130-435: Windows Me ( Millennium Edition ) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windows 98 , and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and then to retail on September 14, 2000. It was Microsoft's main operating system for home users until the introduction of its successor Windows XP on October 25, 2001. Windows Me
260-497: A Safe removal applet for removable storage devices. Windows 2000 SP4 added native USB 2.0 support, Wireless Zero Configuration support and SSE3 support. Windows 2000 is also the first Windows version to support hibernation at the operating system level (OS-controlled ACPI S4 sleep state) unlike Windows 98 which required special drivers from the hardware manufacturer or driver developer. A new capability designed to protect critical system files called Windows File Protection
390-452: A Windows Interface Source Environment partner. Microsoft issued the following statement: "Microsoft source code is both copyrighted and protected as a trade secret. 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, 2004, an exploit "allegedly discovered by an individual studying
520-428: A system call to perform a block I/O write operation, then the system call might execute the following instructions: While the writing takes place, the operating system will context switch to other processes as normal. When the device finishes writing, the device will interrupt the currently running process by asserting an interrupt request . The device will also place an integer onto the data bus. Upon accepting
650-486: A business-oriented operating system seven months earlier, into the graphical user interface, shell and Windows Explorer . Although Windows Me was still ultimately based around MS-DOS like its predecessors, access to real-mode DOS was restricted to decrease system boot time. Windows Me was initially positively received when it was released; however, it soon garnered a more infamous reputation from many users due to numerous stability problems. In October 2001, Windows XP
780-399: A cache stored in a separate "DLLCACHE" directory, or from the original install media. Microsoft recognized that a serious error (a Blue Screen of Death or stop error) could cause problems for servers that needed to be constantly running and so provided a system setting that would allow the server to automatically reboot when a stop error occurred. Also included is an option to dump any of
910-645: A computer even if they are not compatible with the base operating system. A library operating system (libOS) is one in which the services that a typical operating system provides, such as networking, are provided in the form of libraries and composed with a single application and configuration code to construct a unikernel : a specialized (only the absolute necessary pieces of code are extracted from libraries and bound together ), single address space , machine image that can be deployed to cloud or embedded environments. The operating system code and application code are not executed in separated protection domains (there
1040-585: A development of MULTICS for a single user. Because UNIX's source code was available, it became the basis of other, incompatible operating systems, of which the most successful were AT&T 's System V and the University of California 's Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). To increase compatibility, the IEEE released the POSIX standard for operating system application programming interfaces (APIs), which
1170-586: A different market, they share a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications. Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 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 . For ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching
1300-497: A file to be transparently referred from one file or directory location to another. Windows 2000 also introduces a Distributed Link Tracking service to ensure file shortcuts remain working even if the target is moved or renamed. The target object's unique identifier is stored in the shortcut file on NTFS 3.0 and Windows can use the Distributed Link Tracking service for tracking the targets of shortcuts, so that
1430-470: 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
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#17327796523121560-459: A follow-up article he stated that it was "clear that the decision [...] actually changed". Beta 3 was released on April 11, 2000, and this version marked the first appearance of its final startup and shutdown sounds derived from Windows 2000 , as the previous betas used Windows 98's startup and shutdown sounds. Although Microsoft signed off on the final build of Windows Me on June 28, 2000, after trialing three Release Candidate builds with testers,
1690-484: A large legal settlement was paid. In the twenty-first century, Windows continues to be popular on personal computers but has less market share of servers. UNIX operating systems, especially Linux, are the most popular on enterprise systems and servers but are also used on mobile devices and many other computer systems. On mobile devices, Symbian OS was dominant at first, being usurped by BlackBerry OS (introduced 2002) and iOS for iPhones (from 2007). Later on,
1820-442: A library with no protection between applications, such as eCos . A hypervisor is an operating system that runs a virtual machine . The virtual machine is unaware that it is an application and operates as if it had its own hardware. Virtual machines can be paused, saved, and resumed, making them useful for operating systems research, development, and debugging. They also enhance portability by enabling applications to be run on
1950-447: A malformed machine instruction . However, the most common error conditions are division by zero and accessing an invalid memory address . Users can send messages to the kernel to modify the behavior of a currently running process. For example, in the command-line environment , pressing the interrupt character (usually Control-C ) might terminate the currently running process. To generate software interrupts for x86 CPUs,
2080-733: A new 'mini' boot screen, and removed the 'dark space' theme in the logo. The Windows NT 5.0 betas had very long startup and shutdown sounds, though these were changed in the early Windows 2000 beta, but during Beta 3, a new piano -made startup and shutdown sounds were made, composed by Steven Ray Allen. It was featured in the final version as well as in Windows Me . The new login prompt from the final version made its first appearance in Beta 3 build 1946 (the first build of Beta 3). The new, updated icons (for My Computer , Recycle Bin etc.) first appeared in Beta 3 build 1964. The Windows 2000 boot screen in
2210-455: A particular application's memory is stored, or even whether or not it has been allocated yet. In modern operating systems, memory which is accessed less frequently can be temporarily stored on a disk or other media to make that space available for use by other programs. This is called swapping , as an area of memory can be used by multiple programs, and what that memory area contains can be swapped or exchanged on demand. Virtual memory provides
