3.11, was released. It was sold along with Windows 3.1. Support for Windows 3.1 ended on December 31, 2001. Windows 3.2, released in 1994, is an updated version of the Chinese version of Windows 3.1. The update was limited to this language version, as it fixed only issues related to the complex writing system of

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2376-431: A specialized editor or IDE . However, this feature was often the source of user confusion, as which program would launch when the files were double-clicked was often unpredictable. RISC OS uses a similar system, consisting of a 12-bit number which can be looked up in a table of descriptions—e.g. the hexadecimal number FF5 is "aliased" to PoScript , representing a PostScript file. A Uniform Type Identifier (UTI)

2484-543: A specific base language and are commonly used for more popular languages such as French or Chinese. These languages cannot be downloaded through the Download Center, but are available as optional updates through the Windows Update service (except Windows 8). The interface language of installed applications is not affected by changes in the Windows interface language. The availability of languages depends on

2592-416: A successor to NT 4.0. The Windows NT name was dropped at this point in order to put a greater focus on the Windows brand. The next major version of Windows NT, Windows XP , was released to manufacturing (RTM) on August 24, 2001, and to the general public on October 25, 2001. The introduction of Windows XP aimed to unify the consumer-oriented Windows 9x series with the architecture introduced by Windows NT,

2700-485: A text editor or a hexadecimal editor. As well as identifying the file format, file headers may contain metadata about the file and its contents. For example, most image files store information about image format, size, resolution and color space , and optionally authoring information such as who made the image, when and where it was made, what camera model and photographic settings were used ( Exif ), and so on. Such metadata may be used by software reading or interpreting

2808-502: A value in a company/standards organization database), and the 2 following digits categorize the type of file in hexadecimal . The final part is composed of the usual filename extension of the file or the international standard number of the file, padded left with zeros. For example, the PNG file specification has the FFID of 000000001-31-0015948 where 31 indicates an image file, 0015948

2916-638: A way of identifying what type of file was attached to an e-mail , independent of the source and target operating systems. MIME types identify files on BeOS , AmigaOS 4.0 and MorphOS , as well as store unique application signatures for application launching. In AmigaOS and MorphOS, the Mime type system works in parallel with Amiga specific Datatype system. There are problems with the MIME types though; several organizations and people have created their own MIME types without registering them properly with IANA, which makes

3024-428: A well-designed magic number test is a pretty sure sign that the file is either corrupt or of the wrong type. On the other hand, a valid magic number does not guarantee that the file is not corrupt or is of a correct type. So-called shebang lines in script files are a special case of magic numbers. Here, the magic number is human-readable text that identifies a specific command interpreter and options to be passed to

3132-549: Is a product line of proprietary graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft . It is grouped into families and sub-families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation , Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system . Windows is sold as either a consumer retail product or licensed to third-party hardware manufacturers who sell products bundled with Windows. The first version of Windows, Windows 1.0 ,

3240-654: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . File format Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped images using lossless data compression . Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video , with or without text (such as subtitles ), and metadata . A text file can contain any stream of characters, including possible control characters , and

3348-528: Is a method used in macOS for uniquely identifying "typed" classes of entities, such as file formats. It was developed by Apple as a replacement for OSType (type & creator codes). The UTI is a Core Foundation string , which uses a reverse-DNS string. Some common and standard types use a domain called public (e.g. public.png for a Portable Network Graphics image), while other domains can be used for third-party types (e.g. com.adobe.pdf for Portable Document Format ). UTIs can be defined within

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3456-407: Is a risk that the file format can be misinterpreted. It may even have been badly written at the source. This can result in corrupt metadata which, in extremely bad cases, might even render the file unreadable. A more complex example of file headers are those used for wrapper (or container) file formats. One way to incorporate file type metadata, often associated with Unix and its derivatives,

3564-435: Is an edition of Windows that runs on minimalistic computers , like satellite navigation systems and some mobile phones. Windows Embedded Compact is based on its own dedicated kernel, dubbed Windows CE kernel. Microsoft licenses Windows CE to OEMs and device makers. The OEMs and device makers can modify and create their own user interfaces and experiences, while Windows CE provides the technical foundation to do so. Windows CE

