{
  "id": "microsoft-windows",
  "title": "Microsoft Windows",
  "lang": "en",
  "source_lang": "en",
  "summary": "Microsoft Windows is a family of proprietary operating systems, from the MS-DOS-based graphical shell of 1985 to the NT-based Windows 11, used on PCs, servers and embedded devices.",
  "category": "computer-science",
  "subcategory": "software",
  "type": "product",
  "aliases": [
    "Windows",
    "Microsoft Windows operating system",
    "Windows NT family (broader lineage)"
  ],
  "generated_at": "2026-10-07",
  "model": "pro/claude-haiku-5-5",
  "url": "https://aiwiki.page/en/microsoft-windows/",
  "translations": {
    "zh-Hans": {
      "url": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/microsoft-windows/",
      "json": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/microsoft-windows.json"
    }
  },
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "",
      "text": "Microsoft Windows is a family of proprietary graphical operating systems developed by Microsoft for personal computers, servers, and embedded hardware. The name comes from the overlapping, resizable windows of its user interface, which first shipped in 1985 as a layer on top of MS-DOS. Since the early 2000s, every desktop release has been built on the Windows NT kernel, a design that began in 1993 and gave the family its multitasking, security, and multi-user foundations. Windows remains one of the most widely deployed operating systems in history, and its APIs, file formats, and hardware expectations have shaped the wider computing industry, including hardware makers, software developers, and enterprise IT practice.\n\nThis entry traces the product line from its MS-DOS origins through the creation of Windows NT, the consolidation under Windows XP, and the later Vista, Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11 releases. It then explains the technical architecture, covering the kernel, process and memory management, file systems, the registry, and security, followed by the user interface, development platforms, editions and support lifecycles, update delivery, the server and embedded lines, market position, and the legal and privacy controversies that have accompanied the platform."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Definition and product family",
      "text": "Windows is Microsoft's umbrella brand for a family of operating systems. It covers client PCs, servers, embedded systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Beneath the brand sits a separate technical lineage: the kernel known as Windows NT, first released in 1993 as Windows NT 3.1, the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. The two terms overlap but are not identical. \"Windows\" names products and marketing lines, while \"NT\" names the core architecture underneath them. Each Windows release built on this technology is considered to be based on, if not a revision of Windows NT, even though the Windows NT name itself has not been used in any other Windows releases since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996. The article follows this convention: a release counts as NT-based when its kernel descends from that code, whether or not the name appears on the box. On the server side, the most recent NT-based release is Windows Server 2025, which was announced in 2024.\n\nThe current major client release is Windows 11. Its newest version, 26H2, is also marketed as the Windows 11 2026 Update, and reached general availability on 29 September 2026 as OS build 26300. Sources differ on the date: Windows Central dates the release to 30 September 2026, while the official announcement came on 29 September, made by Microsoft's servicing team in a Windows Experience Blog post. Rather than requiring a full reinstall, 26H2 is delivered as a small enablement package for eligible PCs. The enablement package is around 174 KB and flips the version and build number after a single restart. Devices on 26H1 are excluded from this path, and the rollout is phased and will expand over the next few months. Support resets to 24 months for consumers and 36 months for organizations once 26H2 is enabled.\n\nScope of the article\n\nThis article uses \"Windows\" for Microsoft's NT-based product families: consumer and business client editions, server editions, and the embedded and IoT offerings that share NT technology. Earlier MS-DOS-based releases are discussed only where needed to explain the history. NT was intended to complement the consumer versions of the MS-DOS-based Windows OS that existed at the time, including Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.1x. Those earlier products are therefore described in the history section, not treated as part of the modern family.\n\nSeveral adjacent products are excluded or handled elsewhere. Xbox system software is derived from the NT core, but this article mentions it only as an NT-derived platform and does not describe it in detail. Windows Phone and Windows Mobile are covered in the section on embedded and mobile platforms, where the article considers their history and Microsoft's exit from the mobile market. Likewise, the term \"Windows\" in a generic sense, meaning any graphical windowed interface, is outside the scope here. Version names such as \"Windows 11\" refer to specific Microsoft releases. Build numbers are given in parentheses. The naming conventions behind marketing names and internal build numbers are discussed in the next section."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Name and branding",
      "text": "The name \"Windows\" describes the product's defining feature: a graphical environment that shows each program in a rectangular window that can be moved, resized, and overlapped on screen. Microsoft began this graphical shell in the early 1980s under a different working title, and the product reached users as Windows 1.0 in November 1985, when it ran as a graphical layer on top of MS-DOS. The name stayed with the product line for the next four decades, even as the code beneath it was replaced twice, first by a partly DOS-based kernel and later by a wholly new one.\n\nThe letters \"NT\" entered the story with a different project. Work on the new kernel began in 1988, and its early documents referred to it as \"NT OS/2,\" a planned successor to the OS/2 system Microsoft was developing with IBM. The origin of the two letters is disputed. Two early developers, Mark Lucovsky and Dave Plummer, have said the name came from the first target processor, Intel's i860, whose internal codename was \"N10,\" pronounced \"N-Ten.\" That processor used a RISC design of the kind described in reduced instruction set computing. Microsoft's own marketing later expanded \"NT\" to \"New Technology,\" a phrase that stressed the break from the DOS-based Windows line. In a 1998 question-and-answer session, Bill Gates said the letters no longer carried a specific meaning. The name Windows NT was used for releases from 1993 onward, but from Windows 2000 the \"NT\" was dropped from consumer and business product names. It survived in internal version strings and in many low-level system components, and that kernel lineage still underlies current releases.\n\nVersion numbering is the other source of confusion. Consumer Windows reached 3.1 under DOS, then jumped to 95, and later to 8.1 before leaping to 10. Internally, the NT kernel counts its versions differently from the marketing names. Windows 8.1 identifies itself as NT 6.3, while Windows 10 uses the kernel version 10.0. Microsoft has never fully explained the skipped \"9,\" and a commonly repeated explanation concerns software that tested the version string for a \"Windows 9\" prefix. Whatever the reason, the marketing number and the internal version now point to different things.\n\nSince Windows 10, Microsoft has labeled feature updates with a year and half-year pair, such as 24H2 or 25H2, and the internal build number now matters more to administrators than the label. Windows 11 version 26H2 has a base build of 26300, so a machine running it reports a build number beginning with 26300, for example 26300.9550 in later updates. The earlier 24H2 and 25H2 releases use builds 26100 and 26200. The naming also shows a further split: 26H1 is an ARM-only release on build 28000, so two releases with \"26\" in the label can have entirely different build numbers and availability. Microsoft has said that 26H2 is delivered as an enablement package on the same servicing branch as 24H2 and 25H2. In practice, the update switches on features already present in the shared code rather than installing a new codebase, which is why the marketing version and the build number can change without a corresponding change in the underlying platform."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Origins under MS-DOS (1985–1995)",
      "text": "Windows did not begin as an independent operating system. Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical environment that ran on top of MS-DOS, the disk operating system used by IBM-compatible personal computers. It was started as a program from the DOS prompt, and it drew menus, icons and windows through a graphical user interface, while DOS still handled files, disks and hardware. Windows 1.0 arranged windows only as non-overlapping tiles, and its multitasking was cooperative: each running program had to yield control voluntarily, so one that stopped responding could freeze the whole session. Its bundled applications were modest, including Notepad, Paint, Write, Calculator and Control Panel. Windows 2.x (1987–1988) added overlapping windows, but the platform still depended on DOS and still relied on cooperative multitasking.\n\nWindows 3.0, released in May 1990, was the version that made the platform commercially important on personal computers. It offered three operating modes: real mode for compatibility with the original 8086, standard mode for the 286, and enhanced mode for the 386, which used protected mode, virtual memory backed by a swap file, and virtual 8086 mode to run several DOS programs at once. Its shell introduced Program Manager, which grouped applications into program groups, and File Manager, which made many file operations possible without typing DOS commands. Windows 3.1, released in April 1992, added TrueType scalable fonts, drag-and-drop, and Object Linking and Embedding, and it required at least a 286 processor. Combined with the spread of cheaper 386 and 486 machines, these releases made Windows the most widely used graphical environment on PCs. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (1993) added built-in networking for small office use, which is outside the scope of this period.\n\nWindows 95, released on August 24, 1995, was the point at which the Windows shell became recognizable in its modern form. It introduced the Start button and menu, a taskbar with a notification area, and Plug and Play hardware detection. It also replaced the 8.3 file-name limit of FAT with long file names of up to 255 characters, using the VFAT extension. Its Explorer shell combined file management with the desktop, and it provided preemptive multitasking for 32-bit applications. Yet Windows 95 still booted MS-DOS 7.0 underneath, kept 16-bit code and drivers for compatibility, and remained a hybrid of old and new components. Windows 98 (1998) and Windows Me (2000) continued this design.\n\nThe limits of this foundation were structural rather than cosmetic. DOS programs ran in the 8086's real-mode segmented addressing, with roughly 640 KB of conventional memory available to them. Because there was no hardware-enforced memory protection, a faulty program could overwrite the memory of other programs or of the system itself. Cooperative multitasking in Windows 3.x meant that a single misbehaving application could halt the whole machine. DOS had no meaningful concept of user accounts or access control, and its 16-bit design made it hard to add the portability, multiprocessing and security features that business and server customers needed. Microsoft's answer was a new kernel designed from the start as a 32-bit, protected, portable system. Its development, which began in 1988 under the OS/2 name, led to Windows NT, discussed in the next section."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Creation of the Windows NT kernel (1988–1993)",