2340-421: 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. CHKDSK has significant performance improvements. Windows 2000 comes with two utilities to edit
2470-588: 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 4.0 make use of structured storage , so their metadata
2600-503: A program does not interfere with memory already in use by another program. Since programs time share, each program must have independent access to memory. Cooperative memory management, used by many early operating systems, assumes that all programs make voluntary use of the kernel 's memory manager, and do not exceed their allocated memory. This system of memory management is almost never seen any more, since programs often contain bugs which can cause them to exceed their allocated memory. If
2730-408: A program fails, it may cause memory used by one or more other programs to be affected or overwritten. Malicious programs or viruses may purposefully alter another program's memory, or may affect the operation of the operating system itself. With cooperative memory management, it takes only one misbehaved program to crash the system. Memory protection enables the kernel to limit a process' access to
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#17327796523122860-440: A program tries to access memory that is not accessible memory, but nonetheless has been allocated to it, the kernel is interrupted (see § Memory management ) . This kind of interrupt is typically a page fault . When the kernel detects a page fault it generally adjusts the virtual memory range of the program which triggered it, granting it access to the memory requested. This gives the kernel discretionary power over where
2990-470: A significant amount of CPU time. Direct memory access (DMA) is an architecture feature to allow devices to bypass the CPU and access main memory directly. (Separate from the architecture, a device may perform direct memory access to and from main memory either directly or via a bus.) When a computer user types a key on the keyboard, typically the character appears immediately on the screen. Likewise, when
3120-691: A simple command-line interface , used to check and repair the hard drive(s), repair boot information (including NTLDR ), replace corrupted system files with fresh copies from the CD, or enable/disable services and drivers for the next boot. The console can be accessed in either of the two ways: Windows 2000 introduced Windows Script Host 2.0 which included an expanded object model and support for logon and logoff scripts. The Windows 2000 Server family consists of Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Small Business Server, and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. All editions of Windows 2000 Server have
3250-402: A specific moment in time. Hard real-time systems require exact timing and are common in manufacturing , avionics , military, and other similar uses. With soft real-time systems, the occasional missed event is acceptable; this category often includes audio or multimedia systems, as well as smartphones. In order for hard real-time systems be sufficiently exact in their timing, often they are just
3380-417: A user moves a mouse , the cursor immediately moves across the screen. Each keystroke and mouse movement generates an interrupt called Interrupt-driven I/O . An interrupt-driven I/O occurs when a process causes an interrupt for every character or word transmitted. Devices such as hard disk drives , solid-state drives , and magnetic tape drives can transfer data at a rate high enough that interrupting
3510-453: A variation of the classic reader/writer problem . The writer receives a pipe from the shell for its output to be sent to the reader's input stream. The command-line syntax is alpha | bravo . alpha will write to the pipe when its computation is ready and then sleep in the wait queue. bravo will then be moved to the ready queue and soon will read from its input stream. The kernel will generate software interrupts to coordinate
3640-418: Is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers . In the personal computer market, as of September 2024 , Microsoft Windows holds a dominant market share of around 73%. macOS by Apple Inc. is in second place (15%), Linux is in third place (5%), and ChromeOS
3770-562: Is remote direct memory access , which enables each CPU to access memory belonging to other CPUs. Multicomputer operating systems often support remote procedure calls where a CPU can call a procedure on another CPU, or distributed shared memory , in which the operating system uses virtualization to generate shared memory that does not physically exist. A distributed system is a group of distinct, networked computers—each of which might have their own operating system and file system. Unlike multicomputers, they may be dispersed anywhere in
3900-484: Is a change away from the currently running process. Similarly, both hardware and software interrupts execute an interrupt service routine . Software interrupts may be normally occurring events. It is expected that a time slice will occur, so the kernel will have to perform a context switch . A computer program may set a timer to go off after a few seconds in case too much data causes an algorithm to take too long. Software interrupts may be error conditions, such as
4030-817: 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 2000 introduced the Logical Disk Manager and the diskpart command line tool for dynamic storage . All versions of Windows 2000 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 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server support mirrored volumes and striped volumes with parity : With Windows 2000, Microsoft introduced
Windows Me - Misplaced Pages Continue
4160-422: Is difficult to define, but has been called "the layer of software that manages a computer's resources for its users and their applications ". Operating systems include the software that is always running, called a kernel —but can include other software as well. The two other types of programs that can run on a computer are system programs —which are associated with the operating system, but may not be part of
4290-564: Is displayable in the Windows 2000 Explorer default tooltip . 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 2000 Explorer, which usually just lists files and folders, can also be customized. For example,
4420-644: Is great and the enhancements added are really worth the wait." The new features that Windows Me introduced were also praised and have since remained part of subsequent Windows versions. Along with Windows 2000 from the Windows NT family, Windows Me was the last version of Windows that lacked product activation . Operating system An operating system ( OS ) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs . Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of