3672-449: Is an extensible scheme of persistent, unique, and unambiguous identifiers for file formats, which has been developed by The National Archives of the UK as part of its PRONOM technical registry service. PUIDs can be expressed as Uniform Resource Identifiers using the info:pronom/ namespace. Although not yet widely used outside of the UK government and some digital preservation programs,

3780-450: Is an unofficial name given to the version of Windows that runs on Xbox consoles. From Xbox One onwards it is an implementation with an emphasis on virtualization (using Hyper-V ) as it is three operating systems running at once, consisting of the core operating system , a second implemented for games and a more Windows-like environment for applications. Microsoft updates Xbox One's OS every month, and these updates can be downloaded from

3888-594: Is encoded in one of various character encoding schemes . Some file formats, such as HTML , scalable vector graphics , and the source code of computer software are text files with defined syntaxes that allow them to be used for specific purposes. File formats often have a published specification describing the encoding method and enabling testing of program intended functionality. Not all formats have freely available specification documents, partly because some developers view their specification documents as trade secrets , and partly because other developers never author

3996-529: Is said to be available to update from qualified Windows 7 with SP1, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices from the Get Windows 10 Application (for Windows 7 , Windows 8.1 ) or Windows Update ( Windows 7 ). In February 2017, Microsoft announced the migration of its Windows source code repository from Perforce to Git . This migration involved 3.5 million separate files in a 300-gigabyte repository. By May 2017, 90 percent of its engineering team

4104-424: Is small, and/or that chunks do not contain other chunks; many formats do not impose those requirements. The information that identifies a particular "chunk" may be called many different things, often terms including "field name", "identifier", "label", or "tag". The identifiers are often human-readable, and classify parts of the data: for example, as a "surname", "address", "rectangle", "font name", etc. These are not

4212-427: Is that the system can easily be tricked into treating a file as a different format simply by renaming it — an HTML file can, for instance, be easily treated as plain text by renaming it from filename.html to filename.txt . Although this strategy was useful to expert users who could easily understand and manipulate this information, it was often confusing to less technical users, who could accidentally make

4320-573: Is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with a 70% market share as of March 2023 , according to StatCounter ; however when including mobile OS es, it is not the most used, in favor of Android . As of today, the most recent version of Windows is Windows 11 for consumer PCs and tablets , Windows 11 Enterprise for corporations, and Windows Server 2025 for servers. Still supported are some editions of Windows 10 , Windows Server 2016 or later (and exceptionally with paid support down to Windows Server 2008 ). As of today,

4428-447: Is the last Windows client operating system to support Itanium. Windows Server line continues to support this platform until Windows Server 2012 ; Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last Windows operating system to support Itanium architecture. On April 25, 2005, Microsoft released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 editions to support x86-64 (or simply x64), the 64-bit version of x86 architecture. Windows Vista

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4536-648: Is the standard number and 000000001 indicates the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Another less popular way to identify the file format is to examine the file contents for distinguishable patterns among file types. The contents of a file are a sequence of bytes and a byte has 256 unique permutations (0–255). Thus, counting the occurrence of byte patterns that is often referred to as byte frequency distribution gives distinguishable patterns to identify file types. There are many content-based file type identification schemes that use

4644-479: Is to store a "magic number" inside the file itself. Originally, this term was used for a specific set of 2-byte identifiers at the beginnings of files, but since any binary sequence can be regarded as a number, any feature of a file format which uniquely distinguishes it can be used for identification. GIF images, for instance, always begin with the ASCII representation of either GIF87a or GIF89a , depending upon

4752-638: The GIF file format required the use of a patented algorithm, and though the patent owner did not initially enforce their patent, they later began collecting royalty fees . This has resulted in a significant decrease in the use of GIFs, and is partly responsible for the development of the alternative PNG format. However, the GIF patent expired in the US in mid-2003, and worldwide in mid-2004. Different operating systems have traditionally taken different approaches to determining

