Table of Content
If Windows is not activated within 30 days of installation, the OS will cease to function until it is activated. If significant hardware changes are detected, the activation is voided, and Windows must be re-activated. If you are installing Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, you can use a Windows XP Media Center Edition Product key or a Windows XP Professional product key. A machine running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition cannot be directly upgraded to Windows Vista, because the 64 bit Vista DVD mistakenly recognizes XP x64 as a 32-bit system. XP x64 does qualify the customer to use an upgrade copy of Windows Vista or Windows 7, but it must be installed as a clean install.
And speaking of Microsoft accounts, another big turn off that the article fails to mention is you can’t use 11 Home without one. That said, there are some exciting new features coming to Windows 11 including support for Widgets, new Window snapping behavior, the ability to run Android apps on your PC, and much more. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Timesand Reader's Digest, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek.
Media Center Edition
Consumer interest has been low, with roughly 1,500 units shipped to OEMs, and no reported sales to consumers. Windows XP is remotely exploitable by numerous security holes that were discovered after Microsoft stopped supporting it. Two specialized variants of XP were introduced in 2002 for certain types of hardware, exclusively through OEM channels as pre-loaded software.
As of July 2005, Windows XP 64-Bit Edition is no longer supported, and no further security updates were made available. Media Center Edition was the only consumer-oriented edition of Windows XP that was updated with new features on an annual basis during the five-year development of Windows Vista. The MCE 2005 release, for example, includes an update to Windows Movie Maker that supports burning DVDs, a new visual style called "Royale", support for Media Center Extenders, and SoundSpectrum's G-Force sound visualizations.
Service Pack 1
It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and business users and Windows Me for home users, available for any devices running Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows Me that meet the new Windows XP system requirements. Unlike Windows CE, Microsoft's operating system for portable devices and consumer electronics, XP Embedded provides the full Windows API, and support for the full range of applications and device drivers written for Microsoft Windows. The system requirements state that XPe can run on devices with at least 32 MB Compact Flash, 32 MB RAM and a P-200 microprocessor. As of October 2008, the newest release is Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 3. This edition was discontinued in January 2005, after Hewlett-Packard, the last distributor of Itanium-based workstations, stopped selling Itanium systems marketed as 'workstations'.
There is also session restore for picking up wherever you stopped or in the rare instance that the browser crashes. It also comes with an HTML editor, an IRC client, ChatZilla, and web development tools. While these may not appeal to casual users, they are helpful to advanced users, web developers, and corporate users.
Deprecations[edit | edit source]
Windows XP's longevity was viewed as testament to its stability and Microsoft's successful attempts to keep it up to date, but also as an indictment of its direct successor's perceived failings. On March 8, 2014, Microsoft deployed an update for XP that, on the 8th of each month, displays a pop-up notification to remind users about the end of support; however, these notifications may be disabled by the user. Microsoft also partnered with Laplink to provide a special "express" version of its PCmover software to help users migrate files and settings from XP to a computer with a newer version of Windows. The third and final Service Pack, SP3, was released through different channels between April and June 2008, about a year after the release of Windows Vista, and about a year before the release of Windows 7. Service Pack 3 was not available for Windows XP x64 Edition, which was based on the Windows Server 2003 kernel and, as a result, used its service packs rather than the ones for the other editions. The Start menu received its first major overhaul in XP, switching to a two-column layout with the ability to list, pin, and display frequently used applications, recently opened documents, and the traditional cascading "All Programs" menu.
The former allows you to record any dynamic content on a web page and save it on your local drive. The latter supports photo editing, including filter effects and frames. Speaking of downloads, the browser also has an in-built YouTube video downloader. You can download any YouTube video to your hard drive in any resolution or format and extract mp3 files from the downloaded video file.
Included software
These were originally shipped as add-ons to Windows XP to enhance the users experience of their Windows XP machine. Similarly, specialized devices that run XP, particularly medical devices, must have any revisions to their software—even security updates for the underlying operating system—approved by relevant regulators before they can be released. For this reason, manufacturers often did not allow any updates to devices' operating systems, leaving them open to security exploits and malware.
Two distinct editions of Windows XP were released to support 64-bit hardware. According to a Microsoft press release, Windows XP Starter is "a low-cost introduction to the Microsoft Windows XP operating system designed for first-time desktop PC users in developing countries." Like the European Commission decision, this decision was based on the grounds that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the market to push other products onto consumers. Unlike that decision, however, Microsoft was also forced to withdraw the non-compliant versions of Windows from the South Korean market.
However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs producing what it defined as "ultra low-cost personal computers", particularly netbooks, until one year after the availability of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009. Analysts felt that the move was primarily intended to compete against Linux-based netbooks, although Microsoft's Kevin Hutz stated that the decision was due to apparent market demand for low-end computers with Windows. The maximum amount of RAM that Windows XP can support varies depending on the product edition and the processor architecture. All 32-bit editions of XP support up to 4 GB, except the Windows XP Starter edition, which supports up to 512 MB of RAM.
Tablet PC Edition is a superset of Windows XP Professional, the difference being tablet functionality, including alternate text input and basic drivers for support of tablet PC specific hardware. Requirements to install Tablet PC Edition include a tablet digitizer or touchscreen device, and hardware control buttons including a Ctrl-Alt-Delete shortcut button, scrolling buttons, and at least one user-configurable application button. Media Center has higher hardware requirements than other editions of Windows XP. MCE 2005 requires at least a 1.6 GHz processor, DirectX 9.0 hardware-accelerated GPU , and 256 MB of system RAM. Some functionality, such as Media Center Extender support, use of multiple tuners, or HDTV playback/recording carries higher system requirements.
However, in January 2000, both projects were scrapped in favor of a single OS codenamed "Whistler", which would serve as a single platform for both consumer and business markets. As a result, Windows XP is the first consumer edition of Windows not based on the Windows 95 kernel and MS-DOS. Windows XP removed support for PC-98, i486 and SGI Visual Workstation 320 and 540 and will only run on 32-bit x86 CPUs and devices which use BIOS firmware. Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001.
So, how is disabling activation synonymous with ‘activating’ Windows XP? This is most certainly the last resort you should opt for, especially if you wish to bypass the whole process of Windows XP activation. A patch released in May 2019 to address a critical code execution vulnerability in Remote Desktop Services which can be exploited in a similar way as the WannaCry vulnerability. While this ability was first introduced in Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, it had to be activated through the "register server" and was only available to administrator users, whereas Windows XP has it activated out of the box and also grants it to regular users. Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 is derived from WEPOS since Microsoft at the time of its development did not have a componentized version of Windows Vista.
The K and KN editions of Windows XP Home Edition and Professional Edition were released in August 2006, and are only available in English and Korean. Both editions contain links to third-party instant messenger and media player software. The installation file is 36MB, and it requires less than 300MB RAM space.
