20 Facts About Windows XP

Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system.

Development of Windows XP began in the late 1990s under the codename "Neptune", built on the Windows NT kernel explicitly intended for mainstream consumer use.

An updated version of Windows XP 2000 was initially planned for the business market.

Windows XP removed support for PC-98, i486 and SGI Visual Workstation 320 and 540 and will only run on 32-bit x86 CPUs and devices which use BIOS firmware.

Mainstream support for Windows XP ended on April 14, 2009, and extended support ended on April 8, 2014.

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Windows Embedded POSReady 2009, based on Windows XP Professional, received security updates until April 2019.

Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 introduced new features to Windows XP post-release, including the Windows Security Center, Bluetooth support, the executable space protection, Windows Firewall, and support for SDHC cards, which are larger than 4 GB and smaller than 32 GB.

Windows XP uses prefetching to improve startup and application launch times.

Windows XP was originally bundled with Internet Explorer 6, Outlook Express 6, Windows Messenger, and MSN Explorer.

Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 removed features from Windows XP, including support for TCP half-open connections and the address bar on the taskbar.

Windows XP was released in two major editions on launch: Home Edition and Professional Edition.

The "K" and "KN" editions of Windows XP were released in August 2006, and are only available in English and Korean, and contain links to third-party instant messenger and media player software.

Several Windows XP components are upgradable to the latest versions, which include new versions introduced in later versions of Windows, and other major Microsoft applications are available.

Windows XP stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista.

Variants of Windows XP for embedded systems have different support policies: Windows XP Embedded SP3 and Windows Embedded for Point of Service SP3 were supported until January and April 2016, respectively.

Plans were being made by several ATM vendors and their customers to migrate to Windows XP 7-based systems over the course of 2014, while vendors have considered the possibility of using Linux-based platforms in the future to give them more flexibility for support lifecycles, and the ATM Industry Association has since endorsed Windows XP 10 as a further replacement.

Windows XP is remotely exploitable by numerous security holes that were discovered after Microsoft stopped supporting it.

In 2020, Microsoft announced that it would disable the Windows Update service for SHA-1 endpoints; since Windows XP did not get an update for SHA-2, Windows Update Services are no longer available on the OS as of late July 2020.

However, as of October 2021, the old updates for Windows XP are still available on the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Windows XP's longevity was viewed as testament to its stability and Microsoft's successful attempts to keep it up to date, but as an indictment of its direct successor's perceived failings.