4860-585: The Start screen , which uses large tiles that are more convenient for touch interactions and allow for the display of continually updated information, and a new class of apps which are designed primarily for use on touch-based devices. The new Windows version required a minimum resolution of 1024×768 pixels, effectively making it unfit for netbooks with 800×600-pixel screens. Other changes include increased integration with cloud services and other online platforms (such as social networks and Microsoft's own OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and Xbox Live services),

4968-974: The Windows Driver Model , support for USB composite devices , support for ACPI , hibernation , and support for multi-monitor configurations. Windows 98 also included integration with Internet Explorer 4 through Active Desktop and other aspects of the Windows Desktop Update (a series of enhancements to the Explorer shell which was also made available for Windows 95). In May 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition , an updated version of Windows 98. Windows 98 SE added Internet Explorer 5.0 and Windows Media Player 6.2 amongst other upgrades. Mainstream support for Windows 98 ended on June 30, 2002, and extended support for Windows 98 ended on July 11, 2006. On September 14, 2000, Microsoft released Windows Me (Millennium Edition),

5076-505: The Windows Image Acquisition framework for retrieving images from scanners and digital cameras), additional system utilities such as System File Protection and System Restore , and updated home networking tools. However, Windows Me was faced with criticism for its speed and instability, along with hardware compatibility issues and its removal of real mode DOS support. PC World considered Windows Me to be one of

5184-578: The Windows Store service for software distribution, and a new variant known as Windows RT for use on devices that utilize the ARM architecture , and a new keyboard shortcut for screenshots . An update to Windows 8, called Windows 8.1 , was released on October 17, 2013, and includes features such as new live tile sizes, deeper OneDrive integration, and many other revisions. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have been subject to some criticism, such as

5292-451: The x86 -based personal computer became dominant in the professional world. Windows NT 4.0 and its predecessors supported PowerPC , DEC Alpha and MIPS R4000 (although some of the platforms implement 64-bit computing , the OS treated them as 32-bit). Windows 2000 dropped support for all platforms, except the third generation x86 (known as IA-32 ) or newer in 32-bit mode. The client line of

5400-446: The "Tablet PC" edition (designed for mobile devices meeting its specifications for a tablet computer , with support for stylus pen input and additional pen-enabled applications). Mainstream support for Windows XP ended on April 14, 2009. Extended support ended on April 8, 2014. After Windows 2000, Microsoft also changed its release schedules for server operating systems; the server counterpart of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 ,

5508-471: The ASCII representation formed a sequence of meaningful characters, such as an abbreviation of the application's name or the developer's initials. For instance a HyperCard "stack" file has a creator of WILD (from Hypercard's previous name, "WildCard") and a type of STAK . The BBEdit text editor has a creator code of R*ch referring to its original programmer, Rich Siegel . The type code specifies

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5616-736: The C development environment, which included numerous windows samples. Windows 2.0 was released in December 1987, and was more popular than its predecessor. It features several improvements to the user interface and memory management. Windows 2.03 changed the OS from tiled windows to overlapping windows. The result of this change led to Apple Computer filing a suit against Microsoft alleging infringement on Apple's copyrights (eventually settled in court in Microsoft's favor in 1993). Windows 2.0 also introduced more sophisticated keyboard shortcuts and could make use of expanded memory . Windows 2.1

5724-589: The Chinese language. Windows 3.2 was generally sold by computer manufacturers with a ten-disk version of MS-DOS that also had Simplified Chinese characters in basic output and some translated utilities. The next major consumer-oriented release of Windows, Windows 95 , was released on August 24, 1995. While still remaining MS-DOS-based, Windows 95 introduced support for native 32-bit applications , plug and play hardware, preemptive multitasking , long file names of up to 255 characters, and provided increased stability over its predecessors. Windows 95 also introduced

5832-513: The PUID scheme does provide greater granularity than most alternative schemes. MIME types are widely used in many Internet -related applications, and increasingly elsewhere, although their usage for on-disc type information is rare. These consist of a standardised system of identifiers (managed by IANA ) consisting of a type and a sub-type , separated by a slash —for instance, text/html or image/gif . These were originally intended as