4550-896: Is in fourth place (2%). In the mobile sector (including smartphones and tablets ), as of September 2023 , Android's share is 68.92%, followed by Apple's iOS and iPadOS with 30.42%, and other operating systems with .66%. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors. Other specialized classes of operating systems (special-purpose operating systems), such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. Security-focused operating systems also exist. Some operating systems have low system requirements (e.g. light-weight Linux distribution ). Others may have higher system requirements. Some operating systems require installation or may come pre-installed with purchased computers ( OEM -installation), whereas others may run directly from media (i.e. live CD ) or flash memory (i.e. USB stick). An operating system
4680-581: Is integrated into Windows 2000 Explorer, unlike the separate search dialog found in all previous Explorer versions. 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. Microsoft released the version 3.0 of NTFS (sometimes incorrectly called "NTFS 5" in relation to the kernel version number) as part of Windows 2000; this introduced disk quotas (provided by QuotaAdvisor), file-system-level encryption , sparse files and reparse points . Sparse files allow for
4810-526: Is not installed upon first boot, but is retained if upgrading from the original release of Windows 98 to Windows 98 Second Edition or Windows Me. Windows Me, like Windows 98 Second Edition, did not ship with the WinG API or RealPlayer 4.0, unlike the original release of Windows 98, due to both of these having been superseded by DirectX and Windows Media Player, respectively. Windows Me could have its components upgraded or have new components installed up to
4940-536: Is noteworthy that the first preview build of Windows XP (then codenamed "Whistler") was released to developers on July 13, 2000, two months before Windows Me's general availability date. Microsoft originally planned to end support for Windows Me on December 31, 2004. However, in order to give customers more time to migrate to newer Windows versions, particularly in developing or emerging markets, Microsoft decided to extend support until July 11, 2006. Microsoft ended support for Windows Me (and Windows 98) on this date because
5070-443: Is only a single application running, at least conceptually, so there is no need to prevent interference between applications) and OS services are accessed via simple library calls (potentially inlining them based on compiler thresholds), without the usual overhead of context switches , in a way similarly to embedded and real-time OSes. Note that this overhead is not negligible: to the direct cost of mode switching it's necessary to add
5200-499: Is supported by most UNIX systems. MINIX was a stripped-down version of UNIX, developed in 1987 for educational uses, that inspired the commercially available, free software Linux . Since 2008, MINIX is used in controllers of most Intel microchips , while Linux is widespread in data centers and Android smartphones. The invention of large scale integration enabled the production of personal computers (initially called microcomputers ) from around 1980. For around five years,
5330-473: Is that they do not load user-installed software. Consequently, they do not need protection between different applications, enabling simpler designs. Very small operating systems might run in less than 10 kilobytes , and the smallest are for smart cards . Examples include Embedded Linux , QNX , VxWorks , and the extra-small systems RIOT and TinyOS . A real-time operating system is an operating system that guarantees to process events or data by or at
Windows Me - Misplaced Pages Continue
5460-649: Is the first Windows NT release to include Active Desktop , first introduced as a part of Internet Explorer 4.0 (specifically Windows Desktop Update ), and only pre-installed in Windows 98 by that time. It allowed users to customize the way folders look and behave by using HTML templates, having the file extension HTT . This feature was abused by computer viruses that employed malicious scripts, Java applets, or ActiveX controls in folder template files as their infection vector. Two such viruses are VBS/Roor-C and VBS.Redlof.a. The "Web-style" folders view, with
5590-547: Is the first system to integrate these two programs into a single utility, adopting the REGEDIT behavior with the additional NT features. The System File Checker (SFC) also comes with Windows 2000. 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
5720-435: Is the part of the operating system that provides protection between different applications and users. This protection is key to improving reliability by keeping errors isolated to one program, as well as security by limiting the power of malicious software and protecting private data, and ensuring that one program cannot monopolize the computer's resources. Most operating systems have two modes of operation: in user mode ,
5850-575: Is viewed as one of the worst operating systems of all time, being unfavorably compared to its immediate predecessor and successor. A PC World article dubbed Windows Me the "Mistake Edition" and placed it 4th in their "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006. The article states: "Shortly after Me appeared in late 2000, users reported problems installing it, getting it to run, getting it to work with other hardware or software, and getting it to stop running." Consequently, most home users remained with Windows 98 , while some moved to Windows 2000 despite
5980-542: The CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was the most popular operating system for microcomputers. Later, IBM bought the DOS (Disk Operating System) from Microsoft . After modifications requested by IBM, the resulting system was called MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System) and was widely used on IBM microcomputers. Later versions increased their sophistication, in part by borrowing features from UNIX. Apple 's Macintosh
6110-746: The DirectX API , commonly used by game developers on Windows 98 . The last version of DirectX that was released for Windows 2000 was DirectX 9.0c (Shader Model 3.0), which shipped with Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft published quarterly updates to DirectX 9.0c through the February 2010 release after which support was dropped in the June 2010 SDK. These updates contain bug fixes to the core runtime and some additional libraries such as D3DX , XAudio 2 , XInput and Managed DirectX components. The majority of games written for versions of DirectX 9.0c (up to
6240-504: The INT assembly language instruction is available. The syntax is INT X , where X is the offset number (in hexadecimal format) to the interrupt vector table . To generate software interrupts in Unix-like operating systems, the kill(pid,signum) system call will send a signal to another process. pid is the process identifier of the receiving process. signum is
