21 years of Windows XP. Let’s remember how it was

In the fall of 2001, a significant event happened in my life: Microsoft invited me to the official presentation of its recently released Windows XP operating system. The event was held under the slogan “Windows XP is a lifestyle change”, and in general I agreed with this wording. First of all, because I got acquainted with this OS at the stage when it was called Microsoft Codename Whistler – in fact, thanks to participation in the beta testing program, I got to this holiday of life. And the first release of Windows XP saw the light even earlier, on August 24, 2001, that is, exactly 21 years ago.

In internal Microsoft documentation, this version of the OS was referred to as Windows NT 5.1, and given that Windows NT 5.0 had the commercial designation Windows 2000, the XP version (from the word “eXPerience”, “experience”) was its deep modification. The goal was to make business- and commercial-oriented Windows 2000 Professional more user-friendly, adding the convenience and simplicity of the outdated Win9X line, while retaining the inherent reliability of NT. Initially, Microsoft planned to develop two independent OS branches on the NT platform – Neptune as a “home” edition, with an emphasis on games and multimedia, and Odessey – for corporate users. But the parallel development of the two families of Windows required too many resources, and in January 2000 they were merged into a common project, code-named “Whistler” – after the town of the same name in British Columbia, where Microsoft employees liked to spend time skiing.

The first alpha version of Windows Whistler, shown in April 2000 at the WinHEC conference, differed little from the regular Windows 2000 Professional both in terms of interface and internal content. It featured some elements from Neptune, including an updated logon screen, a built-in CD burner, a prototype Fast User Switching mechanism… and, perhaps, everything. The closed beta started in June 2000, and the first public beta, designated Build 2296 (beta 1), appeared on October 31st. There were still some mentions of Windows 2000 in it, and the system was still quite “raw”. One of the funniest bugs in this build was that icons pinned by the user in the updated Main Menu were then unable to be unpinned back without fiddling with tambourine system registry.

In beta2 (Build 2405), more serious changes have already been outlined: testing of the Microsoft Product Activation mechanism has begun, and a product key was required during installation of the system. The OS included Internet Explorer 6, Windows Media Player 8 and a Search Companion (search assistant) that will accompany all subsequent Whistler builds until the final release. I remember that this novelty almost gave me a heart attack: at some point, the computer began to make terrible grinding sounds, very similar to the sound of a dying hard drive. It turned out that the rattle comes from the speakers, and its source is the dog from the search panel, which, being left unattended, begins to comb out fleas with a characteristic sound. Beta 2 introduced the Aquarelle theme, a forerunner of the future Luna theme, which was not yet ready at this stage, and was added a little later, in public build 2428.

By the Release Candidate 1 version, the system has already taken on the form we are used to. On the bootscreen and in the About window, instead of “Microsoft Whistler”, the official “Windows XP” already appeared, and in build 2469, instead of the Red moon desert wallpaper with a scarlet desert dune, which became familiar to beta testers, “Serenity” debuted for the first time.

By the way, the author of these two arts is the same – Charles O’Rear. And if the wallpaper of Bliss depicts a green hill in Sonoma County, California (on the title picture for this article, by the way, it is captured only 20 years later), then in the beta version of Windows XP there was a night photograph of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa. In daylight, the same place looks like this.

With Release Candidate 2, released on July 27, 2001, Windows XP took on its final form, leaving only minor rough edges for Microsoft to fix. At the same time, a global marketing program was launched to promote and promote the new operating system, on which Microsoft, together with its partners from Intel, AMD, ASUS and Lenovo, planned to spend more than $1 billion. Influencers and big-name stars were recruited for the ad, including Madonna with her song Ray of Light, which was used in the Windows XP TV commercial in North America. The slogan of the new system was the phrase “prepare to fly”, but after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, it was hastily replaced with “Yes, you can” (Yes, you can).

Before the official release, Microsoft released several more test builds under the general name Pre-RTM (2531 – 2542). It is noteworthy that in builds 2531 and 2332, a dull blue-gray picture with the original name “Windows XP” was used as the default wallpaper, but already in build 2535, “Serenity” was returned to its rightful place.

The Release to Manufacturers (RTM) release on August 24, 2001 included build 2600, which became the first and main official build of Windows XP. On this day, a pathetic event took place in Redmond, to which representatives of the largest PC manufacturers were invited. They were solemnly handed leather briefcases with a Windows XP distribution disk, drunk champagne and sent home on specially rented helicopters. From that moment, the record of the Windows XP era began, which ended on April 8, 2014 with the end of extended support for this system.

Who cares, but personally I really miss the “three-pane” Explorer from the early builds of Whistler, in which the tree structure of disks and folders on the computer was displayed in a separate plug-in panel, which was very convenient. Later, for some reason, it was replaced with a standard “two-pane” version, which survived in a slightly modified form until Windows 11. Windows XP is rightfully considered the most successful and reliable version of Windows from the entire NT line, and is still used on millions of computers and laptops around the world. all over the world, despite their more than mature age.

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