5940-751: The VSAM catalog (prior to ICF catalogs ) and the VSAM Volume Record in the VSAM Volume Data Set (VVDS) (with ICF catalogs) identifies the type of VSAM dataset. In IBM OS/360 through z/OS , a format 1 or 7 Data Set Control Block (DSCB) in the Volume Table of Contents (VTOC) identifies the Dataset Organization ( DSORG ) of the dataset described by it. The HPFS , FAT12, and FAT16 (but not FAT32) filesystems allow

6048-588: The Windows NT family still ran on IA-32 up to Windows 10 (the server line of the Windows NT family still ran on IA-32 up to Windows Server 2008 ). With the introduction of the Intel Itanium architecture ( IA-64 ), Microsoft released new versions of Windows to support it. Itanium versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 were released at the same time as their mainstream x86 counterparts. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition (Version 2003), released in 2003,

6156-430: The Windows interface, and require a certain base language (the language which Windows originally shipped with). This is used for most languages in emerging markets. Full Language Packs, which translate the complete operating system, are only available for specific editions of Windows (Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows Vista and 7, and all editions of Windows 8, 8.1 and RT except Single Language). They do not require

6264-620: The Xbox 360's system is backwards compatible with the original Xbox. Up to and including every version before Windows 2000 , Microsoft used an in-house version control system named Source Library Manager (SLM). Shortly after Windows 2000 was released, Microsoft switched to a fork of Perforce named Source Depot. This system was used up until 2017 once the system could not keep up with the size of Windows. Microsoft had begun to integrate Git into Team Foundation Server in 2013, but Windows (and Office) continued to rely on Source Depot. The Windows code

6372-527: The Xbox Live service to the Xbox and subsequently installed, or by using offline recovery images downloaded via a PC. It was originally based on NT 6.2 (Windows 8) kernel, and the latest version runs on an NT 10.0 base. This system is sometimes referred to as "Windows 10 on Xbox One". Xbox One and Xbox Series operating systems also allow limited (due to licensing restrictions and testing resources) backward compatibility with previous generation hardware, and

6480-457: The application developers themselves. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 introduce a new Language Control Panel where both the interface and input languages can be simultaneously changed, and language packs, regardless of type, can be downloaded from a central location. The PC Settings app in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 also includes a counterpart settings page for this. Changing

6588-437: The application, a home networking system called HomeGroup , and performance improvements. Windows 8 , the successor to Windows 7, was released generally on October 26, 2012. A number of significant changes were made on Windows 8, including the introduction of a user interface based around Microsoft's Metro design language with optimizations for touch-based devices such as tablets and all-in-one PCs. These changes include

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6696-442: The appropriate icons, but these will be located in different places on the storage medium thus taking longer to access. A folder containing many files with complex metadata such as thumbnail information may require considerable time before it can be displayed. If a header is binary hard-coded such that the header itself needs complex interpretation in order to be recognized, especially for metadata content protection's sake, there

6804-454: The command interpreter. Another operating system using magic numbers is AmigaOS , where magic numbers were called "Magic Cookies" and were adopted as a standard system to recognize executables in Hunk executable file format and also to let single programs, tools and utilities deal automatically with their saved data files, or any other kind of file types when saving and loading data. This system

6912-431: The computer. The same is true with files with only one extension: as it is not shown to the user, no information about the file can be deduced without explicitly investigating the file. To further trick users, it is possible to store an icon inside the program, in which case some operating systems' icon assignment for the executable file ( .exe ) would be overridden with an icon commonly used to represent JPEG images, making

7020-419: The data must be entirely parsed by applications. On Unix and Unix-like systems, the ext2 , ext3 , ext4 , ReiserFS version 3, XFS , JFS , FFS , and HFS+ filesystems allow the storage of extended attributes with files. These include an arbitrary list of "name=value" strings, where the names are unique and a value can be accessed through its related name. The PRONOM Persistent Unique Identifier (PUID)