6370-800: The Microsoft Management Console (MMC), UDF support, the Encrypting File System (EFS), Logical Disk Manager , Image Color Management 2.0, support for PostScript 3 -based printers, OpenType (.OTF) and Type 1 PostScript (.PFB) font support (including a new font— Palatino Linotype —to showcase some OpenType features ), the Data protection API (DPAPI), an LDAP / Active Directory -enabled Address Book , usability enhancements and multi-language and locale support. Windows 2000 also introduced USB device class drivers for USB printers, Mass storage class devices , and improved FireWire SBP-2 support for printers and scanners, along with
6500-709: The Original Xbox and the Xbox 360 use a modified version of Windows 2000 as their system software . Windows 2000, originally named Windows NT 5.0, is a continuation of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems, replacing Windows NT 4.0 . Chairman and CEO Bill Gates was originally "pretty confident" Windows NT 5.0 would ship in the first half of 1998, revealing that the first set of beta builds had been shipped in early 1997; these builds were identical to Windows NT 4.0. The first official beta
6630-427: The Windows registry , REGEDIT.EXE and REGEDT32.EXE . REGEDIT has been directly ported from Windows 98 , and therefore does not support editing registry permissions. REGEDT32 has the older multiple document interface (MDI) and can edit registry permissions in the same manner that Windows NT's REGEDT32 program could. REGEDIT has a left-side tree view of the Windows registry , lists all loaded hives and represents
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#17327796523126760-1213: The ZIP folders , the Spider Solitaire game and Internet Explorer 6 by default, all while being based on the Windows NT kernel, which on XP was an evolution of the one in Windows 2000 . Windows Me featured the shell enhancements inherited from Windows 2000 such as personalized menus, customizable Windows Explorer toolbars, auto-complete in Windows Explorer address bar and Run box, Windows 2000 advanced file type association features, displaying comments in shortcuts as tooltips, extensible columns in Details view (IColumnProvider interface), icon overlays, integrated search pane in Windows Explorer, sort by name function for menus, Places bar in common dialogs for Open and Save , cascading Start menu special folders , some Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes, and updated graphics. The notification area in Windows Me and later supported 16-bit high color icons. The Multimedia control panel
6890-420: The transistor in the mid-1950s, mainframes began to be built. These still needed professional operators who manually do what a modern operating system would do, such as scheduling programs to run, but mainframes still had rudimentary operating systems such as Fortran Monitor System (FMS) and IBSYS . In the 1960s, IBM introduced the first series of intercompatible computers ( System/360 ). All of them ran
7020-648: The "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option in the shutdown dialog box ; however, unless patched unofficially with third-party software, Windows Me cannot be booted to MS-DOS real mode. Unlike previous versions of Windows 9x, Windows Me was entirely aimed at home users, and thus had certain enterprise -oriented features removed. Several features of its predecessors did not work or were officially unsupported by Microsoft on Windows Me, including Automated Installation, Active Directory client services, System Policy Editor, Personal Web Server and ASP . These features were supported on
7150-410: The CPU for every byte or word transferred, and having the CPU transfer the byte or word between the device and memory, would require too much CPU time. Data is, instead, transferred between the device and memory independently of the CPU by hardware such as a channel or a direct memory access controller; an interrupt is delivered only when all the data is transferred. If a computer program executes
7280-474: The CPU to re-enter supervisor mode , placing the kernel in charge. This is called a segmentation violation or Seg-V for short, and since it is both difficult to assign a meaningful result to such an operation, and because it is usually a sign of a misbehaving program, the kernel generally resorts to terminating the offending program, and reports the error. Windows versions 3.1 through ME had some level of memory protection, but programs could easily circumvent
7410-510: 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. A DFS root can only exist on a Windows 2000 version that is part of the server family, and only one DFS root can exist on that server. There can be two ways of implementing a DFS namespace on Windows 2000: either through a standalone DFS root or a domain-based DFS root. Standalone DFS allows for only DFS roots on
7540-674: The February 2010 release) can therefore run on Windows 2000. Windows 2000 included the same games as Windows NT 4.0 did: FreeCell , Minesweeper , Pinball , and Solitaire . Windows 2000 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 2000 computers from one centralised 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
7670-704: The OEM channel and then were superseded by the final versions of Server 2003. Windows 2000 introduced many of the new features of Windows 98 and 98 SE into the NT line, such as the Windows Desktop Update , Internet Explorer 5 ( Internet Explorer 6 , which followed in 2001, is also available for Windows 2000), Outlook Express , NetMeeting , FAT32 support, SSE and SSE2 support, Windows Driver Model , Internet Connection Sharing , Windows Media Player 6.4, WebDAV support etc. Certain new features are common across all editions of Windows 2000, among them NTFS 3.0,
7800-829: The Windows 9x accessibility features for people with visual and auditory impairments and other disabilities into the NT-line of operating systems. These included: Additionally, Windows 2000 introduced the following new accessibility features: Windows 2000 introduced the Multilingual User Interface (MUI). Besides English , Windows 2000 incorporates support for Arabic , Armenian , Baltic , Central European, Cyrillic , Georgian , Greek , Hebrew , Indic , Japanese , Korean , simplified Chinese , Thai , traditional Chinese , Turkic , Vietnamese and Western European languages. It also has support for many different locales. Windows 2000 included version 7.0 of
7930-656: The Windows Update v4 website. An independent project named Windows Update Restored aims to restore the Windows Update websites for older versions of Windows, including Windows Me. Microsoft announced in July 2019 that the Microsoft Internet Games services on Windows Me (and XP) would end on July 31, 2019. Windows Me initially received generally positive reviews, with reviewers citing the operating system's integrity protection (branded as "PC Health") and
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#17327796523128060-425: The Windows equivalent of a log file , a system information utility, a backup utility , Task Scheduler and management consoles to view open shared folders and shared folder sessions, configure and manage COM+ applications, configure Group Policy , manage all the local users and user groups, and a device manager . It contains Disk Management and Removable Storage snap-ins, a disk defragmenter as well as