      "text": "The kernel that became Windows NT began in late 1988, when Microsoft recruited a group of engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). When DEC's PRISM and MICA projects were cancelled, Dave Cutler left Digital for Microsoft, where he was put in charge of the development of what became Windows NT. Cutler started at Microsoft on October 31, 1988, and other members of the DEC West team soon followed. Cutler had already been a principal designer of DEC's RSX-11M, VAXELN, VMS, and MICA systems, and one of the chief architects of VMS is the figure most associated with NT's design lineage. Accounts differ on how much was carried over. One source notes that Cutler's architecture for NT was heavily inspired by many aspects of MICA, while the VMS influence is usually described in terms of general design philosophy rather than shared code.\n\nThe team's goals were set against the limits of the DOS-based Windows line. Windows NT 3.1 was a modern 32-bit, portable operating system, with support for multiprocessor systems. Portability was a deliberate hedge: it was a crucial long-term hedge, a way to ensure Microsoft wouldn't be left behind in case RISC processors took over the personal computer space from Intel, which was widely predicted at the time. Security and multi-user operation drew on the DEC tradition; Cutler's earlier RSX-11M work was known for fitting a multitasking, multi-user kernel into brutally small memory. Consequently, the first release supported Intel x86, DEC Alpha, and MIPS R4000 CPUs, so the architecture was not tied to a single chip family.\n\nThe OS/2 origin\n\nThe project was not originally a Windows product. Windows NT was originally intended to be OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and International Business Machines (IBM). The turning point came after the 1990 launch of Windows 3.0. Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still-unreleased NT OS/2 from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. By August 1990, the main focus of the NT project changed to creating a 32-bit version of Windows, while the OS/2 subsystem was eventually reduced to character mode OS/2 1.x application support. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM, and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development independently, while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT.\n\nRelease and first editions\n\nDevelopment took several years and was slow to produce a shipping product. Early demonstrations were given in 1991 and 1992, and Windows NT 3.1 is the first release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of server and business desktop operating systems, and was released to manufacturing on July 27, 1993. Sources differ on the exact day: one date given for the release is July 26, 1993, and another source lists the RTM date as July 27. The version number was chosen to resemble the contemporary desktop product. The version number was chosen to match that of Windows 3.1, the then-latest operating environment from Microsoft, on account of the similar visual appearance of the user interface. Two editions were offered: Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT Advanced Server.\n\nThe hardware demands kept the product from becoming mainstream. With its 12MB minimum RAM requirement (x86 version; 16MB for the RISC version), NT 3.1 was never going to be anywhere close to a mainstream OS in 1993. It took almost ten years before Windows NT would finally completely take over from Windows 3.1 and its progeny. Even so, the basic kernel introduced in NT 3.1 became the foundation for later systems: the basic OS kernel introduced in NT 3.1 remains in use today for the 32-bit version of Windows 7 and (in an extended form) the 64-bit version, as well as the NTFS file system."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Consolidation from Windows 2000 to Windows XP (2000–2001)",
      "text": "Windows 2000 began as the successor to Windows NT 4.0. It was created from the previous Windows NT desktop OS and was originally called Windows NT 5.0. The name was changed to Windows 2000 in 1998. Microsoft released it to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and then to retail on February 17, 2000. It was positioned for companies rather than households: while Windows 2000 was designed for businesses, Windows Me was designed for home use.\n\nIts most consequential feature for organizations was Active Directory. It replaced Windows NT's earlier domain model with a new way of organizing network resources. Its hierarchical structure let administrators apply user and computer policies, manage accounts, and deploy software and updates centrally, and it is one of the main reasons many corporations migrated to Windows 2000. Over the following years Microsoft issued updates in bundles: four Service Packs and an update rollup were released for Windows 2000, with Service Pack 1 released in August 2000, Service Pack 2 in May 2001, and Service Packs 3 and 4 in August 2002 and June 2003. The planned fifth pack was cancelled, and in 2005 Microsoft instead released Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, a collection of security-related hotfixes and other significant fixes.\n\nWindows XP was the point where Microsoft's two desktop lines finally converged. Before it, desktop Windows was divided between the MS-DOS-based 9x family and the NT family, and Windows 9x was a series of operating systems based on MS-DOS, with four full releases: Windows 95, Windows 98 First Edition, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me. The NT family was mainly targeted at the enterprise in the 1990s and 2000s. The two lines were built separately, and Windows NT and DOS-based versions of Windows would not be truly unified until Windows XP nearly five years later. The development history explains the split. Under contractual obligations with original equipment manufacturers, Microsoft was required to put together a stop-gap OS release in the Windows 9x family, Windows Me, to keep consumers satisfied while an NT-based consumer system was built. That consumer project, codenamed Neptune, was merged with the business-oriented successor to Windows 2000, codenamed Odyssey, into a single project, which became XP. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25 that year. It was first offered in both Home and Professional editions, targeting home and business respectively. Both shared the same NT foundation, which was the first time a Windows release served both markets since Windows 3.1 in 1992.\n\nThe transition was not frictionless for existing users. The Windows XP upgrade was available for Windows 98, Me, and 2000 users. The final release of Windows XP dropped the ability to upgrade from Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95, and it required at least Windows 98 or NT 4.0. Upgrading NT machines had constraints of its own: a computer running Windows NT 4.0 or 2000 could not be upgraded to Windows XP Home Edition and had to go to Professional instead. Administrators were also advised to bring NT 4.0 systems up to date first, since NT 4.0 computers had to run at least SP5 and preferably SP6a. Service packs served as the main carrier for these fixes, because they are later packaged together from individual updates and fixes.\n\nXP's security story changed with Service Pack 2. According to Microsoft, Service Pack 2 established stronger default security settings, and among its changes the firewall was active by default. Microsoft also described network protection, memory protection, safer e-mail handling, more secure browsing, and improved computer maintenance as the focus of the release. These changes were significant because XP was now the mainstream platform for both home and office machines, and it was more exposed to network attacks than the consumer 9x systems it replaced.\n\nXP's service life was unusually long. Mainstream support ended on April 14, 2009, and extended support ended on April 8, 2014, with some exceptions lasting until May 14, 2019. Its popularity persisted well after successors appeared: Windows XP was the second most used computer operating system in the world as late as April 2012. The long support window meant that many homes and organizations could postpone upgrades, which slowed the adoption of Windows Vista and later releases. By comparison, Windows 2000 reached the end of its extended support on July 13, 2010."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8: technical and interface experiments (2007–2013)",
      "text": "Windows Vista was the first client release built on the NT kernel line that Microsoft had reserved for business use since 2000, and it carried a large part of the company's security and graphics work into the consumer market. Its visual layer was Aero, which used the GPU to composite windows with translucent frames and live thumbnails. Vista also introduced User Account Control, which made ordinary applications run with a standard user token unless an administrator approved an elevation. Driver signing became mandatory on 64-bit editions, and the networking stack was rewritten, adding native IPv6 support and a new TCP/IP implementation. Reviewers, however, criticised its long load times, weak compatibility with existing hardware and software, and frequent confirmation prompts. Many PCs sold with a \"Vista Capable\" label ran it poorly, and the reputation damage outlasted the technical improvements.\n\nWindows 7, which reached general availability on October 22, 2009, was built on the same kernel and driver base as Vista but focused on tuning rather than new architecture. Microsoft reduced memory and boot overheads, improved stability, and reworked the taskbar so that pinned programs and Jump Lists were easier to reach. Aero Snap let users dock windows to the edges of the screen, and libraries grouped files from several folders. For compatibility, Microsoft offered a Windows XP Mode in some editions, which ran a virtual machine with a licensed copy of XP for older applications. The release sold strongly and became one of the most widely used versions of Windows, which in turn meant that its later support deadlines affected a very large installed base. Its compatibility trade-offs were real, though: a substantial number of applications and drivers had been designed around older Windows versions, and the virtualised workaround was not practical for every user.\n\nWindows 8 went much further in changing the interface. Released on October 26, 2012, it replaced the Start menu with a full-screen Start screen built from live tiles, and it introduced the Windows Store for \"Metro-style\" apps that ran full screen and used touch input. The desktop remained, but it was secondary, and programs written for the classic desktop could not use the new app model. Many desktop users, who relied on a mouse and keyboard, found the change disorienting, and the lack of a Start button made navigation harder on non-touch machines. Windows 8 also brought built-in antivirus, a rewritten Task Manager, and faster boot times, but these improvements were overshadowed by the interface debate.\n\nWindows 8.1, released as a free update on October 17, 2013, responded to the criticism without abandoning the touch-oriented design. It restored a Start button on the desktop, but clicking it opened the Start screen rather than the old pop-up menu. Users could also choose to boot directly to the desktop, and the update added more personalisation options and the ability to snap two apps side by side. The partial reversal showed that Microsoft had underestimated how much existing users valued the desktop workflow, and that a single interface could not easily serve tablets and traditional PCs at the same time.\n\nThe main lessons of this period shaped later product decisions. Compatibility with installed software and hardware became a firm priority, and Microsoft increasingly treated large changes to the shell as something to introduce gradually. The experience with Windows 8 also helped to justify the return of the Start menu in Windows 10 and the decision to separate the desktop experience from the touch-oriented app model. These changes are discussed in the following sections."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Windows 10 and Windows 11: continuous servicing and annual updates (2015–2026)",