7128-409: The design, mostly because of virtual memory and loadable virtual device drivers ( VxDs ) that allow Windows to share arbitrary devices between multi-tasked DOS applications. Windows 3.0 applications can run in protected mode , which gives them access to several megabytes of memory without the obligation to participate in the software virtual memory scheme. They run inside the same address space, where

7236-430: The destination, the single file received has to be unzipped by a compatible utility to be useful. The problems of handling metadata are solved this way using zip files or archive files. The Mac OS ' Hierarchical File System stores codes for creator and type as part of the directory entry for each file. These codes are referred to as OSTypes. These codes could be any 4-byte sequence but were often selected so that

7344-435: The file during the loading process and afterwards. File headers may be used by an operating system to quickly gather information about a file without loading it all into memory, but doing so uses more of a computer's resources than reading directly from the directory information. For instance, when a graphic file manager has to display the contents of a folder, it must read the headers of many files before it can display

7452-448: The file format's definition. Throughout the 1970s, many programs used formats of this general kind. For example, word-processors such as troff , Script , and Scribe , and database export files such as CSV . Electronic Arts and Commodore - Amiga also used this type of file format in 1985, with their IFF (Interchange File Format) file format. A container is sometimes called a "chunk" , although "chunk" may also imply that each piece

7560-831: The file, each of which is a string, such as "Plain Text" or "HTML document". Thus a file may have several types. The NTFS filesystem also allows storage of OS/2 extended attributes, as one of the file forks , but this feature is merely present to support the OS/2 subsystem (not present in XP), so the Win32 subsystem treats this information as an opaque block of data and does not use it. Instead, it relies on other file forks to store meta-information in Win32-specific formats. OS/2 extended attributes can still be read and written by Win32 programs, but

7668-471: The format of the file, while the creator code specifies the default program to open it with when double-clicked by the user. For example, the user could have several text files all with the type code of TEXT , but each open in a different program, due to having differing creator codes. This feature was intended so that, for example, human-readable plain-text files could be opened in a general-purpose text editor, while programming or HTML code files would open in

7776-463: The format will be identified correctly, and can often determine more precise information about the file. Since reasonably reliable "magic number" tests can be fairly complex, and each file must effectively be tested against every possibility in the magic database, this approach is relatively inefficient, especially for displaying large lists of files (in contrast, file name and metadata-based methods need to check only one piece of data, and match it against

7884-586: The format's developers for a fee and by signing a non-disclosure agreement . The latter approach is possible only when a formal specification document exists. Both strategies require significant time, money, or both; therefore, file formats with publicly available specifications tend to be supported by more programs. Patent law, rather than copyright , is more often used to protect a file format. Although patents for file formats are not directly permitted under US law, some formats encode data using patented algorithms . For example, prior to 2004, using compression with

7992-516: The full Windows feature set. The early versions of Windows are often thought of as graphical shells, mostly because they ran on top of MS-DOS and used it for file system services. However, even the earliest Windows versions already assumed many typical operating system functions; notably, having their own executable file format and providing their own device drivers (timer, graphics, printer, mouse, keyboard and sound). Unlike MS-DOS, Windows allowed users to execute multiple graphical applications at

8100-436: The interface language also changes the language of preinstalled Windows Store apps (such as Mail, Maps and News) and certain other Microsoft-developed apps (such as Remote Desktop). The above limitations for language packs are however still in effect, except that full language packs can be installed for any edition except Single Language, which caters to emerging markets. Windows NT included support for several platforms before

8208-515: The keyboard and the interface can be changed through the Region and Language Control Panel. Components for all supported input languages, such as Input Method Editors , are automatically installed during Windows installation (in Windows XP and earlier, files for East Asian languages, such as Chinese, and files for right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, may need to be installed separately, also from

8316-433: The last DOS-based version of Windows. Windows Me incorporated visual interface enhancements from its Windows NT-based counterpart Windows 2000 , had faster boot times than previous versions (which however, required the removal of the ability to access a real mode DOS environment, removing compatibility with some older programs), expanded multimedia functionality (including Windows Media Player 7, Windows Movie Maker , and

