Development of Windows Vista
Encyclopedia
Development of Windows Vista
occurred over the span of five and a half years, starting in earnest in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft
's Windows XP
operating system, and continuing until November 2006.
Microsoft originally expected to ship the new version sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler") and Windows 7 (codenamed "Blackcomb" and "Vienna"). Vista's original codename, "Longhorn", was an allusion to this plan: While Whistler and Blackcomb are large ski resorts in British Columbia
, Longhorn is the name of a bar between the two mountains that Whistler's visitors pass to reach Blackcomb. Gradually, "Longhorn" assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for "Blackcomb", resulting in the release date being pushed back a few times. Many of Microsoft's developers were also re-tasked with improving the security of Windows XP. Faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on August 27, 2004 that it was making significant changes. "Longhorn" development basically started afresh, building on the Windows Server 2003
codebase, and re-incorporating only the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release. Some previously announced features, such as WinFS
and NGSCB
, were dropped or postponed.
After "Longhorn" was named Windows Vista in mid-2005, an unprecedented beta-test
program was started which involved hundreds of thousands of volunteers and companies. Between September 2005 and October 2006, Microsoft released regular Community Technology Previews (CTP) to beta testers, and two release candidates to the general public. Development of Windows Vista came to a conclusion with the November 8, 2006 announcement of its completion by co-president of Windows development, Jim Allchin.
, which was released in April 2003. Occasional builds of Longhorn were leaked onto popular file sharing
networks such as IRC
, BitTorrent, eDonkey
and various newsgroup
s, and so most of what is known about builds prior to the first sanctioned development release of Longhorn in May 2003, is derived from these builds.
Most builds of Longhorn and Vista were identified by a label that was always displayed in the bottom-right corner of the desktop. A typical build label would look like "Longhorn Build 3663.Lab06_N.020728-1728". Higher build numbers didn't automatically mean that the latest features from every development team at Microsoft was included. Typically, a team working on a certain feature or subsystem would generate their own working builds which developers would test with, and when the code was deemed stable, all the changes would be incorporated back into the main development tree at once. At Microsoft, a number of "Build labs" exist where the compilation of the entirety of Windows can be performed by a team. The lab in which any given build originated is shown as part of the build label, and the date and time of the build follows that. Some builds (such as Beta 1 and Beta 2) only display the build label in the version information dialog (Winver), The icons is Windows XP.
.
Build 3670 (build date of August 19, 2002) where some screenshots of this build showed a variation of the Device Manager implemented inside Windows Explorer.
had colored Windows logos. Also the templates in the My Documents and My Pictures were notably different as well as the Open and Save as dialog boxes also included the template, incorporating aesthetic changes and a few new user interface options. A new "Sidebar" was also present, which contained many of the gadgets that would much later be seen in Windows Sidebar, such as an analog clock, slide show, and search capability. An option in this version of the sidebar also made it possible to move the Start button into it, and disable the traditional taskbar entirely. An early revision of WinFS
was also included, but very little in the way of a user interface was included, and as such it appeared to early testers to be nothing more than a service that consumed large amounts of memory and processor time. The "Display Properties" control panel was the first significant departure, being built on the new "Avalon
" API
.
Build 3706 (build date of October 29, 2002) was leaked on May 22, 2006. It was one of the first builds to include the Desktop Window Manager
(DWM), and the Desktop Composition Engine, which later became known as the Media Integration Layer. This build appeared on the Internet long after other builds from this time period, and included several of the changes that were first reported as being part of later milestone builds, including Internet Explorer 6.05 and the "Plex" theme.
Build 3718 (build date of November 19, 2002) was leaked on April 30, 2004. It included the DWM and some early hardware-accelerated alpha transparency and transition effects. As a demonstration of the DCE's capabilities, programs literally flipped into the taskbar
and twisted as they were minimized.
