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Windows XP Released
October 25, 2001 Microsoft releases the operating system Windows XP, the successor to both Windows 2000 and Windows ME. Designed to unify the Windows NT line and Windows 95 line of operating systems, Windows XP was not replaced by Microsoft until January 2007 with Windows Vista. However, with a nearly six-year run and the public debacle…
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Windows Gets Blasted
August 11, 2003 The Blaster worm, also known as MSBlast or Lovesan, begins to spread on the Internet, infecting Windows XP and Windows 2000 computers. The primary symptom of the worm was the crashing of the RPC service, which would trigger the computer to shut itself down and reboot as shown in the graphic. Microsoft…
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Windows Hits Version 2.1
May 27, 1988 Microsoft releases 2 versions of Windows 2.1 – One for 286 computers and one for 386 computers. Do you remember this version of Windows? No? Not many people do. It wasn’t until version 3 that Windows had any sort of appreciable user base. Windows Hits Version 2.1 is original content of This…
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Windows 98 is Plug and … Whoa?
April 20, 1998 During the COMDEX Spring ’98 and Windows World shows in Chicago, a public demonstration of the soon-to-be released Windows 98 goes awry when Bill Gates’ assistant causes the operating system to crash after plugging in a scanner. Instead of showing the plug-and-play capabilities they were trying to demonstrate, a “Blue Screen of…
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Windows 3.1 Released
April 6, 1992 Microsoft releases Windows 3.1, priced at $ 149.00, selling three million copies over the next two months. Windows 3.1 added multimedia extensions allowing support for sound cards, MIDI, and CD Audio, Super VGA (800 x 600) monitors, and increased the speed of modem it would support to 9600 bps. For many of us that…
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Windows 2000 Introduced
February 17, 2000 Microsoft introduces the latest version of the Windows NT line of operating systems, Windows 2000. While Windows 2000 did bring plug and play to the Windows NT line, it was targeted to the business market and not the consumer. It was not until Windows XP that Microsoft merged the NT line with…
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Windows Refund Day
February 15, 1999 Hundreds of computer owners (dominated by Linux users) march on Microsoft’s offices demanding refunds for the copies of Windows that came pre-installed on their computers. This day came to be known as Windows Refund Day. The post Windows Refund Day appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech…
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Windows Vista Released; Users Exodus
January 30, 2007 Six years after the launch of Windows XP, the infamous operating system, Windows Vista, was released to an unsuspecting public. For various reasons, the launch of Vista was marred by numerous incompatibility, stability, and otherwise onerous problems. While Microsoft actually made Vista much more palatable after 2 Service Pack upgrades, the damage…
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Windows 2.0 Released
December 9, 1987 Microsoft releases version 2.0 of Windows. The most notable feature of Windows 2.0 was that application windows could overlap each other, unlike in Windows 1.0. The terminology of “Minimize” and “Maximize” was also introduced in Windows 2.0. Windows 2.0 was a relatively obscure operating system, as the popularity of Windows did not…
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Windows 95 Released
August 24, 1995 Kicking off one of the largest product launches in technology history, Microsoft releases the highly anticipated Windows 95. More than one million copies will be sold in the first four days of its release. The post Windows 95 Released appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech History…