8190-540: 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
8320-835: 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 2000 Explorer introduces customizable Windows Explorer toolbars, auto-complete in Windows Explorer address bar and Run box, advanced file type association features, displaying comments in shortcuts as tooltips, extensible columns in Details view (IColumnProvider interface), icon overlays, integrated search pane in Windows Explorer, sort by name function for menus, and Places bar in common dialogs for Open and Save . Windows Explorer has been enhanced in several ways in Windows 2000. It
8450-538: The application program, which then interacts with the user and with hardware devices. However, in some systems an application can request that the operating system execute another application within the same process, either as a subroutine or in a separate thread, e.g., the LINK and ATTACH facilities of OS/360 and successors . An interrupt (also known as an abort , exception , fault , signal , or trap ) provides an efficient way for most operating systems to react to
8580-524: The case of Me was that the OS was designed for consumers. However, Thurrott alleged that the real motivation behind both case to force software developers to move to Windows 2000 . Three days later, following a write-in and call-in campaign by hundreds of readers, Microsoft announced that Windows Me (including development versions) would ship to MSDN subscribers after all. Microsoft also apologized personally to Thurrott, claiming he received misinformation, though in
8710-491: The company considered the operating system to be obsolete and prone to security risks, and recommended customers to upgrade to a newer version of Windows such as Windows XP for the latest security improvements. Retail availability for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003. The operating system is no longer available from Microsoft in any form (through MSDN or otherwise) due to the terms of Java-related settlements Microsoft made with Sun Microsystems . In 2011, Microsoft retired
8840-453: The computer's memory. Various methods of memory protection exist, including memory segmentation and paging . All methods require some level of hardware support (such as the 80286 MMU), which does not exist in all computers. In both segmentation and paging, certain protected mode registers specify to the CPU what memory address it should allow a running program to access. Attempts to access other addresses trigger an interrupt, which causes
8970-729: 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 2000 can be found in the Computer Management console (in Administrative Tools in the Control Panel). This contains the Event Viewer —a means of viewing system or application-related events and
9100-509: 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 2000; neither Windows 98 nor the Desktop Update could provide it. The new DHTML-based search pane
9230-471: The details of how interrupt service routines behave vary from operating system to operating system. However, several interrupt functions are common. The architecture and operating system must: A software interrupt is a message to a process that an event has occurred. This contrasts with a hardware interrupt — which is a message to the central processing unit (CPU) that an event has occurred. Software interrupts are similar to hardware interrupts — there
9360-485: 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. Reparse points are used to implement volume mount points , junctions , Hierarchical Storage Management , Native Structured Storage and Single Instance Storage . Volume mount points and directory junctions allow for
9490-404: 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 into EFS. A Recovery Agent
9620-418: The end of support on July 13, 2010, the same day that support ended for Windows XP SP2 . Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server were succeeded by Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 , released in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Although unreleased, it was developed on Alpha in alpha, beta, and release candidate versions. Its successor, Windows XP , only supports x86 , x64 and Itanium processors. Both
9750-462: The environment variables, and any other commands present are moved into a Windows registry key (see below). The two files thus contain only settings and preferences which configure the "global environment" for the computer during the boot phase or when starting a new virtual DOS machine (VDM). To specify or edit other startup values (which, in Windows 98, would be present in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file)
9880-422: The environment. Interrupts cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a control flow change away from the currently running program to an interrupt handler , also known as an interrupt service routine (ISR). An interrupt service routine may cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a context switch . The details of how a computer processes an interrupt vary from architecture to architecture, and
10010-573: 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 2000. 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 . It includes commands like fixmbr , which are not present in MS-DOS. It has
10140-484: The final retail release was pushed back to September 14 for reasons that were not clear. Shortly after Windows Me was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, Microsoft launched a marketing campaign to promote it in the U.S., which they dubbed the Meet Me Tour . A national partnered promotional program featured the new OS, OEMs and other partners in an interactive multimedia attraction in 25 cities. Windows Me
10270-655: The final version first appeared in Beta 3 build 1983. Windows 2000 did not have an actual codename because, according to Dave Thompson of Windows NT team, " Jim Allchin didn't like codenames". , although Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 was codenamed "Asteroid". During development, builds for the Alpha architecture were compiled, but the project was abandoned in the final stages of development (between RC1 and RC2 ) after Compaq announced they had dropped support for Windows NT on Alpha. From here, Microsoft issued three release candidates between July and November 1999, and finally released
10400-418: The first 64 KB of memory to disk (the smallest amount of memory that is useful for debugging purposes, also known as a minidump), a dump of only the kernel's memory, or a dump of the entire contents of memory to disk, as well as write that this event happened to the Windows 2000 event log . In order to improve performance on servers running Windows 2000, Microsoft gave administrators the choice of optimizing