8424-515: The main data and the name, but is also less portable than either filename extensions or "magic numbers", since the format has to be converted from filesystem to filesystem. While this is also true to an extent with filename extensions— for instance, for compatibility with MS-DOS 's three character limit— most forms of storage have a roughly equivalent definition of a file's data and name, but may have varying or no representation of further metadata. Note that zip files or archive files solve

8532-430: The memory images also have reserved spaces for future extensions, extending and improving this type of structured file is very difficult. It also creates files that might be specific to one platform or programming language (for example a structure containing a Pascal string is not recognized as such in C ). On the other hand, developing tools for reading and writing these types of files is very simple. The limitations of

8640-622: The only active top-level family is Windows NT . The first version, Windows NT 3.1 , was intended for server computing and corporate workstations . It grew into a product line of its own and now consists of four sub-families that tend to be released almost simultaneously and share the same kernel. These top-level Windows families are no longer actively developed: The term Windows collectively describes any or all of several generations of Microsoft operating system products. These products are generally categorized as follows: The history of Windows dates back to 1981 when Microsoft started work on

8748-403: The platform), but also supported the capabilities of the existing NT kernel . Following its approval by Microsoft's staff, development continued on what was now Windows NT, the first 32-bit version of Windows. However, IBM objected to the changes, and ultimately continued OS/2 development on its own. Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel . The hybrid kernel

8856-416: The problem of handling metadata. A utility program collects multiple files together along with metadata about each file and the folders/directories they came from all within one new file (e.g. a zip file with extension .zip ). The new file is also compressed and possibly encrypted, but now is transmissible as a single file across operating systems by FTP transmissions or sent by email as an attachment. At

8964-447: The program look like an image. Extensions can also be spoofed: some Microsoft Word macro viruses create a Word file in template format and save it with a .doc extension. Since Word generally ignores extensions and looks at the format of the file, these would open as templates, execute, and spread the virus. This represents a practical problem for Windows systems where extension-hiding is turned on by default. A second way to identify

9072-495: The removal of the Start menu . On September 30, 2014, Microsoft announced Windows 10 as the successor to Windows 8.1. It was released on July 29, 2015, and addresses shortcomings in the user interface first introduced with Windows 8. Changes on PC include the return of the Start Menu, a virtual desktop system, and the ability to run Windows Store apps within windows on the desktop rather than in full-screen mode. Windows 10

9180-754: The said Control Panel). Third-party IMEs may also be installed if a user feels that the provided one is insufficient for their needs. Since Windows 2000, English editions of Windows NT have East Asian IMEs (such as Microsoft Pinyin IME and Microsoft Japanese IME) bundled, but files for East Asian languages may be manually installed on Control Panel. Interface languages for the operating system are free for download, but some languages are limited to certain editions of Windows. Language Interface Packs (LIPs) are redistributable and may be downloaded from Microsoft's Download Center and installed for any edition of Windows (XP or later) – they translate most, but not all, of

9288-819: The same thing as identifiers in the sense of a database key or serial number (although an identifier may well identify its associated data as such a key). With this type of file structure, tools that do not know certain chunk identifiers simply skip those that they do not understand. Depending on the actual meaning of the skipped data, this may or may not be useful ( CSS explicitly defines such behavior). This concept has been used again and again by RIFF (Microsoft-IBM equivalent of IFF), PNG, JPEG storage, DER ( Distinguished Encoding Rules ) encoded streams and files (which were originally described in CCITT X.409:1984 and therefore predate IFF), and Structured Data Exchange Format (SDXF) . Indeed, any data format must somehow identify

9396-420: The same time, through cooperative multitasking . Windows implemented an elaborate, segment-based, software virtual memory scheme, which allows it to run applications larger than available memory: code segments and resources are swapped in and thrown away when memory became scarce; data segments moved in memory when a given application had relinquished processor control. Windows 3.0 , released in 1990, improved