The most notable visual and functional difference, however, came with Windows Explorer
. The incorporation of the Plex theme made blue the dominant color of the entire application. The Windows XP-style task pane was almost completely replaced with a large horizontal pane that appeared under the toolbars. A new search interface allowed for filtering of results, searching of Windows help, and natural-language queries that would be used to integrate with WinFS. The animated search characters were also removed. The "view modes" were also replaced with a single slider that would resize the icons in real-time, in list, thumbnail, or details mode, depending on where the slider was. File metadata was also made more visible and more easily editable, with more active encouragement to fill out missing pieces of information. Also of note was the conversion of Windows Explorer to being a .NET
application.
-style download manager, though no such functionality was apparent. Significant memory leak
problems with Windows Explorer and the Sidebar made this build difficult to use, which resulted in some third-party hacks to mitigate the problem. The back-end database of Outlook Express changed completely, and became dependent on WinFS to store its email. WinFS itself still had significant performance and memory usage issues, and so it became common for testers to disable WinFS entirely, thus rendering Outlook Express inoperative.
At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference
(WinHEC) conference in May 2003, Microsoft gave their first public demonstrations of the new Desktop Window Manager and Aero. The demonstrations were done on a revised build 4015 which was never released. A number of sessions for developers and hardware engineers at the conference focused on these new features, as well as the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
(previously known as "Palladium"), which at the time was Microsoft's proposed solution for creating a secure computing environment whereby any given component of the system could be deemed "trusted". Also at this conference, Microsoft reiterated their roadmap for delivering Longhorn, pointing to an "early 2005" release date.
Build 4028 (build date of July 1, 2003) was the first known Server build, and was based on Windows Server.NET RC1, which later became Windows Server 2003. Traditional client bits, such as visual style and look, were present but disabled by default.
Build 4029 (build date of June 19, 2003), was leaked on September 23, 2003. This build contained few of the technologies new to build 4015. Windows Explorer went through a number of other changes. Larger image and video previews were displayed in a tooltip when the mouse hovered over a file, column-level filtering of results was introduced, and overall performance of Explorer was somewhat improved over build 4015, though the memory leak issues were not entirely resolved. There was also a new analog clock user interface. Batch image processing of images was also introduced, making it possible for a user to rotate a number of images at once.
Build 4029's name was displayed as "onghornLay rofessionalPay" (Pig Latin
for Longhorn Professional) in various places around the operating system. While some had presumed that screenshots of this build were fake because of this seemingly obvious mistake, Microsoft later explained that this was merely a test of some new code to locate and reduce the number of places in the operating system code that the name was defined.
Build 4039 (build date of August 27, 2003) was leaked on August 22, 2007. This build includes Phodeo, a 3D view of displaying photos, and full DWM and glass. This was the last build to contain the Plex visual style.
Build 4042 (build date of September 9, 2003) was probably the earliest build to have the Slate theme (Lab06) instead of the Plex theme (winmain) seen in the previous builds. However, the Aero glass from Build 4039 was still present.
Build 4050 (build date of September 28, 2003) was shown at TechEd 2004 in Israel and was one of the many 4050-numbered builds used in Microsoft demos, notably in the 2003 Professional Developers Conference
.
Official PDC 2003 build (build date of October 1, 2003 with a build number of 4051) was not released to the general public, but it did leak on October 20, 2003. It introduced the Slate theme, which first debuted in 4042.Lab06. Some visual changes included:
This build also contained an updated version of Internet Explorer
with a version number of 6.05. New features noted by reviewers included a Download Manager, pop-up blocker, add-on manager and a tool to clear browsing history. With the exception of the download manager, which was eventually discarded, these features all appeared in builds of Internet Explorer included with preview builds of Windows XP Service Pack 2 a few months later. It also did not have the classic Start Button with "Start" written on it - a development used later in Windows Vista.
Build 4053 (build date of October 22, 2003) was leaked on March 2, 2004 and had some minor changes.