      "text": "Windows 10 was presented in July 2015 as the last numbered Windows release. Instead of new major versions, Microsoft delivered it as a service that received feature and security updates on a rolling basis, a model often described as continuous delivery. The line ended with a single terminal feature release: the current version, 22H2, was the final version of Windows 10, and all editions remained in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Support for Windows 10 ended on October 14, 2025. After that date, Microsoft stopped issuing security fixes and technical assistance for these PCs, although they continued to run. For users who could not move to new hardware, Microsoft offered an Extended Security Updates program, which was a new option for consumers; ESU enrollment does not provide other types of fixes, feature improvements, or product enhancements, and it does not come with technical support. Enrollment runs until the program ends on October 12, 2027.\n\nWindows 11, released in October 2021, changed the hardware baseline. Its redesigned shell, including a centered taskbar, was the most visible change, but the more consequential one was eligibility. Windows 11 has stricter hardware requirements than Windows 10, requiring modern processors, Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. Many older machines therefore could not be upgraded, which made the Windows 10 end-of-support date a practical problem for organizations and households alike.\n\nThe annual feature-update cadence\n\nThe Windows 11 line now moves to one feature update per year. New versions of Windows 11 are released once per year. The 2026 update, Windows 11 version 26H2 (marketed as the Windows 11 2026 Update), began rolling out on September 29, 2026. Its build number is 26300; the preview build that reached the Release Preview channel in late August was build 26300.9278.\n\nThe main novelty of this cycle is the delivery method. PCs on 24H2 or 25H2 can move to it through a lightweight enablement package and a single restart, while select 26H1 devices are excluded because they use a different Windows core. Much of the required code is already present on updated 24H2 and 25H2 systems but remains inactive until the package turns it on. The package has a prerequisite: systems must already have the Sept. 22 KB5124010 preview update or a later cumulative update installed. Because the rollout is staged, eligible PCs may not receive it immediately. Microsoft's own explanation is that the features added in 25H2 were already delivered through monthly updates, so the 26H2 package mostly switches on what is present. Some features that were disabled by default in 25H2 are turned on in 26H2.\n\nSupport periods and the 24H2 deadline\n\nSupport lifecycles now depend on edition. Installing 26H2 resets the support lifecycle to 24 months for consumer editions and 36 months for Enterprise and Education editions. The practical consequence falls on machines still running 24H2. For 24H2 Home and Pro, the last security update arrives on Patch Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Microsoft's lifecycle listing displays the end as 6:59 a.m. Pacific on October 14, and one analysis notes that that looks like a difference in how the cutoff is displayed, not a different policy. Enterprise and Education editions of 24H2 are supported until October 12, 2027, although some listings give October 13, 2027 instead.\n\nDevices that stay on 24H2 after the deadline keep working but stop receiving fixes. No comparable Extended Security Updates option has been announced for Windows 11 24H2 Home or Pro. Microsoft's planned path for unmanaged Home and Pro devices is an automatic move to 25H2, which has its own support period extending to October 2027. Administrators who control feature-update timing through policy need to check those settings; a policy set to defer feature updates for a stability reason can quietly keep a fleet on 24H2 past the deadline.\n\nAssessment\n\nThe shift from numbered releases to continuous servicing reduced the disruption of each update and shortened the time between a fix and its delivery, but it also made the timing of support less visible to ordinary users. A version can reach end of service while the PC looks unchanged, which is why the two-tier lifecycle (shorter for Home and Pro, longer for Enterprise and Education) matters for both security and planning. Adoption of each feature update is also uneven, which fits the pattern described in diffusion-of-innovations research: early adopters move quickly, while many managed fleets wait for testing and approval."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Kernel architecture and executive layers",
      "text": "Hybrid design and privilege boundary\n\nWindows NT's kernel is usually classed as a hybrid design. The kernel, the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), drivers, and a range of services called the Executive all sit in kernel mode. Code outside that boundary is restricted: applications and user-mode subsystems face limits on which system resources they can reach, while kernel-mode code has unrestricted access to memory and external devices. User-mode subsystems therefore send their device work to drivers through the I/O manager rather than touching hardware directly. This split is what lets the system protect itself from faulty or hostile application code.\n\nExecutive components\n\nThe Executive is the main body of kernel-mode services, and its code lives in the ntoskrnl.exe file. It is divided into named managers, including the Cache Manager, Configuration Manager, I/O Manager, Local Procedure Call facility, Memory Manager, Object Manager, Process Structure, and Security Reference Monitor.\n\nThe Object Manager is the common gateway. Other executive subsystems, especially system calls, pass through it to reach NT resources, which reduces duplicated resource-management code and the bugs that come with it. Applications refer to these resources through handles, and each handle works like a UNIX file descriptor, an opaque reference to a kernel resource. Opening an object by name is checked for security, while later use of an existing handle is limited to the access granted when it was opened.\n\nThe I/O manager manages all input and output for the operating system. Its requests move as I/O request packets, a design that also allows asynchronous completion; the packet approach is described in the packet-driven I/O model, which uses I/O request packets (IRPs) and asynchronous I/O. Access control is enforced by the Security Reference Monitor, which keeps applications from using system resources without authorization. The process manager, for its part, handles the creation and deletion of processes.\n\nHardware abstraction layer and kernel\n\nThe kernel itself sits between the HAL and the Executive. It provides multiprocessor synchronization, thread and interrupt scheduling and dispatching, and trap and exception handling. The HAL isolates platform-specific code: it hides hardware differences from most of the kernel, so most kernel-mode code does not have to change when the hardware changes. Early NT documentation credited this layer with easing the move to new processor families; one account notes that the HAL simplified porting of the operating system to new processor architectures such as the IA-64.\n\nDrivers are arranged in tiers. Kernel-mode drivers exist in three levels: highest-level drivers, intermediate drivers, and low-level drivers. The lowest tier includes legacy Windows NT device drivers that control a device directly, or a plug and play (PnP) hardware bus.\n\nBoot sequence\n\nOn NT 3.1 through Windows XP, the boot path began with NTLDR (the NT loader), the boot loader for all Windows NT releases up to and including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. NTLDR also loaded the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.DLL), which insulates the kernel from hardware. In later releases the OS loader takes this role. Winload initializes essential boot-start drivers needed for disk and hardware access, enforces kernel-mode driver signature validation, and launches ELAM drivers ahead of third-party kernel drivers. It then reads ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll into memory, and hal.dll abstracts hardware differences and provides a consistent interface to the kernel. Once running, the kernel spawns the System process, which hosts threads for device drivers, and then launches the Session Manager Subsystem (SMSS) and the Client/Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS).\n\nEnvironment subsystems and WoW64\n\nThe user-mode layer includes environment subsystems, which run applications written for many different types of operating systems, alongside an integral subsystem that performs system-specific work on their behalf.\n\nWoW64 is the compatibility layer that runs 32-bit programs on 64-bit editions. 32-bit x86 applications run on 64-bit x64 Windows, and 32-bit x86 and 32-bit ARM applications run on 64-bit ARM64 Windows. Its performance depends on the processor. Because x64 processors execute x86 instructions natively, WoW64 runs at roughly the speed of 32-bit Windows there; on Itanium and ARM64, more software is involved in emulation and performance suffers. On ARM64, the layer uses separate components for each guest architecture: it emulates x86 and ARM32 applications using XTAJIT.DLL and WOWARMW.DLL, respectively, because a number of inbox Windows applications are still 32-bit on Arm. WoW64 also keeps registry views separate for 32-bit and 64-bit applications, and it has limits: 32-bit applications that include only 32-bit kernel-mode device drivers, or that plug into the process space of components implemented purely as 64-bit processes, cannot be executed on a 64-bit platform."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Process, thread, and memory management",
      "text": "Windows NT separates the unit of execution from the unit of resource ownership. A process is a container that holds an address space, security context, and handles to resources, while the scheduler dispatches threads, not processes. Each thread carries a current priority and a base priority. The base priority is inherited from the owning process and its relative setting, and the current priority can move above or below it over time. The kernel exposes 32 priority levels. Levels 16 to 31 are reserved for real-time work, and levels 0 to 15 are used by ordinary, dynamically adjusted threads.\n\nScheduling and priority adjustments\n\nScheduling is preemptive and priority-based. A higher-priority ready thread can interrupt a lower-priority running thread, and threads at the same level share the processor in round-robin fashion, each receiving a time slice (quantum). The scheduler also tries to keep a thread on its preferred processor so that its cache contents and nearby memory remain useful. Threads can additionally be restricted to a set of processors through an affinity mask.\n\nTo keep interactive programs responsive, the kernel temporarily raises the dynamic priority of some threads. Boosts are granted to threads that bring a window to the foreground and to threads that wake up because an event they were waiting for has occurred. A thread that consumes its full quantum, particularly one that is CPU-bound, has its priority decay back toward its base. The kernel also addresses concurrency hazards such as priority inversion, in which a high-priority thread waits for a lock held by a low-priority thread. Early NT versions used a randomized boost to let ready lock-holders run long enough to leave their critical sections; later releases replaced this approach with a more deterministic mechanism. Such boosts interact closely with shared-resource synchronization, and poor locking discipline can still lead to data races in application code.\n\nVirtual memory\n\nEvery process receives its own virtual address space, which the memory manager maps onto physical RAM through page tables. Pages that are not resident can be stored in one or more page files on disk, and the memory manager pages them in on demand. Each process has a working set, the set of pages currently resident in physical memory, which the memory manager trims or expands according to available memory and demand. Committed private pages and shared pages are zero-filled before they are first made visible to user mode, so that stale data from another process cannot leak.\n\nMemory-mapped files let a process treat a file region as memory. The application creates a section object, either backed by a file or by the page file, and maps views of it into its address space. Several processes can map the same section, which is the basis for shared memory and for loading DLLs and executables efficiently.\n\nAddress space layout randomization (ASLR) is a security measure that randomizes the base addresses of executables, libraries, the stack, and the heap. The goal is to make it harder for an attacker to predict where code or data will reside after a memory corruption bug has been found. Its effectiveness depends on the binary being compiled with compatible options and on the other protections, such as no-execute page protection, that operate alongside it.\n\nMultiprocessor and NUMA support\n\nWindows NT runs on symmetric multiprocessing systems, in which all processors can execute kernel code and any ready thread may run on any available processor, subject to affinity. On systems with non-uniform memory access, processors are grouped into nodes, and memory local to a node is faster for processors in that node. The memory manager attempts to satisfy allocation requests from the requesting processor's node first and falls back to other nodes when local memory is exhausted. The scheduler cooperates by preferring processors in the same node as the memory a thread is using. Applications can query the node topology and request a preferred node for allocations through Win32 functions such as the NUMA-aware virtual allocation API, which is useful for memory-intensive server workloads.\n\nKernel objects, handles, and job objects\n\nMost resources managed by the executive, including processes, threads, files, events, mutexes, sections, and semaphores, are represented as kernel objects. User-mode code never touches these structures directly. Instead, it receives a handle, an opaque index into a per-process handle table maintained by the object manager. Handles carry access rights that are checked when they are used, and they keep objects alive until all references are closed. This indirection lets the kernel validate, audit, and reclaim resources reliably.\n\nJob objects group one or more processes so that they can be managed as a unit. A job can impose limits on CPU time, memory use, process count, and the affinity of its members, and it can be terminated as a whole. Job objects are widely used by server software, sandboxes, and application containers to enforce resource boundaries that individual processes could not guarantee on their own."