10530-473: The first officially released 64-bit version of Windows was Windows XP 64-Bit Edition , released alongside the 32-bit editions of Windows XP on October 25, 2001, followed by the server versions Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition and later Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition , which were based on the pre-release Windows Server 2003 (then known as Windows .NET Server ) codebase. These editions were released in 2002, were shortly available through
10660-490: The following services and features built in: The Server editions include more features and components, including the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS), Active Directory support and fault-tolerant storage. The Distributed File System (DFS) allows shares in multiple different locations to be logically grouped under one folder, or DFS root . When users try to access a network share off
10790-410: The hardware checks that the software is only executing legal instructions, whereas the kernel has unrestricted powers and is not subject to these checks. The kernel also manages memory for other processes and controls access to input/output devices. The operating system provides an interface between an application program and the computer hardware, so that an application program can interact with
10920-493: The hardware only by obeying rules and procedures programmed into the operating system. The operating system is also a set of services which simplify development and execution of application programs. Executing an application program typically involves the creation of a process by the operating system kernel , which assigns memory space and other resources, establishes a priority for the process in multi-tasking systems, loads program binary code into memory, and initiates execution of
11050-418: The indirect pollution of important processor structures (like CPU caches , the instruction pipeline , and so on) which affects both user-mode and kernel-mode performance. The first computers in the late 1940s and 1950s were directly programmed either with plugboards or with machine code inputted on media such as punch cards , without programming languages or operating systems. After the introduction of
11180-564: The installation to continue working with somewhat larger amounts of RAM as well. The maximum amount of memory the operating system is designed to use is up to 1 GB of RAM. Systems with more than 1.5 GB of RAM may continuously reboot during startup. Compared with other releases of Windows, Windows Me had a short shelf-life of just over a year. Windows 2000 and Windows Me were eventually succeeded by newer Microsoft operating systems: Windows Me by Windows XP Home Edition , and Windows 2000 Professional by Windows XP Professional . Windows XP
11310-404: The interrupt request, the operating system will: When the writing process has its time slice expired, the operating system will: With the program counter now reset, the interrupted process will resume its time slice. Among other things, a multiprogramming operating system kernel must be responsible for managing all system memory which is currently in use by the programs. This ensures that
11440-402: The introduction of Active Directory , which in the years following became a widely used directory service in business environments. Four editions of Windows 2000 have been released: Professional , Server , Advanced Server , and Datacenter Server ; the latter was both released to manufacturing and launched months after the other editions. While each edition of Windows 2000 is targeted at
11570-465: The kernel PnP Manager along with the Power Manager are two significant subsystems added in Windows 2000. Windows 2000 introduced version 3 print drivers (user mode printer drivers) based on Unidrv , which made it easier for printer manufacturers to write device drivers for printers. Generic support for 5-button mice is also included as standard and installing IntelliPoint allows reassigning
11700-431: The kernel—and applications—all other software. There are three main purposes that an operating system fulfills: With multiprocessors multiple CPUs share memory. A multicomputer or cluster computer has multiple CPUs, each of which has its own memory . Multicomputers were developed because large multiprocessors are difficult to engineer and prohibitively expensive; they are universal in cloud computing because of
11830-515: The last iteration of Windows to use the Windows 9x kernel, with the intention for the next consumer-focused version to be based on the Windows NT kernel, unifying the two branches of Windows. However, it soon became apparent that the development work involved was too great to meet the aim of releasing before the end of 2000, particularly given the ongoing parallel work on the eventually-canceled Neptune project. The Consumer Windows development team
11960-487: The latest versions: The /nm setup switch can be used at the DOS command line to bypass the minimum system requirement checks, allowing for installation on a CPU as low as the 16 MHz 80486SX . Windows Me is only designed to handle up to 512 MB of RAM without changes. Systems with larger RAM pools may lose stability; however, depending on the hardware and software configuration, it is sometimes possible to manually tweak
12090-463: The latter being enterprise-oriented. System Restore suffered from a bug in the date-stamping functionality that could cause System Restore to incorrectly date-stamp snapshots that were taken after September 8, 2001. This could prevent System Restore from locating these snapshots and cause the system restore process to fail. Microsoft released an update to fix this problem. Byron Hinson and Julien Jay, writing for ActiveWin, took an appreciative look on
12220-399: The leaked source code" for certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer was reported. On April 15, 2015, GitHub took down a repository containing a copy of the Windows NT 4.0 source code that originated from the leak. Microsoft planned to release in 2000 a version of Windows 2000, specially codenamed "Janus", which would run on 64-bit Intel Itanium microprocessors . However,
12350-524: The left Explorer pane displaying details for the object currently selected, is turned on by default in Windows 2000. 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 2000 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
12480-400: The memory allocated to a different one. Around the same time, teleprinters began to be used as terminals so multiple users could access the computer simultaneously. The operating system MULTICS was intended to allow hundreds of users to access a large computer. Despite its limited adoption, it can be considered the precursor to cloud computing . The UNIX operating system originated as
12610-578: The menu structure in Windows 2000. While some were simply moved to a different location, certain functionality of the Go menu, as well as the Find command on the Tools menu, are no longer available. For the latter change Microsoft recommends using a variety of similar functionality labeled Search. The Active Channels Channel bar from the original release of Windows 98 was removed like with Windows 98 Second Edition and