Build 4066 (build date of February 26, 2004). Although this build identified itself as a "Server" build, it contained many of the features only ever seen and associated with desktop builds. An updated version of Phodeo was included, as well as the Sidebar, a Mini-Windows Media Player and associated sidebar tiles, a functioning build of the Desktop Window Manager and the Jade theme. This build was leaked on December 20, 2008.
was introduced for the Jade theme.
In May 2004, Microsoft changed its plans to include the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
technology with Longhorn. The technology, better known by its original code-name of "Palladium", had garnered much criticism from analysts, security specialists and researchers, and was often cited by advocates of non-Microsoft
operating systems as a reason to migrate to their preferred platform. Ross Anderson, for example, published a paper, collating many of these concerns and criticisms as part of a larger analysis on Trusted Computing
. In light of a large amount of negative response not only from analysts, but enterprise customers and software developers, Microsoft shelved many aspects of the NGSCB project for an indefinite period of time. The only aspect of NGSCB that was included with the final release of the operating system is "BitLocker
", which can make use of a Trusted Platform Module chip to facilitate secure startup and full-drive encryption.
Build 4083 (build date of May 16, 2004) – Leaked on November 10, 2004. Both Sidebar and WinFS were dropped from this release. Considered highly unstable, including the absence of programs in the start menu and driver and installation issues.
Build 4093 (build date of August 19, 2004) – It was the last build compiled before the development reset. Considered highly unstable, it contained Sidebar, WinFS, and an Avalon
-based Windows Movie Maker
. There was an Avalon-based Display Properties control panel applet hidden in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder, similar to the one in Build 3683.
that the company embarked on through the first half of the 1990s, which never resulted in a shipping operating system (though nearly all the technologies developed in that time did end up in Windows 95
and Windows NT
.)
In a September 23, 2005 front-page article on The Wall Street Journal
, Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin
, who had overall responsibility for the development and delivery of Windows, explained how development of Longhorn was "crashing into the ground" due in large part to the haphazard methods by which features were introduced and integrated into the core of the operating system, without a clear focus on an end-product. In December 2003, Allchin enlisted the help of two other senior executives, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, the former being experienced with shipping software at Microsoft, most notably Windows Server 2003, and the latter having spent his career at Microsoft researching and developing methods of producing high-quality testing systems. Srivastava employed a team of core architects to visually map out the entirety of the Windows operating system, and to proactively work towards a development process that would enforce high levels of code quality, reduce interdependencies between components, and in general, "not make things worse with Vista". These things, in conjunction with the fact that many of Microsoft's most skilled developers and engineers had been working on Windows Server 2003, led to the decision to "reset" development of Longhorn, building on the same code that would become Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, instead of the older Windows XP. This change, announced internally to Microsoft employees on August 26, 2004, began in earnest in September, though it would take several more months before the new development process and build methodology would be used by all of the development teams. A number of complaints came from individual developers, and Bill Gates himself, that the new development process was going to be prohibitively difficult to work within. Changes at the build labs also resulted in a period of time of several months where no builds of Longhorn were leaked onto the Internet.
Build 5001 (build date of September 12, 2004) the other Windows Longhorn build also has a Windows XP Interface. The wallpaper is same of Windows XP, but has a bull with a long horn. The bootscreen also is same of Windows XP, but has "lh" replaxing "xp". The "lh" represents "Longhorn" the codename of Windows Vista
Build 5048 (built on April 1, 2005) was the official WinHEC 2005 preview build, described as the Longhorn Developer Preview, and made available to WinHEC attendees on April 24, 2005. It was the only build from this time period that was made available by Microsoft; it was not officially distributed outside of WinHEC, but the build quickly appeared on file sharing networks. The Aero
visual style made its first appearance in this build, and the Desktop Window Manager was present but disabled and hidden by default. At the keynote presentation, Bill Gates also announced that many of the WinFX developer APIs that were originally planned exclusively for Longhorn were going to be backported
to Windows XP and Server 2003, and that the final user interface for Longhorn would not be seen for a while longer. Other features such as device-independent resolutions, rasterized icons, virtual folders, and registry virtualization were discussed as well.