9504-439: The segmented memory provides a degree of protection. Windows 3.0 also featured improvements to the user interface. Microsoft rewrote critical operations from C into assembly . Windows 3.0 was the first version of Windows to achieve broad commercial success, selling 2 million copies in the first six months. Windows 3.1, made generally available on March 1, 1992, featured a facelift. In August 1993, Windows for Workgroups,

9612-899: The significance of its component parts, and embedded boundary-markers are an obvious way to do so: This is another extensible format, that closely resembles a file system ( OLE Documents are actual filesystems), where the file is composed of 'directory entries' that contain the location of the data within the file itself as well as its signatures (and in certain cases its type). Good examples of these types of file structures are disk images , executables , OLE documents TIFF , libraries . Microsoft Windows 24H2 (10.0.26100.2454) (November 21, 2024 ; 5 days ago  ( 2024-11-21 ) ) [±] 23H2 (10.0.22635.4515) (November 22, 2024 ; 4 days ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] 24H2 (10.0.26120.2415) (November 22, 2024 ; 4 days ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] Microsoft Windows

9720-538: The standard to which they adhere. Many file types, especially plain-text files, are harder to spot by this method. HTML files, for example, might begin with the string <html> (which is not case sensitive), or an appropriate document type definition that starts with <!DOCTYPE html , or, for XHTML , the XML identifier, which begins with <?xml . The files can also begin with HTML comments, random text, or several empty lines, but still be usable HTML. The magic number approach offers better guarantees that

9828-438: The storage of "extended attributes" with files. These comprise an arbitrary set of triplets with a name, a coded type for the value, and a value, where the names are unique and values can be up to 64 KB long. There are standardized meanings for certain types and names (under OS/2 ). One such is that the ".TYPE" extended attribute is used to determine the file type. Its value comprises a list of one or more file types associated with

9936-414: The unstructured formats led to the development of other types of file formats that could be easily extended and be backward compatible at the same time. In this kind of file structure, each piece of data is embedded in a container that somehow identifies the data. The container's scope can be identified by start- and end-markers of some kind, by an explicit length field somewhere, or by fixed requirements of

10044-472: The use of this standard awkward in some cases. File format identifiers are another, not widely used way to identify file formats according to their origin and their file category. It was created for the Description Explorer suite of software. It is composed of several digits of the form NNNNNNNNN-XX-YYYYYYY . The first part indicates the organization origin/maintainer (this number represents

10152-465: The worst operating systems Microsoft had ever released, and the fourth worst tech product of all time. In November 1988, a new development team within Microsoft (which included former Digital Equipment Corporation developers Dave Cutler and Mark Lucovsky ) began work on a revamped version of IBM and Microsoft's OS/2 operating system known as "NT OS/2". NT OS/2 was intended to be a secure, multi-user operating system with POSIX compatibility and

10260-407: Was announced as the successor to Windows 10 during a livestream. The new operating system was designed to be more user-friendly and understandable. It was released on October 5, 2021. As of May 2022, Windows 11 is a free upgrade to Windows 10 users who meet the system requirements. In July 2021, Microsoft announced it will start selling subscriptions to virtualized Windows desktops as part of

10368-492: Was available in a number of different editions , and has been subject to some criticism , such as drop of performance, longer boot time, criticism of new UAC, and stricter license agreement. Vista's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 was released in early 2008. On July 22, 2009, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing (RTM) and released to the public three months later on October 22, 2009. Unlike its predecessor, Windows Vista, which introduced

10476-517: Was designed as a modified microkernel , influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but without meeting all of the criteria of a pure microkernel. The first release of the resulting operating system, Windows NT 3.1 (named to associate it with Windows 3.1 ) was released in July 1993, with versions for desktop workstations and servers . Windows NT 3.5

10584-462: Was marketed in two main editions : the "Home" edition was targeted towards consumers, while the "Professional" edition was targeted towards business environments and power users , and included additional security and networking features. Home and Professional were later accompanied by the "Media Center" edition (designed for home theater PCs , with an emphasis on support for DVD playback, TV tuner cards , DVR functionality, and remote controls), and