    },
    {
      "heading": "File systems, storage, and the registry",
      "text": "Windows storage rests on NTFS, which Microsoft introduced with Windows NT 3.1 in 1993, and on a set of companion features: FAT-family formats for removable media, ReFS for resilient server volumes, a hierarchical configuration store called the registry, and volume-level services such as shadow copies. The design of these pieces reflects the NT kernel's aim of putting security and recoverability into the file system itself rather than leaving them to applications.\n\nNTFS\n\nNTFS grew out of the limits of the FAT format, which lacked per-file permissions, journaling, and compression. NTFS 1.0 shipped with Windows NT 3.1 in 1993 as an initial version. Named streams and access control lists arrived with NTFS 1.1 in NT 3.5, and compression followed in NT 3.51 (NTFS compression support was added in Windows NT 3.51). The Windows 2000 generation (NTFS 3.0) added disk quotas, file-level encryption through the Encrypting File System, sparse files, reparse points, and update sequence number (USN) journaling.\n\nAll metadata for a file, including its name, timestamps, size, and access permissions, is kept as records in the Master File Table. Because each attribute is typed and optional, new features could be added without redesigning the volume layout. Journaling works by logging metadata changes before they are committed, so that after a power failure or crash the volume can be rolled back to a consistent state. Access control lists define which users and groups may read, modify, or delete each file or folder, and encryption and compression can be applied per file or per folder.\n\nAlternate data streams are additional named streams attached to a file beside its main unnamed stream. They allow applications and backup tools to store metadata without changing the visible content. The same property makes them a known hiding place for malicious payloads, because a stream can carry data without changing the file's reported size, a point that matters for forensic analysts and endpoint security products.\n\nFAT, exFAT, and ReFS\n\nFAT-family formats persist mainly for compatibility and removable media. FAT32 lacks file permissions, journaling, and practical support for large files, which is why exFAT is used on flash drives and external disks that must work across operating systems. These formats are not the focus of Windows' internal storage design.\n\nReFS was designed for data integrity in server environments. It integrates with Storage Spaces, a storage virtualization layer that allows data mirroring and striping, as well as sharing storage pools between machines. Its scrubbing process periodically reads all mirror copies and verifies their checksums, then replaces bad copies with good ones. Storage Spaces lets administrators combine multiple disks into a pool and create partitions from this pool with various levels of resiliency, such as two-way or three-way mirroring and parity. Windows and Windows Server also include ReFSUtil, a command-line tool for salvaging files from badly damaged ReFS volumes.\n\nThe registry\n\nThe registry is a hierarchical database of configuration settings for the operating system, installed software, hardware, and individual users. Its tree is organized into hives, each of which is a file on disk: the machine-wide hive under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM), the current user's profile under HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU), and all loaded profiles under HKEY_USERS (HKU). The system hives sit in C:\\Windows\\System32\\Config and are loaded early in boot, which is why they remain locked while Windows runs. Per-user hives such as NTUSER.DAT live in each user's profile folder. On disk, the hive uses a binary format that begins with a base block carrying sequence numbers and a timestamp, followed by 4 KB bins that contain variable-length cells.\n\nAdministrators usually inspect the registry with regedit, the graphical editor, or with reg.exe on the command line. Forensic practitioners work at a lower level, because the GUI cannot show deleted keys and locked hives must be read offline or from a copy. Shadow copies or raw disk access are common ways to obtain them.\n\nShadow copies and volume features\n\nThe Volume Shadow Copy Service creates point-in-time snapshots of entire volumes, and it omits temporary items such as paging files to save space. Each volume can hold up to 512 software shadow copies, but by default only 64 are kept for the Shadow Copies of Shared Folders feature, a limit that the MaxShadowCopies registry value can change. The minimum size of the shadow copy storage area defaults to 32 MB on small volumes and 320 MB on larger ones. Snapshots are not a substitute for backups, since they usually reside on the same physical disks as the data they protect.\n\nOther storage features include dynamic disks, which allow volumes to span several physical disks, and pooled storage spaces, which combine disks into resilient logical pools that can be formatted with NTFS or ReFS."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Security architecture",
      "text": "Windows access control is built on identity objects. Every user account, group, and computer account has a security identifier (SID), a variable-length value that the system stores in its security database and does not reassign once it has identified a principal. At sign-in, the system creates an access token that holds the user's SID, the SIDs of the user's groups, a logon SID for the current session, the privileges the account holds, and a default discretionary access control list (DACL). Every process and thread started by that user carries a copy of the token, so the kernel judges each request by the identity behind the code that makes it.\n\nWhen a thread asks for a securable object such as a file, registry key, or process, the kernel's security reference monitor compares the token with the object's security descriptor. The DACL contains access control entries (ACEs) that allow or deny particular rights to particular SIDs. Explicit denials are evaluated before explicit grants, and inherited entries come after explicit ones, so a matching deny generally overrides an allow. If no ACE matches any SID in the token, access is refused. The separate system access control list (SACL) governs auditing rather than permission. Certain privileges, such as the debug privilege, can allow an account to bypass some of these checks, which is why such rights are tightly restricted and why attackers who obtain them are considered dangerous.\n\nUser Account Control\n\nBefore Windows Vista, many users ran daily with administrative rights, so any malicious program they launched inherited full control of the machine. User Account Control (UAC), introduced in Vista, changes this by giving an administrator two tokens: a filtered standard token used for ordinary work, and a full administrative token that becomes active only after the user consents to an elevation prompt. The prompt is typically displayed on a secure desktop, a separate screen that ordinary programs cannot draw on or click through. Standard users who need elevated rights must supply the credentials of an administrator account. Integrity levels add a further layer: processes are labeled Low, Medium, High, or System, and a lower-integrity process is generally denied write access to higher-integrity objects, which limits what a compromised browser or document reader can alter.\n\nBoot and device protection\n\nProtection begins before Windows loads. On UEFI systems, Secure Boot checks the digital signatures of boot loaders and early drivers against keys held in firmware, so that unsigned or tampered boot components are not executed. Windows 11 requires firmware that supports Secure Boot together with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0. A TPM is a dedicated secure cryptoprocessor that stores keys and records measurements of boot components. Windows uses these measurements in measured boot, and BitLocker uses the TPM to protect the volume encryption key so that it is released only when the boot chain matches the expected state. If the boot path changes, for example after firmware tampering or a hardware swap, BitLocker asks for its recovery key instead of unlocking the drive automatically. This design is why Microsoft treated TPM 2.0 as a baseline requirement when it announced Windows 11 in June 2021.\n\nVirtualization-based security\n\nVirtualization-based security (VBS) uses the hypervisor, the thin layer that Hyper-V runs beneath the operating system, to create isolated memory regions that the normal kernel cannot read or write, even when it runs with full privileges. Windows relies on Virtual Secure Mode and Virtual Trust Levels to separate these regions. Credential Guard uses this isolation to move NTLM password hashes and Kerberos ticket-granting tickets for domain accounts out of reach of the ordinary Local Security Authority process, so that tools which dump LSASS memory find nothing useful. Hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI), also called memory integrity, uses the same mechanism to ensure that only verified code can be executed in kernel mode. Windows Security groups these protections under the heading Core isolation. These features depend on hardware virtualization support, and they can be unavailable or disabled on some virtual machines and on devices with incompatible drivers.\n\nBuilt-in antivirus\n\nMicrosoft Defender Antivirus is included with Windows and runs as a core component, providing real-time scanning, cloud-delivered detection, and automatic signature updates. It operates under the SYSTEM account with high privileges, so Microsoft adds tamper protection to prevent malicious software from switching it off. Defender can run alongside, or defer to, third-party security products, and its status is reported through the Windows Security app."
    },
    {
      "heading": "User interface and the shell",
      "text": "The Windows desktop is built around Explorer, a program that serves both as the graphical shell and as a file browser. It draws the desktop background and icons, the taskbar, the Start menu, the notification area (the system tray and its flyouts), and the windows of running programs. Window management, including moving, resizing, minimizing, and snapping windows into screen regions, is handled by the shell and the window manager in the kernel-mode graphics stack. The shell is separate from the operating system kernel, so it can be replaced. Third-party shell replacements have existed for decades, and that separation is one reason the interface has changed so often.\n\nThe shell has been redesigned several times. Windows 3.x used Program Manager, which organized applications into program groups, alongside File Manager. Windows 95 replaced this model with an Explorer-based shell that introduced the Start menu and the taskbar. The Start menu was introduced with Windows 95, and all versions of Windows except Windows 8 have had one. Windows 8 replaced it with a full-screen Start screen built for touch input, and adoption numbers suggested that most consumers and businesses disliked the change. Windows 8.1 restored the Start button, but the menu itself did not return until Windows 10 in 2015. That version combined the column of app icons from Windows 7 with a sidebar of Windows 8's touch-friendly Live Tiles. A tablet mode switched the Start menu to a full-screen layout when the device was used without a keyboard and mouse.\n\nWindows 11, released in 2021, applied a Fluent-style visual language with rounded corners, translucent materials, and a centered taskbar, while keeping the Start menu layout introduced in Windows 10 in a revised form. Later feature updates have continued to adjust the shell. The 26H2 update, for example, added new customization options, positioning changes, and a smaller view option for the Start menu and taskbar.\n\nInput and accessibility\n\nThe shell supports keyboard, mouse, touch, and pen input. Keyboard navigation relies on the Tab, arrow, and Enter keys, along with Windows-key shortcuts for the Start menu, the taskbar, window snapping, and the notification panel. Touch and pen input are handled by the same shell, with larger tap targets in tablet-oriented modes and pen-specific features on supported hardware.\n\nAccessibility features are grouped under the Ease of Access settings. They include the Narrator screen reader, the Magnifier, high-contrast themes, an on-screen keyboard, captions, and options for reducing motion and transparency. Because these features live in the shell and the accessibility framework rather than in individual applications, they apply across most of the interface, though third-party software varies in how fully it supports them.\n\nSettings and Control Panel\n\nWindows has two configuration interfaces. The classic Control Panel is a Win32 application that dates back to the 1990s, and it still hosts tools for hardware, drivers, and some administrative tasks. The Settings app, first introduced as a touch-oriented PC settings panel in Windows 8, has absorbed more options with each release. Migration has been gradual. Microsoft has said it is moving the remaining Control Panel features carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices and drivers that must keep working. Some tools, such as BitLocker Drive Encryption management, advanced sound options, File Explorer preferences, device and disk management, and certain recovery controls, were still available only in Control Panel in 2026 reporting. Microsoft has announced an intention to retire the Win32 Control Panel eventually, but it has not set a removal date, so the two interfaces overlap in current versions of Windows 11.\n\nUsers therefore often encounter the same option in two places, and reviews of the transition have noted that settings are sometimes buried several clicks deep in Settings while Control Panel shows them directly. The result is a long period of dual interfaces, which administrators and power users continue to navigate."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Application programming interfaces and development platforms",