Build 5048's closer resemblance to Windows XP than to the prior Longhorn builds from 2003 surprised many, leading well-known Windows enthusiast Paul Thurrott
to write: "My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck." Months later, Thurrott stated that the Vista development process has since recovered in the more recent builds.
Build 5060 (build date of April 17, 2005) Not much difference to Build 5048, except it had a new style logon screen.
and was available to Microsoft Developer Network
(MSDN) and TechNet subscribers as well as a select group of Microsoft Beta testers.
Compared with the WinHEC build released earlier in the year, Vista Beta 1 was a large advancement in introducing new user interface features. The Windows Shell was drastically changed yet again, introducing virtual folders, a new search interface, a number of new high-resolution icons, and a revamped Windows Explorer interface which did away with the menus and most of the toolbar buttons that were present in previous versions. Beta 1 also introduced many of the underlying technologies slated for Vista, including the new networking and audio stacks, parental controls, and fairly complete working build of .NET Framework 3.0
, then still referred to as WinFX.
Build 5219, also known as CTP1 and September CTP, was distributed among 2005 PDC attendees on September 13, 2005, and has been released to Microsoft Beta testers and MSDN subscribers. This was the first public "Ultimate Edition"
build, and included Super Fetch. Although not enabled by default, this refresh saw the return of the Windows Sidebar, which had been removed as part of the development reset, and the introduction of Desktop Gadgets
, both of which are part of Microsoft gadgets
line of mini-applications. Microsoft stated that they intended to make additional gadgets available for download from a web site over time. This build also supported a new version of Windows Media Center
code-named "Diamond".
Although Microsoft had stated that WinFS will not make its debut in Windows Vista, users of build 5219 noticed that WinFS was in fact included in that version. Several Windows 'rumor' sites and newsgroups such as Neowin and Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows speculated that WinFS would in fact be ready on time for Windows Vista's release.
Build 5231 (build date of October 4, 2005), also known as CTP2 or the October 2005 CTP, was released to MSDN subscribers and Microsoft Beta Testers on October 17, 2005. This "Ultimate" build introduced Windows Media Player
version 11. Paul Thurrot stated that he hated Windows Media Center in this build.
Build 5259 (built on November 17, 2005) was released to Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) members on November 22, 2005. It was originally announced to be released on November 18 as a November CTP. Microsoft cancelled the November CTP due to its instability, however, and released this build only to TAP members. Sidebar was temporarily removed; the build had a few new UI changes, including the ability to change the color and clarity of the UI. Windows AntiSpyware (soon to be "Windows Defender") was integrated. Also, this build featured an updated version of Windows Mail. It was an IDW build and therefore had not gone through the CTP testing process. It leaked to the Internet on December 7, 2005.
December CTP (built on December 14, 2005 with a build number of 5270), was released to testers and MSDN on December 19, 2005 and was very close to feature-complete. Since then, the feature complete build was delayed until late January, 2006. In this build, Windows AntiSpyware was renamed Windows Defender, and IE7 had a new icon/logo. There were some minor UI changes.
The December CTP was also the last build of Windows Vista that supported the bypassing of the WDDM driver model requirement, hence allowing the Desktop Window Manager (UXSS at the time of the build) to run using software vertex emulation. Because of this change post the 5270 builds, the well known keys 'UseMachineCheck' and 'EnableMachineCheck do not allow running the Desktop Window Manager in software emulation mode.
February CTP (built on February 17, 2006 with a build number of 5308), was released on February 22, 2006 and was the first feature-complete CTP. This build was meant for enterprises. It was also the first build to have the upgrade
compatibility. This build, according to Microsoft, had all but one feature (which should appear in the next CTP) that customers will see in the final release. However, later builds brought more improvements than previously expected. An unstaged revision was made to this build and was released on February 28, 2006 as build 5308.60 (built on February 23), which was released as a result of Windows Server "Longhorn" having many issues.