10692-698: Was not released until November 1985. Windows 1.0 was to compete with Apple 's operating system, but achieved little popularity. Windows 1.0 is not a complete operating system; rather, it extends MS-DOS . The shell of Windows 1.0 is a program known as the MS-DOS Executive . Components included Calculator , Calendar, Cardfile , Clipboard Viewer , Clock, Control Panel , Notepad , Paint , Reversi , Terminal and Write . Windows 1.0 does not allow overlapping windows. Instead, all windows are tiled . Only modal dialog boxes may appear over other windows. Microsoft sold as included Windows Development libraries with

10800-462: Was released in April 2003. It was followed in December 2005, by Windows Server 2003 R2. After a lengthy development process , Windows Vista was released on November 30, 2006, for volume licensing and January 30, 2007, for consumers. It contained a number of new features , from a redesigned shell and user interface to significant technical changes , with a particular focus on security features . It

10908-626: Was released in September 1994, focusing on performance improvements and support for Novell 's NetWare , and was followed up by Windows NT 3.51 in May 1995, which included additional improvements and support for the PowerPC architecture. Windows NT 4.0 was released in June 1996, introducing the redesigned interface of Windows 95 to the NT series. On February 17, 2000, Microsoft released Windows 2000 ,

11016-675: Was released in two different versions: Windows/286 and Windows/386 . Windows/386 uses the virtual 8086 mode of the Intel 80386 to multitask several DOS programs and the paged memory model to emulate expanded memory using available extended memory . Windows/286, in spite of its name, runs on both Intel 8086 and Intel 80286 processors. It runs in real mode but can make use of the high memory area . In addition to full Windows packages, there were runtime-only versions that shipped with early Windows software from third parties and made it possible to run their Windows software on MS-DOS and without

11124-509: Was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The name "Windows" is a reference to the windowing system in GUIs. The 1990 release of Windows 3.0 catapulted its market success and led to various other product families, including the now-defunct Windows 9x , Windows Mobile , Windows Phone , and Windows CE/Embedded Compact . Windows

11232-401: Was roughly equivalent to a service pack . The first OSR of Windows 95 was also the first version of Windows to be bundled with Microsoft's web browser , Internet Explorer . Mainstream support for Windows 95 ended on December 31, 2000, and extended support for Windows 95 ended on December 31, 2001. Windows 95 was followed up with the release of Windows 98 on June 25, 1998, which introduced

11340-586: Was the first client version of Windows NT to be released simultaneously in IA-32 and x64 editions. As of 2024, x64 is still supported. An edition of Windows 8 known as Windows RT was specifically created for computers with ARM architecture , and while ARM is still used for Windows smartphones with Windows 10, tablets with Windows RT will not be updated. Starting from Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) and later includes support for ARM-based PCs. Windows CE (officially known as Windows Embedded Compact ),

11448-579: Was then enhanced with the Amiga standard Datatype recognition system. Another method was the FourCC method, originating in OSType on Macintosh, later adapted by Interchange File Format (IFF) and derivatives. A final way of storing the format of a file is to explicitly store information about the format in the file system, rather than within the file itself. This approach keeps the metadata separate from both

11556-556: Was used in the Dreamcast along with Sega's own proprietary OS for the console. Windows CE was the core from which Windows Mobile was derived. Its successor, Windows Phone 7 , was based on components from both Windows CE 6.0 R3 and Windows CE 7.0 . Windows Phone 8 however, is based on the same NT-kernel as Windows 8. Windows Embedded Compact is not to be confused with Windows XP Embedded or Windows NT 4.0 Embedded , modular editions of Windows based on Windows NT kernel. Xbox OS

11664-420: Was using Git, in about 8500 commits and 1760 Windows builds per day. In June 2021, shortly before Microsoft's announcement of Windows 11, Microsoft updated their lifecycle policy pages for Windows 10, revealing that support for their last release of Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025. On April 27, 2023, Microsoft announced that version 22H2 would be the last of Windows 10. On June 24, 2021, Windows 11

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