12740-408: The need to use it. A general protection fault would be produced, indicating a segmentation violation had occurred; however, the system would often crash anyway. The use of virtual memory addressing (such as paging or segmentation) means that the kernel can choose what memory each program may use at any given time, allowing the operating system to use the same memory locations for multiple tasks. If
12870-477: The new System Restore feature as steps forward for home users. Despite this, however, users' real-world experience did not bear this out, with industry publications receiving myriad reports of problems with the "PC Health" systems, PCs refusing to shut down cleanly, and general stability problems. As time went on, reception of Windows Me became more negative, to the point where it was heavily panned by users, mainly due to stability issues. Retrospectively, Windows Me
13000-419: The new Help and Support feature that would appear in the final version. Three more Development Previews were released over the subsequent two months. The first beta version was released to testers and the industry press on September 24, 1999, with the second coming on November 24 that year. Beta 2 showed the first real changes from Windows 98, including importing much of the look-and-feel from Windows 2000, and
13130-408: The open-source Android operating system (introduced 2008), with a Linux kernel and a C library ( Bionic ) partially based on BSD code, became most popular. The components of an operating system are designed to ensure that various parts of a computer function cohesively. With the de facto obsoletion of DOS , all user software must interact with the operating system to access hardware. The kernel
13260-432: The operating system to partners on December 12, 1999, followed by manufacturing three days later on December 15. The public could buy the full version of Windows 2000 on February 17, 2000. 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 2000 had "over 63,000 potential known defects." After Foley's article
13390-738: The operating system's memory and processor usage patterns for background services or for applications. Windows 2000 also introduced core system administration and management features, such as the Windows Installer , Windows Management Instrumentation and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) into the operating system. The most notable improvement from Windows NT 4.0 is the addition of Plug and Play with full ACPI and Windows Driver Model support. Similar to Windows 9x , Windows 2000 supports automatic recognition of installed hardware, hardware resource allocation, loading of appropriate drivers, PnP APIs and device notification events. The addition of
13520-533: The operating system. On the removal of real mode DOS support, they had noted "The removal of DOS has clearly made a difference in Windows Me in terms of stability (far less Blue Screens of Death are seen now) and booting speed has greatly increased." In a recommendation of the operating system upgrade for users of Windows 95 and 98, they had stated "If Windows Me isn't a revolutionary OS it's clear that Microsoft has focused its efforts to make it more user-friendly, stable and packed full of multimedia options. The result
13650-421: The piping. Signals may be classified into 7 categories. The categories are: Input/output (I/O) devices are slower than the CPU. Therefore, it would slow down the computer if the CPU had to wait for each I/O to finish. Instead, a computer may implement interrupts for I/O completion, avoiding the need for polling or busy waiting. Some computers require an interrupt for each character or word, costing
13780-455: The previous versions of Windows 9x. A Resource Kit publication, targeted towards system administrators, was never published for Windows Me. Other features that were removed or never updated to work with Windows Me included Microsoft Fax , QuickView and DriveSpace , as well as the GUI FAT32 conversion tool. Several Windows Explorer commands were also modified in Windows Me, matching
13910-485: The programmable buttons. Windows 98 lacked generic support. Driver Verifier was introduced to stress test and catch device driver bugs. Windows 2000 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 2000 introduces personalized menus , expandable special folders and
14040-523: The programmer or the user with the perception that there is a much larger amount of RAM in the computer than is really there. Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0 , and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, officially released to retail on February 17, 2000 for all versions, and on September 26, 2000 for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. It
14170-414: The release "our tests show the successor to Windows NT 4.0 is everything we hoped it would be. Of course, it isn't perfect either." Wired News later described the results of the February launch as "lackluster." Novell criticized Microsoft's Active Directory , the new directory service architecture, as less scalable or reliable than its own Novell Directory Services (NDS) alternative. Windows 2000
14300-507: The removal of real-mode DOS. Industry expert Paul Thurrott reviewed Beta 2 upon release and spoke positively of it in a review. By early 2000, Windows Me was reportedly behind schedule, and an interim build containing the new automatic update feature was released to allay concerns about a delayed-release. In February 2000, Paul Thurrott revealed that Microsoft had planned to exclude Windows Me, as well as new releases of Windows NT 4.0 , from CD shipments for MSDN subscribers. The reason given in
14430-418: The same operating system— OS/360 —which consisted of millions of lines of assembly language that had thousands of bugs . The OS/360 also was the first popular operating system to support multiprogramming , such that the CPU could be put to use on one job while another was waiting on input/output (I/O). Holding multiple jobs in memory necessitated memory partitioning and safeguards against one job accessing
14560-611: The shortcut file may be silently updated if the target moves, even to another hard drive. The Encrypting File System (EFS) introduced strong file system -level encryption to Windows. It allows any folder or drive on an NTFS volume to be encrypted transparently by the user. EFS works together with the EFS service, Microsoft's CryptoAPI and the EFS File System Runtime Library (FSRTL). To date, its encryption has not been compromised. EFS works by encrypting
14690-400: The signal number (in mnemonic format) to be sent. (The abrasive name of kill was chosen because early implementations only terminated the process.) In Unix-like operating systems, signals inform processes of the occurrence of asynchronous events. To communicate asynchronously, interrupts are required. One reason a process needs to asynchronously communicate to another process solves
