Windows XP is a historical Microsoft operating system edition for use on personal computers. Support was discontinued in April 2014. Important note: This tag is exclusively for programming questions directly related to Windows XP; questions about general software issues should be directed to Super User. This tag is for all flavors of XP, including XP Home Edition, XP Professional, XP x64, Itanium-64, XP Embedded, and XP Tablet.
Important Notice: As of April 8, 2014 microsoft has stopped the support for Windows XP. See the official recommendations.
Microsoft Windows XP is the sixth release of the NT series of operating systems. The name "XP" is short for "eXPerience", highlighting the enhanced user experience. Its predecessors are NT 3.1 (released July 1993), NT 3.5 (September 1994), NT 3.51 (May 1995), NT 4.0 nt4 (July 1996), NT 5.0 (February 2000, marketed as Windows 2000 windows-2000). The next in the family is NT 5.1 (October 2001), which is marketed as Windows XP.
Releases before XP targeted enterprise, business, and server installations. XP was the first to be marketed in a variety of editions, and the first NT-derivative to target home and small business use, as well as professional, developer, data center, and a few more. Subsequent product releases do not use the XP title. They are windows-vista (November 2006), windows-server-2008 (February 2008), windows-7 (October 2009), windows-8 (October 2012).
XP features a new task-based GUI. It is also the first version of Windows to use product activation to combat illegal software duplication. Windows XP was released worldwide for retail sale on October 25, 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006. Microsoft released various service packs: SP1, SP2, SP2b, SP2c, and SP3. These added limited features, but mostly fixed bugs and increased system reliability.
XP was packaged in multiple flavors:
- Windows XP Home Edition, designed for home users, and
- Windows XP Professional, designed for business and power users. It contains advanced features that the average home user would not use. However, those features generally are disabled in Home Edition, but are there and can be activated.
Two different 64-bit editions were made available. One, designed specifically for Itanium-based workstations, was introduced in 2001 at around the same time as the Home and Professional editions, but was discontinued a few years later when vendors of Itanium hardware stopped selling workstation-class machines due to low sales. The other, called Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
- Windows XP Embedded: an edition for specific consumer electronics, set-top boxes, kiosks/ATMs, medical devices, arcade video games, point-of-sale terminals, and VoIP components.
- Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (July 2006): a thin client version of Windows XP Embedded which targets older machines (as early as the original Pentium).
- Windows XP Tablet PC Edition was produced for a class of specially designed notebook/laptop computers called tablet PCs. It is compatible with a pen-sensitive screen, supporting handwritten notes and portrait-oriented screens.
- windows-server-2003 released April 2003, internally versioned V5.2
- windows-xp-sp1
- windows-xp-sp2
- windows-xp-sp3