      "text": "Win32 and COM\n\nThe Win32 API is the long-lived core of the platform. It is a set of C-callable functions exposed through system libraries such as kernel32, user32, and gdi32, and it has carried Windows software from the 32-bit era to today's 64-bit builds. Much of the installed base of C and C++ software still runs against it. The Component Object Model (COM) sits alongside Win32 as a binary standard for objects that can be called across languages and process boundaries. Its successors, such as WinRT, keep the same basic idea.\n\nFrom .NET Framework to modern .NET\n\nMicrosoft's managed platform started with WinForms, which Microsoft shipped in 2002 as a UI library for building Windows desktop apps in .NET. It wrapped the same standard USER32 controls behind a .NET-friendly, object-oriented API. In 2006, Microsoft introduced WPF as part of .NET Framework 3.0. WPF did not wrap the older controls; it had its own layout and rendering pipeline, and its interfaces were typically defined in XAML.\n\nThe .NET Framework was closely bound to Windows. It is tightly integrated with Windows, offering features like COM interop, registry access, and Windows Authentication. Modern .NET, which descends from .NET Core and was first released in 2016, was rebuilt to run across platforms. Its desktop UI frameworks, WinForms and WPF, still run on .NET Core, but only on Windows. The practical effect is that the Windows-specific UI stack is now separate from the general-purpose runtime, and legacy .NET Framework applications are usually maintained rather than redeveloped.\n\nSuccessive native UI frameworks\n\nMicrosoft introduced several UI frameworks aimed at the Windows Runtime. Silverlight, a browser-hosted technology, was short-lived and is not treated here in detail. The Universal Windows Platform (UWP) appeared with Windows 10: it was introduced in 2015 with Windows 10, addressing Microsoft's vision for a unified app platform across all Windows devices. UWP apps were sandboxed and distributed mainly through the Microsoft Store, which limited their appeal for conventional desktop software. One analysis describes it as the sandboxed, Store-distributed successor that never quite landed for enterprise desktop apps.\n\nWinUI was the response. The first generation, WinUI 2, was tightly coupled to the OS and Windows SDKs. WinUI 3 was decoupled: it ships through the Windows App SDK, and reached general availability with Windows App SDK 1.0 in 2021, running on top of Win32. This allowed WPF, WinForms, and Win32 applications to adopt modern controls, which WinUI 3 is designed to support. Microsoft's guidance still treats UWP as a supported platform, stating that UWP and WinUI for UWP remain supported and receive bug, reliability, and security fixes. The Windows shell itself is built with WinUI: the Windows shell and many built-in apps are built with WinUI.\n\nDirectX and graphics\n\nDirectX is the family of APIs for games, video, and GPU-accelerated graphics, with Direct3D as its 3D component. Developers reach GPUs through these interfaces, while the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) defines how vendor drivers plug into the operating system. Higher-level frameworks depend on this stack. WPF, for example, is constructed on the foundation of DirectX. Hardware-accelerated rendering in WPF is one reason it produces smoother animation than older GDI-based controls, although the performance gap depends heavily on the application.\n\nWindows Subsystem for Linux, the Microsoft Store, and MSIX\n\nThe Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets developers run Linux user-space tools on Windows. Microsoft offers two types of WSL distros: WSL 1, which isn't really a VM and doesn't offer the full Linux kernel, and WSL 2, which is a full Linux VM. In 2022 Microsoft made the Store-distributed version the default. Since WSL 2 is the default distro type, and the Store version of WSL is the default install location is how Microsoft summarized the change. Distribution is not exclusive to the Store, though: the WSL project produces both MSI packages for traditional installation and MSIX packages for Microsoft Store distribution.\n\nMSIX is the packaging format that Microsoft promotes for modern apps. MSIX apps run in a sandboxed environment with declared capabilities. An app that needs broader access must declare it, and an app that launches external programs needs full-trust declarations. The Store, in turn, requires MSIX packages for submission, which is why third-party developers often rely on conversion tools. The MSIX Packaging Tool, for example, enables you to repackage your existing desktop applications to the MSIX format. WinUI 3 projects default to MSIX, but unpackaged deployment is fully supported since Windows App SDK 1.1."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Editions, licensing, and support lifecycles",
      "text": "Windows 11 comes in several editions, and the differences mostly reflect the buyer rather than the core operating system. Home suits most individual users. The features most often cited as separating Home from Pro are BitLocker encryption and Remote Desktop hosting, which Pro includes and Home lacks (Pro is better if you need BitLocker, Remote Desktop, or more IT control.). Pro for Workstations keeps the Pro feature set but targets high-end hardware: its memory ceiling is 6 TB, compared with 2 TB on Pro, and it adds the Resilient File System (ReFS) (it is optimized for performance, and has a Resilient File System (ReFS)). Schools and universities obtain Education and Pro Education through Microsoft Education volume agreements and Azure for Students. The restricted SE edition is meant for K–8 devices, and its support ends in October 2026 (it is a restricted, school-managed edition for compatible K–8 devices—not a general-purpose alternative). Organizations that buy through volume or subscription agreements and centralize IT administration usually fall under Enterprise (Enterprise is for organizations with volume or subscription licensing and centralized IT administration.).\n\nLicensing and activation\n\nThe channel through which a copy is obtained determines much of its licensing terms. Consumers typically receive a copy in one of three ways: through OEM installations, retail licenses, or by using Media Creation Tools. Edition can also depend on the key entered, so replacing a key may move a machine into a different category; one example is swapping a consumer Pro key for a volume key, which changes the edition's business or consumer classification. Moving a device in the other direction is restricted. Going from Enterprise to Pro requires a clean installation, and Microsoft does not support downgrades in place (Enterprise stores additional configuration in components Pro cannot read.). Trial use is possible without purchase, since a free 90-day evaluation ISO is available directly from Microsoft's Evaluation Center. Beyond that trial, a paid license is required — either through Microsoft's volume licensing program or an authorized third-party reseller. Activation links an installed copy to a product key or a digital license tied to the device, which is separate from the choice of edition.\n\nLong-Term Servicing Channel releases\n\nLong-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) releases serve devices where stability matters more than new features. Microsoft does not position them for widespread deployment across an enterprise's general-purpose devices. New builds of this channel appear only every few years, and remain functionally static throughout their lifespan. Machines on this channel do not receive the yearly feature upgrade that Home and Pro devices get (the annual feature upgrades delivered to customers in the General Availability Channel are not offered to LTSC systems.). The 2024 Enterprise LTSC release, based on Windows 11 24H2, has a fixed lifecycle that runs to October 9, 2029. The IoT Enterprise variant targets fixed-function, special-purpose devices such as ATMs, MRI machines, manufacturing controllers, POS systems and kiosks. Among the LTSC offerings, only Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 will have extended support until 2034-10-10.\n\nMainstream and extended support\n\nSupport length depends on which policy governs a product. Windows 11 follows the modern policy: it receives continuous service and support as long as you stay current on the system requirements and have a valid license. Older Windows releases were handled differently. Desktop operating systems under the fixed policy receive 5 years of Mainstream Support and up to 5 years of Extended Support on the latest service pack or update. In the fixed model, Mainstream Support is the first phase of support and includes incident support, security update support, and the ability to request non-security updates. Extended Support follows, including paid support and free security updates. Windows 7 illustrates the endpoint of this model: paid security updates for volume-licensed Professional and Enterprise editions ended on January 10, 2023.\n\nFor modern-policy Windows 11 feature releases, the window depends on edition. Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise releases receive 36 months from release date, while Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations, Home, and SE receive 24 months. Because a new version arrives each year, Home and Pro users must move forward roughly every two years to remain serviced. The 24H2 release illustrates the timing: its Home and Pro servicing ends in October 2026 (24H2 | Oct 2024 | Oct 2026 | Oct 2027), while Enterprise and Education · 24H2 · Oct 1, 2024 · Oct 12, 2027."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Update delivery and servicing",
      "text": "Windows receives its fixes through Windows Update, and the monthly security release is the backbone of that schedule. Client and server endpoints running supported versions of Windows receive monthly security updates on the second Tuesday of each month, known as Patch Tuesday. The release is typically published at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. Each monthly package is cumulative: it carries the security and non-security content introduced in the previous month's security update and optional non-security preview update, so a device that skipped a month still ends up with the full set of fixes once it installs the latest one.\n\nUpdate types\n\nMicrosoft distinguishes several kinds of release. Optional non-security preview updates are usually released during the fourth week of the month, and they give administrators and early adopters a chance to test fixes before those fixes reach the next security release. Hotpatch is a separate channel: hotpatch updates include security fixes only and install without requiring a restart, and enrolled devices receive them between quarterly baselines. A quarterly baseline requires a restart and installs all new features and enhancements, and the next two monthly security updates can then be installed without requiring a restart.\n\nFeature updates follow a different rhythm. Since Windows 11 24H2, the annual release has been delivered largely through enablement packages. Because the code for the new version is already present in the monthly updates, the new features are included in the latest monthly quality update for Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2 but are in an inactive and dormant state. The enablement package acts as a small switch: it enables an update from version 24H2 or 25H2 to version 26H2 with a single restart, reducing update downtime. Microsoft announced Windows 11 version 26H2 on September 29, 2026, also known as Windows 11, version 26H2, and Windows 11 version 26H1 devices cannot upgrade directly to 26H2, because 26H1 uses a different Windows core. Devices on 24H2 or 25H2 that take updates from Windows Update or WSUS automatically get the enablement package by installing the feature update to Windows 11, version 26H2.\n\nEnterprise management tools\n\nOrganizations usually manage these releases through a small set of tools. Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is an on-premises server that synchronizes approved updates within a network; for the 26H2 release, the update will automatically sync with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) if you configure Products and Classifications accordingly. Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based device management service, can also be used to deploy feature updates, as shown in a guide to deploy the Windows 11 26H2 Feature Update using Microsoft Intune. Windows Autopatch, a managed service within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, is another route; Windows 11, version 26H2 is available now through the tools organizations use to manage Windows updates, including Windows Autopatch and the Microsoft 365 admin center.\n\nRelease health, known issues, and safeguard holds\n\nMicrosoft ties update rollout to its quality data. Microsoft uses quality and compatibility data to identify issues that might cause a Windows client feature update to fail or roll back. When such a problem is found, Microsoft can apply a safeguard hold, which keeps the affected devices from receiving the update. Holds are also used when an issue would cause severe effects, such as data loss or loss of key functionality, and no workaround is immediately available. The offering is renewed once a fix is found and verified. A held device simply remains on its current version until the issue is resolved.\n\nThe distinction between a confirmed problem and a suspected one matters here. A known issue is a problem that may occur after an upgrade that was discovered by Microsoft or reported by a customer or partner, while a likely issue is not yet a confirmed (known) issue, it is a likely issue. Known issues and their status are documented on the Windows release health hub. Each hold carries an eight-digit identifier that appears in Windows Update for Business reports and can be looked up on that hub.\n\nTwo limits are important for administrators. First, safeguard holds only affect devices that use the Windows Update service for updates. Devices updated from media or through WSUS are not covered, so Microsoft encourages IT admins who manage updates to devices through other channels to remain aware of known issues. Second, holds are lifted as fixes mature; for example, a hold affecting certain wallpaper applications was removed as of October 15, 2025."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Windows Server and enterprise deployment",