14820-400: The size of the machine needed. The different CPUs often need to send and receive messages to each other; to ensure good performance, the operating systems for these machines need to minimize this copying of packets . Newer systems are often multiqueue —separating groups of users into separate queues —to reduce the need for packet copying and support more concurrent users. Another technique
14950-442: The system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time , mass storage , peripherals, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation , the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or
15080-533: The system would neither boot into an MS-DOS command prompt nor exit to DOS from Windows; real mode drivers such as ANSI.SYS could not be loaded and older applications that require real mode could not be run. Microsoft argued that the change improved the speed and reliability of the boot process. In Windows Me, the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files are used only to set global environment variables . The two files (if present) are scanned for settings relating to
15210-420: 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. REGEDIT supports right-clicking of entries in a tree view to adjust properties and other settings. REGEDT32 requires all actions to be performed from the top menu bar . Windows XP
15340-550: The user must edit the following Windows registry key: For troubleshooting and crash recovery, both the Windows Me CD-ROM and the Windows Me startup disk (a user-creatable floppy disk, known as the Emergency Boot Disk (EBD)) allowed booting into real mode MS-DOS. It is possible to restore real mode DOS functionality through various unofficial means. Additionally, a registry setting exists that re-enables
15470-473: The world. Middleware , an additional software layer between the operating system and applications, is often used to improve consistency. Although it functions similarly to an operating system, it is not a true operating system. Embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems , whether they are internet of things objects or not connected to a network. Embedded systems include many household appliances. The distinguishing factor
15600-494: Was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until the introduction of Windows XP Professional in 2001. Windows 2000 introduces NTFS 3.0, Encrypting File System , and basic and dynamic disk storage. Support for people with disabilities is improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new assistive technologies , and Microsoft increased support for different languages and locale information. The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features, most notably
15730-426: Was also updated from Windows 98. Taskbar and Start Menu options allowed disabling of the drag and drop feature and could prevent moving or resizing the taskbar, which was easier for new users. Windows Me restricted support for real mode MS-DOS . As a result, IO.SYS in Windows Me disregards CONFIG.SYS , COMMAND.COM and WIN.COM and directly executes VMM32.VXD . In its default configuration
15860-546: Was initially planned to replace both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 . However, this would be changed later, as an updated version of Windows 98 called Windows 98 Second Edition was released in 1999. On or shortly before February 12, 2004, "portions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 source code were illegally made available on the Internet." The source of the leak was later traced to Mainsoft ,
15990-497: Was introduced. This protects critical Windows system files by preventing programs other than Microsoft's operating system update mechanisms such as the Package Installer , Windows Installer and other update components from modifying them. The System File Checker utility provides users the ability to perform a manual scan of the integrity of all protected system files, and optionally repair them, either by restoring from
16120-467: Was published, she claimed that Microsoft blacklisted her for a considerable time. However, Abraham Silberschatz et al. claim in their computer science textbook that "Windows 2000 was the most reliable, stable operating system Microsoft had ever shipped to that point. 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." InformationWeek summarized
16250-428: Was released for retail sale on September 14, 2000. At launch time, Microsoft announced a time-limited promotion from September 2000 to January 2001 which entitled Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE users to upgrade to Windows Me for $ 59.95 instead of the regular retail upgrade price of $ 109. Non-upgrade versions cost $ 209, the same as Windows 98 on its release. In October 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP , which also included
16380-577: Was released in September 1997, followed by Beta 2 in August 1998. On October 27, 1998, Microsoft announced that the name of the final version of the operating system would be Windows 2000, a name which referred to its projected release date. Windows 2000 Beta 3 was released in May 1999. Windows NT 5.0 Beta 1 was similar to Windows NT 4.0, including a very similarly themed logo. Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 introduced
16510-469: Was released to the public, having already been under development at the time of Windows Me's release, and incorporated most, but not all, of the features of Windows Me, while being far more stable due to being based on the Windows NT kernel. Mainstream support for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006. At the 1998 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates stated that Windows 98 would be
16640-515: Was targeted specifically at home PC users, and included Internet Explorer 5.5 (which could later be upgraded to Internet Explorer 6 ), Windows Media Player 7 (which could later be upgraded to Windows Media Player 9 Series), DirectX 7 (which could later be upgraded to DirectX 9) and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy to use for consumers. Microsoft also incorporated features first introduced in Windows 2000 , which had been released as
16770-406: Was the first popular computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI proved much more user friendly than the text-only command-line interface earlier operating systems had used. Following the success of Macintosh, MS-DOS was updated with a GUI overlay called Windows . Windows later was rewritten as a stand-alone operating system, borrowing so many features from another ( VAX VMS ) that
16900-423: Was therefore re-tasked with improving Windows 98 while porting some of the look-and-feel from Windows 2000. Microsoft President Steve Ballmer publicly announced these changes at the next Windows HEIC in 1999. On July 23, 1999, the first alpha version of Windows Me was released to testers. Known as Development Preview 1, it was very similar to Windows 98 SE, with the only major change being a very early iteration of
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