Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of computer software operating systems created by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

in response to the growing interest in

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

s (GUIs). All versions of Microsoft Windows are

commercial Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern ...

General information

Basic general information about Windows.

DOS shells

: Has partial

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calcula ...

compatibility with

Win32s Win32s is a 32-bit application runtime environment for the Microsoft Windows 3.1 and 3.11 operating systems. It allowed some 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit operating system using call thunks. A beta version of Win32s was available in Oc ...

Windows 9x

Windows NT

: has also an N-edition : has also an N-edition : has also an N-edition : has a separate x64-edition : has also a Core-edition : has also an edition without HyperV : has also a Core-edition without HyperV

Windows Embedded Compact

Windows Embedded Compact Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is ba ...

(Windows CE) is a variation of Microsoft's Windows operating system for minimalistic computers and embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinctly different kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows. It is supported on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

x86 and compatibles, MIPS, ARM, and

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

SuperH SuperH (or SH) is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems. At t ...

processors.

Windows IoT

The

Windows IoT Windows IoT, formerly Windows Embedded, is a family of operating systems from Microsoft designed for use in embedded systems. Microsoft currently has three different subfamilies of operating systems for embedded devices targeting a wide market, ...

family is the successor to the now-discontinued Windows Embedded family.

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

is Microsoft's discontinued line of operating systems for smartphones.

Windows Phone

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

is Microsoft's discontinued line of operating systems for smartphones.

Technical information

DOS shells

Windows 9x

It is possible to install the

variants 7.0 and 7.1 without the graphics user interface of Windows. If an independent installation of both, DOS and Windows is desired, DOS ought to be installed prior to Windows, at the start of a small partition. The system must be transferred by the (dangerous) "SYSTEM" DOS-command, while the other files constituting DOS can simply be copied (the files located in the DOS-root and the entire COMMAND directory). Such a stand-alone installation of MS-DOS 8 is not possible, as it is designed to work as real mode for Windows Me and nothing else.

Windows NT

The

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Wi ...

kernel powers all recent Windows operating systems. It has run on

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation of ...

x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mo ...

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ...

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM ...

Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comp ...

ARMv7 ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

, and

ARM64 AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture family. It was first introduced with the Armv8-A architecture. Arm releases a new extension every year. ARMv8.x and ARMv9.x extensions and features Announced in October 2011, ...

processors, but currently supported versions run on

, and

Windows Phone

Supported file systems

Various versions of Windows support various

file systems In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

, including:

FAT12 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...

FAT16 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by c ...

FAT32 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...

, HPFS, or

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred f ...

, along with

network file system Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, li ...

s shared from other computers, and the

ISO 9660 ISO 9660 (also known as ECMA-119) is a file system for optical disc media. Being sold by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) the file system is considered an international technical standard. Since the specification is ...

and UDF file systems used for CDs,

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

s, and other

optical disc drives In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only r ...

such as

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of s ...

. Each file system is usually limited in application to certain media, for example CDs must use ISO 9660 or UDF, and as of

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, NTFS is the only file system which the operating system can be installed on.

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (codenamed "''Yamazaki''") is the sixth major release of the Microsoft Windows embedded operating system targeted to enterprise-specific tools such as industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices like digital ...

, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on F ...

onwards support

exFAT exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006 and optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specificat ...

, a file system more suitable for

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since fir ...

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Phone

Hardware requirements

Installing Windows requires an internal or external optical drive, or a USB flash drive. A

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

and

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

are the recommended input devices, though some versions support a

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

. For operating systems prior to Vista, an optical drive must be capable of reading CD media, while in Windows Vista onwards, such a drive must be DVD-compatible. The drive may be detached after installing Windows.

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Phone

Physical memory limits

Maximum limits on

physical memory Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...

(

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

) that Windows can address vary depending on both the Windows version and between

and

versions.

Windows

Windows NT

Security features

Features

Timeline

References

External links

*
Time line from MicrosoftSite about Microsoft Windows history
{{Microsoft Windows family * Microsoft Windows

General information

DOS shells

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Embedded Compact

Windows IoT

Windows Mobile

Windows Phone

Technical information

DOS shells

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Phone

Supported file systems

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Phone

Hardware requirements

Windows 9x

Windows NT

Windows Phone

Physical memory limits

Windows

Windows NT

Security features

Features

Timeline

See also

Other lists

Windows clones and emulators

References

External links