      "text": "Server lineage\n\nWindows Server is the branch of the NT family aimed at hosting shared services rather than single-user desktops. Its line runs from Windows NT Server in the 1990s through Windows Server 2003, 2008 R2, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Windows Server 2012 R2 was the tenth major release of the NT kernel to carry the Windows Server name, and it was followed by Windows Server 2016, the first server edition built on the Windows 10 code base. Windows Server 2025 reached general availability on November 1, 2024, and it is the newest long-term servicing release.\n\nCore server roles\n\nMost enterprise deployments depend on a small set of roles. Active Directory Domain Services stores directory data for user accounts, computers and groups, and Group Policy uses that directory to push configuration and security settings to managed machines. DNS resolves host names, and DHCP assigns IP addresses automatically. File and print services publish shared folders and printers on the network. Hyper-V, the built-in hypervisor, runs multiple virtual machines on one physical host, which is the basis for much of the consolidation work that server administrators perform.\n\nHybrid identity and cloud integration\n\nMany organizations run Windows Server on premises while connecting it to Microsoft's cloud. Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) can synchronize with on-premises directories so that one identity works across local and cloud resources, a pattern usually called hybrid identity. Azure Arc lets servers located outside Microsoft's data centers be managed with Azure tools and billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Azure Hybrid Benefit allows existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses to be applied to Azure virtual machines at reduced cost. These options link server administration to cloud computing without requiring a full move of workloads.\n\nLicensing models\n\nWindows Server 2025 uses core-based licensing. Every physical core in the host must be licensed, with a minimum of 8 cores per processor and 16 per server, and cores are sold in two-core packs. The Standard edition covers up to two virtual machines per fully licensed host, and additional virtual machines require licensing the cores again; the Datacenter edition covers an unlimited number of Windows Server virtual machines on the licensed host. Client access licenses (CALs) are required separately for each user or device that connects to the server, and a CAL must be the same version as, or newer than, the server it accesses. Microsoft's suggested list prices for a 16-core pack are $1,176 for Standard and $6,771 for Datacenter, and pay-as-you-go pricing through Azure is also available.\n\nLifecycle and older releases\n\nWindows Server releases follow Microsoft's fixed lifecycle policy, which allocates five years of mainstream support, during which feature and non-security fixes are delivered, followed by five years of extended support, which provides security updates only. Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 are a notable case. Mainstream support ended on October 9, 2018, and extended support ended on October 10, 2023. Paid Extended Security Updates for volume-licensed editions ran until October 13, 2026, and customers hosting these systems in Azure received those updates without charge. Because this date falls only days after the present, administrators still running these systems face an imminent loss of all security patches. Windows Server 2022 leaves mainstream support in October 2026 and remains in extended support until October 2031, while Windows Server 2019 and 2016 have extended-support end dates in January 2029 and January 2027, respectively.\n\nThe end dates for Windows Server 2025 are reported inconsistently across secondary sources. Some give mainstream support as ending on November 13, 2029, and extended support on November 14, 2034, while others give October dates for both milestones. Readers should consult Microsoft's own lifecycle pages for the authoritative dates."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Embedded, mobile, and derivative platforms",
      "text": "Microsoft's embedded line began with Windows CE, which was first released in November 1996. The desktop editions could not run on the pocket-sized hardware of the early 1990s, so the CE team built a separate system. It carried a Windows 95-style interface but could not run programs designed for desktop Windows 95 or Windows NT.\n\nCE was designed for machines with little memory and often no disk. One description notes that a Windows CE kernel may run with one megabyte of memory, and devices were often configured without disk storage. Real-time behavior was added early. Windows CE version 2.0 already contained a real-time scheduler in its kernel. From version 3 onward, the system supports 256 priority levels and uses priority inheritance for dealing with priority inversion. With CE 6.0, Microsoft moved system APIs out of their own user-mode processes and placed them into kernel-mode DLLs. Microsoft licensed CE to original equipment manufacturers, who used it to build cameras, industrial controllers, point-of-sale terminals and communications hubs. The product line was eventually retired. Its final release, Windows Embedded Compact 2013, was released on June 13, 2013, and Microsoft later discontinued support for the family of Windows CE operating systems.\n\nSuccessor offerings moved toward the NT kernel. Windows IoT Core, a no-cost option, ceased to receive support in November 2020. Microsoft offered a paid extension, the 10-year Windows 10 IoT Core Services, which provided access to Long-Term Servicing Channel support. The current product is Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC, which is intended for special purpose, fixed function devices and continues to offer a 10-year support lifecycle. Its use cases include industrial equipment, kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, medical systems, and digital signage. Microsoft states that Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC is based on the same foundation as Windows Professional and Windows Enterprise. A binary-equivalent Windows Server IoT edition also exists for fixed-purpose appliances and embedded systems.\n\nWindows Mobile was Microsoft's attempt at smartphones. The first batch of mobile devices running a Microsoft's OS were Windows Mobile smartphones, which became available in 2003 and targeted business users at first. Its successor, Windows Phone, had a new user interface and aimed at the consumer market. The architecture changed with the next generation: the Windows CE architecture was dropped with the release of Windows Phone 8, opting to use the NT kernel as part of the MinWin architecture. Support then eroded. Microsoft ended support for Windows Phone 8.1 on July 11, 2017. The last Windows 10 Mobile release was version 1709, and Microsoft ended support on December 10, 2019. Microsoft advised owners to switch devices, saying \"we recommend that customers move to a supported Android or iOS device\". Analysts attributed the failure largely to the dearth of apps. The company's later mobile strategy pivoted to becoming a provider of cross-platform software and services for mobile devices rather than providing the operating system itself.\n\nOther NT-derived systems continue in consoles and specialized devices. System software for the Xbox consoles and for mixed-reality headsets is built on Windows-derived NT components, though these products are outside the scope of this article's desktop and server discussion.\n\nOn hardware, Windows IoT Enterprise is available for both x64 and Arm64 processors. Systems are available from Qualcomm and NXP that support Windows IoT Enterprise on Arm64. Arm64 editions gained Hyper-V support first introduced in Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 and Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, version 24H2. For compatibility, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise adds support for running x64 applications without modification on Arm64 processors. The lifecycle of the current LTSC release runs to October 10, 2034.\n\n<!-- The specific Arm64 silicon families for devices that began shipping in 2026 were not verified in this research and are therefore omitted. -->"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Market position and competition",
      "text": "Windows has been the most widely used desktop operating system for decades. The size of its lead, however, depends heavily on how usage is counted, and its position rests on several reinforcing factors: the personal computer market it grew out of, the software written for it, and the cost of changing platforms.\n\nMeasured share and its uncertainties\n\nMost published figures come from web-analytics services that record the operating system reported by each visitor's browser. StatCounter, the most frequently cited of these, put Windows at 76.36% of worldwide desktop usage in September 2026, with Linux at 4.54% and ChromeOS at 2.31%. Apple's OS X and macOS labels together account for roughly 16.8% in the same listing.\n\nThe figures are volatile. In June 2026, StatCounter showed Windows at about 56.6%. One analysis attributed much of that drop to an \"Unknown\" category that had grown to more than a fifth of measured traffic, which it linked to privacy tools that mask operating system fingerprints rather than a real fall in Windows use. If unidentified visits are set aside, Windows still represents about 72% of the desktop market. Another outlet described the June dip as a reporting error.\n\nDifferent services also measure different populations. Steam's 93.85% is Windows' share among participating Steam systems, while Statcounter's 56.61% is Windows' share of measured desktop web traffic. Because such trackers count visits rather than machines, they reflect active use more than the number of installed systems. Readers should therefore compare sources by methodology before comparing their figures.\n\nOriginal equipment manufacturers and the Wintel alliance\n\nThe dominance of Windows is closely tied to the 1981 IBM PC. IBM published the technical specifications and schematics of the PC, which allowed third-party companies to produce compatible hardware. The operating system was supplied by Microsoft: DOS was the only operating system available on the PC when it was introduced, which set the stage for later MS-DOS dominance.\n\nThe alliance between Microsoft software and Intel processors became known as Wintel. Wintel is the partnership of Microsoft and Intel producing personal computers using Intel x86-compatible processors running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Intel had the highest volumes of production of CPUs, and PCs were ubiquitous low-cost computers. Intel's role is discussed further in the microprocessor context, while Microsoft's own OEM licensing terms, which made Windows the default choice on most new machines, are a major part of its market position.\n\nPreinstallation remains a significant channel. New computers typically arrive with the current Windows release already installed, which moves users to newer versions without an active decision on their part.\n\nCompatibility and switching costs\n\nWindows's largest competitive asset is the body of software built for it, from business applications to games and specialized industrial tools. This creates a network effect: developers target Windows because most users run it, and users stay because the software and peripherals they need work there. Changing platforms usually means replacing applications, retraining staff, and sometimes rewriting internal tools, so switching costs are high, particularly for organizations. These costs act as barriers to entry for rival platforms, and they help explain why Windows keeps its share even when alternatives are technically competitive.\n\nCompetitors\n\nLinux has gained ground in desktop usage in recent years. Desktop Linux reached about 4%, its highest sustained level in StatCounter's records, helped in part by users abandoning unsupported Windows 10 hardware rather than replacing it. Linux's growth is limited by its fragmented distributions and by the Windows-only applications that many users depend on.\n\nApple's macOS runs only on Apple hardware, which limits its reach but gives it strong positions in creative and premium segments. ChromeOS, built around the browser, is strongest in education and in low-cost laptops that depend on web applications. Both compete mainly on hardware integration and simplicity rather than on the breadth of Windows software.\n\nWindows's dominance raises questions of market-power and monopoly, which are addressed in the legal and regulatory section below."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Legal disputes and controversies",
      "text": "Antitrust cases in the United States and Europe\n\nThe most consequential legal challenge came in 1998, when federal and state plaintiffs sued Microsoft over alleged monopolistic conduct under the Sherman Act. The 2000 remedy would have required the company to propose a plan separating its operating-system and applications businesses. On appeal in 2001, the D.C. Circuit upheld part of the liability finding but set aside the entire remedy and sent the question back to a different judge. The United States and Microsoft reached a resolution in the form of a proposed consent decree, filed as the \"Revised Proposed Final Judgment\" on November 6, 2001. The court approved the consent decree as its Final Judgment on November 12, 2002. Compliance was then tracked through a technical committee and a long series of joint status reports filed into the next decade.\n\nThe European Commission ran a parallel track under competition law. A 2004 decision treated the bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows as an abuse of dominance and imposed a fine of about €497 million; a later 2008 penalty of roughly €899 million addressed non-compliance with the interoperability remedies. The browser dispute followed. In 2009 the Commission made Microsoft's offer binding: Microsoft would make available for five years a \"choice screen\" enabling users of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 to select the web browser(s) they want. The commitments later broke down in practice. The Commission's preliminary view was that Microsoft failed to roll out the choice screen with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, released in February 2011, and millions of EU users may not have seen it until July 2012. In 2013 the Commission imposed an unprecedented €561 million fine for breaking the pledge to offer consumers a choice of how they access the Internet. The Commission also reported that the screen had been shown 795 million times, a figure that illustrates both the scale of the remedy and the gap in its rollout.\n\nPrivacy, default settings, and AI features\n\nWindows has also drawn sustained criticism from privacy advocates, regulators, and users over the data it collects and the defaults it ships with. Debates have centered on diagnostic telemetry sent to Microsoft, the number of settings that are enabled by default, and the promotion of Microsoft services and third-party apps in the Start menu, which critics have described as advertising inside a paid operating system. The sharpest recent controversy concerned Recall, a feature announced in 2024 for Copilot+ PCs that periodically captured screenshots to build a searchable history of activity. Security researchers pointed out that the captured data was initially stored in a form that could be read by anyone with access to the device. Microsoft postponed the launch, made the feature opt-in, and added encryption and Windows Hello authentication before releasing it more widely. The episode is often cited in discussions of data privacy and of how AI features interact with local security.\n\nHardware eligibility and end of support\n\nWindows 11, released in October 2021, set a stricter hardware baseline than its predecessors, including a requirement for a TPM 2.0 security chip and UEFI firmware with Secure Boot, along with a list of supported processors. Many PCs that ran Windows 10 well could not install Windows 11, and critics argued that this pushed owners toward hardware replacement and added to electronic waste. The issue became more pressing as Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025. Microsoft offered a time-limited extended security update program for consumers to bridge the gap, but it ran only for a fixed period and did not change the underlying eligibility rules. Critics, including environmental and consumer groups, continued to argue that the policy shortened the useful life of otherwise functional computers.\n\nSecurity incidents and vulnerabilities\n\nSecurity controversies have often centred on the gap between disclosure and patching. The most widely cited case is the WannaCry worm of May 2017. Microsoft released a security update for the MS17-010 vulnerability on March 14, 2017. It later released patches for Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003 on May 13, 2017. The exploit used by the worm, known as EternalBlue, had been made available on the Internet through the Shadow Brokers dump in April 2017, after Microsoft had already patched the underlying flaw in March. The vulnerability was a weakness in the SMBv1 file-sharing protocol. Affected organisations included the National Health Service of the United Kingdom, the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, and the U.S. delivery service FedEx. The outbreak prompted public debate over government stockpiling of vulnerabilities; Microsoft president Brad Smith criticized intelligence agencies for failing to disclose the vulnerabilities they discover. Such episodes are a central concern of cybersecurity policy for any widely deployed operating system."
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    "operating-system",
    "personal-computer",
    "computer-science",
    "ibm",
    "cybersecurity",
    "concurrent-computing",
    "shared-memory",
    "virtual-machine",
    "programming-language",
    "cloud-computing",
    "network-effect",
    "barriers-to-entry",
    "linux",
    "market-power",
    "monopoly",
    "competition-law",
    "data-privacy"
  ],
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    },
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    },
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    },
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      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/whats-new-windows-11-version-26h2"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025",
      "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-support-has-ended-on-october-14-2025-2ca8b313-1946-43d3-b55c-2b95b107f281"
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      "title": "Architecture of Windows NT - Wikiwand",
      "url": "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Architecture_of_Windows_NT"
    },
    {
      "title": "Running 32-bit Applications - Win32 apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/running-32-bit-applications"
    },
    {
      "title": "Performance and Memory Consumption Under WOW64 - Win32 apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/performance-and-memory-consumption"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows on Arm: This is how well 64-bit emulation is working - TechRepublic",
      "url": "https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-on-arm-this-is-how-well-64-bit-emulation-is-working/"
    },
    {
      "title": "WoW64",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows NT processor scheduling",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_processor_scheduling"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Kernel Internals Thread Scheduling *David B. Probert, Ph.D.",
      "url": "https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/training/ss/lecture/new-documents/Lectures/03-ThreadScheduling/ThreadScheduling.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Understanding the Windows Memory Manager",
      "url": "https://cyberraiden.com/2025/07/27/understanding-the-windows-memory-manager/"
    },
    {
      "title": "NUMA Support - Win32 apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/numa-support"
    },
    {
      "title": "windows-internals/windows-internals-6th-ed/chapter-10-memory-management.md at main · ayoubfaouzi/windows-internals",
      "url": "https://github.com/ayoubfaouzi/windows-internals/blob/main/windows-internals-6th-ed/chapter-10-memory-management.md"
    },
    {
      "title": "Object Manager",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Manager"
    },
    {
      "title": "NTFS",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS"
    },
    {
      "title": "ReFS",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS"
    },
    {
      "title": "Volume shadow copies, ReFS, etc",
      "url": "https://rakhesh.com/windows/volume-shadow-copies-refs-etc/"
    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "Understanding Windows Registry Hive Locations",
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    },
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      "url": "https://cyberwarrior76.substack.com/p/windows-registry-forensics-field"
    },
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      "url": "https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/recover-registry-files-shadow-copy/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/volume-shadow-copy-service"
    },
    {
      "title": "Registry Keys and Values for Backup and Restore - Win32 apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/backup/registry-keys-for-backup-and-restore"
    },
    {
      "title": "How Access Tokens Work",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2003/cc783557(v=ws.10)"
    },
    {
      "title": "[MS-AZOD]: Security Descriptor",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-azod/ec52bde3-9c86-4484-9080-e72148a2d53b"
    },
    {
      "title": "Credential Guard overview",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/credential-guard/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Comprehensive protection for your credentials with Credential Guard and HVCI",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Enable TPM 2.0 on your PC",
      "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enable-tpm-2-0-on-your-pc-1fd5a332-360d-4f46-a1e7-ae6b0c90645c"
    },
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      "title": "Windows 11 Requirements & TPM: What Are the Real Benefits?",
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    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Defender Will Be Defended: MemoryRanger Prevents Blinding Windows AV",
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    },
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    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Unveils Windows 10 with New Start Menu",
      "url": "https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/us/windows-10-unveiled,news-19648.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Launches Windows 11 26H2 Update",
      "url": "https://www.techpowerup.com/353239/microsoft-launches-windows-11-26h2-update"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft is looking to get rid of the Control Panel in Windows 11",
      "url": "https://www.tweaktown.com/news/110938/microsoft-is-looking-to-get-rid-of-the-control-panel-in-windows-11/index.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 Says Farewell to the Classic Control Panel: A Full Transition to the Settings App",
      "url": "https://thinkcomputers.org/windows-11-says-farewell-to-the-classic-control-panel-a-full-transition-to-the-settings-app/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Start menu",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Unveils Windows 10 with New Start Menu",
      "url": "https://www.tomsguide.com/us/windows-10-unveiled,news-19648.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 10 Hands On - The Start Menu is Back, Start Screen Evolves",
      "url": "https://www.pixelrefresh.com/windows-10-hands-on-the-start-menu-is-back-start-screen-evolves/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 Course Correction: Control Panel Fades, Settings Improves, Taskbar Returns",
      "url": "https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-course-correction-control-panel-fades-settings-improves-taskbar-returns.411553/"
    },
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    },
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    },
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      "title": "Microsoft's Stalled UWP Project Supports .NET 9 to Help WinUI 3 Migration -- Visual Studio Magazine",
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    },
    {
      "title": "WinUI vs WPF in 2026: A Practical Comparison for .NET Desktop Developers",
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    },
    {
      "title": "learn.microsoft.com",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/is-is/windows/apps/winui"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows developer FAQ - Windows apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/windows-developer-faq"
    },
    {
      "title": "learn.microsoft.com",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/is-is/windows/apps/winui/winui3"
    },
    {
      "title": "WPF vs WinForms - Making the Right Decision in 2026 - NDepend Blog",
      "url": "https://blog.ndepend.com/wpf-vs-winforms-choosing-the-proper-framework-for-your-project/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Subsystem for Linux becomes an app",
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    },
    {
      "title": "MSI and MSIX Packaging",
      "url": "https://deepwiki.com/microsoft/WSL/7.3-msi-and-msix-packaging"
    },
    {
      "title": "Building WSL-UI: The Microsoft Store Journey - Octasoft Ltd",
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    },
    {
      "title": "MSIX Packaging Tool Overview - MSIX",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/packaging-tool/tool-overview"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows App SDK 1.0 release notes - Windows apps",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-app-sdk/release-notes/windows-app-sdk-1-0"
    },
    {
      "title": "Which Windows 11 version is best for you",
      "url": "https://www.techvertu.co.uk/blog/software/which-windows-11-version-is-best"
    },
    {
      "title": "Difference Between Windows 11 Editions (Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education, SE)",
      "url": "https://www.itechtics.com/windows-editions/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 Home vs Pro vs Enterprise 2026",
      "url": "https://truescho.com/en/blog/windows-11-home-vs-pro-vs-enterprise-2026"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 Home vs Pro vs Enterprise vs Education vs SE",
      "url": "https://www.itechguides.com/windows-11-editions-explained-home-vs-pro-vs-enterprise-vs-education-vs-se/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 LTSC Complete Guide: Install, Set Up & Optimize (2026)",
      "url": "https://techdiy.info/pc/windows/windows-11-ltsc-complete-guide/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 LTSC explained: The OS when you need stability above all",
      "url": "https://www.computerworld.com/article/1716419/faq-windows-10-ltsb-explained.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Install Windows 11 LTSC in 2026: ISO, USB and Activation",
      "url": "https://www.itechguides.com/how-to-install-windows-11-ltsc-in-2026-enterprise-and-iot-guide/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 - release information",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/windows11-release-information"
    },
    {
      "title": "Lifecycle FAQ - Fixed Policy",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/fixed-policy"
    },
    {
      "title": "Clarifying Microsoft Lifecycle Policies as We Approach 2023 End of Support Dates",
      "url": "https://community.connection.com/clarifying-microsoft-lifecycle-policies-as-we-approach-2023-end-of-support-dates/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 7",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7"
    },
    {
      "title": "Lifecycle FAQ - Windows",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 End of Life: Full Support for Home & Pro (2026)",
      "url": "https://www.windowstechit.com/41525/windows-11-end-of-life/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Windows 11 23H2 - what is the difference between windows 11 Home, Pro, Pro Education, and Pro for Workstations,Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise",
      "url": "https://devicebase.net/en/microsoft-windows-11-23h2/questions/what-is-the-difference-between-windows-11-home-pro-pro-education-and-pro-for-workstations-enterprise-education-iot-enterprise/71o"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC",
      "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows 10 LTSC End of Support Dates",
      "url": "https://www.myabt.com/windows-10-ltsc-end-of-support"
    },
    {
      "title": "Patch Tuesday",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft demystifies how Windows updates work - Help Net Security",
      "url": "https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/07/13/how-microsoft-windows-updates-work/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Update release cycle for Windows clients",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/release-cycle"
    },
    {
      "title": "KB5121794: Feature update to Windows 11, version 26H2 by using an enablement package",
      "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/servicing/os/windows-11/2026/09/kb5121794-feature-update-to-windows-11-version-26h2"
    },
    {
      "title": "Deploy The Windows 11 26H2 Feature Update Using Microsoft Intune HTMD Blog",
      "url": "https://www.anoopcnair.com/windows-11-26h2-feature-update-microsoft-intune/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Safeguard holds for Windows",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/safeguard-holds"
    },
    {
      "title": "Safeguard holds with the Windows Update for Business deployment service",
      "url": "https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/safeguard-holds-with-the-windows-update-for-business-deployment-service/3590463"
    },
    {
      "title": "KB5006965: How to check information about safeguard holds affecting your device - Microsoft Support",
      "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5006965-how-to-check-information-about-safeguard-holds-affecting-your-device-265cf311-6c98-4413-956b-75b3044dfde9"
    },
    {
      "title": "A Safeguard Hold Is Blocking Your Feature Update: Finding…",
      "url": "https://endpointweekly.com/blog/windows-update-safeguard-holds-compat-appraiser.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft lifts more safeguard holds blocking Windows 11 updates",
      "url": "https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-lifts-more-safeguard-holds-blocking-windows-11-updates/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server End of Life - Lansweeper",
      "url": "https://www.lansweeper.com/blog/eol/windows-server-end-of-life/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Windows Server Support Dates and Lifecycle - TechVertu",
      "url": "https://www.techvertu.co.uk/blog/software/windows-server-support-dates-and-lifecycle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server End-of-Life Dates: 2012 to 2025 Timeline",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 End of Life: November 14, 2034 (Extended Support)",
      "url": "https://endoflife.ai/article-windows-server-2025-eol"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server Lifecycle Dates",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server End of Life: Every Version's End of Support Date",
      "url": "https://endoflife.ai/article-windows-server-eol"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server EOL Dates: 2016, 2019, 2022 & 2025",
      "url": "https://rafftechnologies.com/windows-server/windows-server-end-of-life-dates"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server end-of-life dates & support status (2026)",
      "url": "https://isitpatched.com/eol/windows-server"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Licensing Guide: Versions, Editions, Pricing",
      "url": "https://www.trustedtechteam.com/pages/microsoft-windows-server-licensing-guide"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Licensing & Pricing",
      "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/pricing"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server licensing",
      "url": "https://wiki.licenseware.io/wiki/windows-server/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Licensing: What Changed",
      "url": "https://o365hq.com/blog/windows-server-2025-licensing-what-changed"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Core Licensing & CALs Explained",
      "url": "https://softwarekeep.digital/blogs/news/windows-server-2025-core-licensing-cals-explained"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Pricing: Licensing, CALs & Cost Guide",
      "url": "https://indigosoftwarecompany.com/windows-server-2025-pricing/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2025 Licensing Guide: Pricing & CALs Explained",
      "url": "https://brytesoft.com/blog/windows-server-2025-pricing-cals-activation.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2012 R2",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2012_R2"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 reaching end of support - Microsoft Lifecycle",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-server-2012-r2-end-of-support"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 End of Life in October - US Cloud",
      "url": "https://www.uscloud.com/blog/microsoft-windows-server-2012-r2-end-of-life-in-october/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 End of Support",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 reach end of support, sort of - gHacks Tech News",
      "url": "https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/02/windows-server-2012-and-2012-r2-reach-end-of-support-sort-of/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft: Windows Server 2012 reaches end of support in October 2023",
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    },
    {
      "title": "What is Windows CE?",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Embedded Compact",
      "url": "https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows CE End-of-Life: Medical Devices’ Migration Guide",
      "url": "https://www.integrasources.com/blog/windows-ce-end-of-life-medical-devices/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Mobilize: Explore The New Features In Windows Embedded CE 6.0",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2006/december/mobilize-explore-the-new-features-in-windows-embedded-ce-6-0"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows CE",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows IoT Enterprise on Arm: A Voyage into New Possibilities - Microsoft",
      "url": "https://www.arrow.com/ais/msembedded/resource/blog/windows-iot-enterprise-on-arm-a-voyage-into-new-possibilities"
    },
    {
      "title": "What's new in Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 - Windows IoT Enterprise",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/whats-new/windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2024"
    },
    {
      "title": "Download Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC ISO: Complete Guide",
      "url": "https://www.itechguides.com/download-windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-iso-complete-guide/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC",
      "url": "https://www.arrow.com/ais/msembedded/resources/windows-iot-enterprise-ltsc-frequently-asked-questions-faqs"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Dark Side(-Channel) of Mobile Devices: A Survey on Network Traffic Analysis",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.03766"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Embedded Compact - BetaWiki",
      "url": "https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact"
    },
    {
      "title": "Support for Windows Phone 8.1 has ended - Microsoft Lifecycle",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-phone-8-1-end-of-support"
    },
    {
      "title": "Support ending for Windows 10 Mobile in 2019",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-10-mobile-end-of-support"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft ending Windows 10 mobile, says switch to iPhone or Android",
      "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/microsoft-ending-windows-10-mobile-says-switch-to-iphone-or-android.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Death date: Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 10 Mobile in December 2019",
      "url": "https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-10-mobile-end-of-support-date"
    },
    {
      "title": "End of Windows 10 Mobile is natural conclusion of Microsoft's shift in strategy",
      "url": "https://www.techradar.com/news/end-of-windows-10-mobile-is-natural-conclusion-of-microsofts-shift-in-strategy"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows IoT FAQ",
      "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/faq"
    },
    {
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    },
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    },
    {
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    },
    {
      "title": "No, Windows did not fall below 60% market share or lose 20 points to Linux",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Usage Statistics 2026: Global and Europe",
      "url": "https://licendi.com/en/blog/estadisticas-uso-windows-2026/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Wintel",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintel"
    },
    {
      "title": "Timeline of Microsoft",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Microsoft"
    },
    {
      "title": "Windows + Intel = Wintel?",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Windows Market Share 2026: Windows 11 vs Windows 10 Adoption",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Intel",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel"
    },
    {
      "title": "Statcounter: Windows 11 market share jumps to 27.83% - Neowin",
      "url": "https://www.neowin.net/news/statcounter-windows-11-market-share-jumps-to-2783/"
    },
    {
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    },
    {
      "title": "EC reaches agreement with Microsoft over web browser choice - Telecompaper",
      "url": "https://www.telecompaper.com/news/ec-reaches-agreement-with-microsoft-over-web-browser-choice--709128"
    },
    {
      "title": "Europe Could Hit Microsoft With $7B+ Fine Over New Internet Explorer Antitrust Violations [Updated]",
      "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2012/10/24/europe-follows-through-on-threat-hits-microsoft-with-complaint-over-internet-explorer-antitrust-violations"
    },
    {
      "title": "Antitrust Alert: European Commission Fines Microsoft €561 Million for Breach of Commitments",
      "url": "https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2013/03/antitrust-alert--european-commission-fines-microsoft-561-million-for-breach-of-commitments"
    },
    {
      "title": "Indicators Associated With WannaCry Ransomware",
      "url": "https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2017/05/12/indicators-associated-wannacry-ransomware"
    },
    {
      "title": "WannaCry Ransomware Campaign Exploiting SMB ...",
      "url": "https://cert.europa.eu/static/SecurityAdvisories/2017/CERT-EU-SA2017-012.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Vulnerabilities and Attacks Against Industrial Control Systems and Critical Infrastructures",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.03945"
    },
    {
      "title": "How WannaCry Went From A Windows Bug To An International Incident",
      "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2017/05/16/wannacry-ransomware-ms17-010/"
    },
    {
      "title": "U.S. v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001) :: Justia",
      "url": "https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/253/34/576095/"
    },
    {
      "title": "us v microsoft corporation settlement information",
      "url": "https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-corporation-settlement-information"
    },
    {
      "title": "Microsoft kills EU browser choice screen",
      "url": "https://www.computerworld.com/article/1487810/microsoft-kills-eu-browser-choice-screen-2.html"
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}