At the Intel Developer Forum
on March 9, 2006, Microsoft announced a change in their plans to support EFI in Windows Vista. The UEFI
2.0 specification (which replaces EFI 1.10) was not completed until early 2006, and at the time of Microsoft's announcement, no firmware manufacturers had completed a production implementation which could be used for testing. As a result, the decision was made to postpone the introduction of UEFI support to Windows; support for UEFI on 64-bit platforms was postponed until Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 and 32-bit UEFI will not be supported, as Microsoft does not expect many such systems to be built as the market moves to 64-bit processors.
February CTP Refresh (built on March 21, 2006 with a build number of 5342) was released March 24, 2006. This build was shipped to technical beta testers and some corporate customers by Microsoft and was being used as a testing board for the extensive feedback they got from the February CTP. They described this release as an "External Developer Workstation", with the intent of providing an interim build between CTPs. Microsoft claimed it was still on track to deliver the next CTP in the second quarter, the build that will be the last in the Beta 2 fork. The build included minor UI changes, most notably improvements to the Media Center, new Aero and Aurora effects, a faster setup process, some new Sidebar gadgets, and slight improvements in overall performance and stability. Paint was also slightly improved, there's a new screenshot snapping/saving tool included, and a slightly redesigned Network Center. This build did not meet CTP quality measurements, and was available only in Ultimate Edition, for both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) systems.
April EDW (built on April 19, 2006 with a build number of 5365), which was released on April 21, 2006, introduced more changes to visual user interface elements, and to the behavior of User Account Control. A number of new backgrounds were also introduced, and two new screensavers were added as well. The Sidebar was enabled by default, as was automatic defragmentation of the hard drive. Hold'em, a game that shipped with some previous CTPs, was dropped due to apparent "political sensitivity" issues; Microsoft now offers it as a separate web download for Windows Vista Ultimate users.
Windows Vista Beta 2 Preview (built on May 1, 2006 with a build number of 5381) leaked on May 3, 2006 and was officially released on May 6, 2006 to Microsoft's technical beta testers. It featured mostly performance tweaks and only a few minor changes compared to build 5365. With this build, Microsoft entered Beta 2 "escrow".
In June, Microsoft made two significant changes to their plans for Windows Vista. One issue, the inclusion of XML Paper Specification
support in Vista and Microsoft Office 2007
, had become a major point of dispute with Adobe Systems
. When it was first introduced May 2005, XPS (known at the time as "Metro") was characterized as a "PDF-killer", but an Adobe representative stated that they were "not threatened" by its addition to "Longhorn". However, a year later, Adobe had changed their stance, and saw the inclusion of the new document format as an anti-competitive attack on their Portable Document Format
. While Microsoft refused to remove XPS altogether, noting that it is at the core of Vista's print spooling
system, they have offered the ability to system builders and OEMs to remove any user-visible aspects of the document format from the operating system. A few days later, it was announced that PC-to-PC Sync would not ship with Windows Vista.
On June 14, 2006, Windows developer Philip Su posted a blog entry which decried the development process of Windows Vista, stating that "the code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process. " The same post also described Windows Vista as having approximately 50 million lines of code, with about 2,000 developers working on the product.
The release notes for the build state that the Time Zone bug that plagued almost all previous builds of Windows Vista had been patched, and quite a few issues in the Regional Settings and IME had also been resolved. A new "Windows Aero" mouse pointer scheme was introduced, which introduced anti-aliasing
to the mouse pointer for the first time, and many of the remaining Windows XP-style icons have been replaced with new icons. The disk space used by a clean installation was also significantly reduced.
Build 5472 (build date of July 13, 2006) was released on July 17, 2006. Aside from incorporating a number of bug fixes and localization improvements, the build also introduced a revised "Basic" theme that replaces the gray theme seen in previous builds with a light blue theme. The Network Center was significantly revised as well, collating more status information in one place, and reducing the number of steps to get to most configuration options. More desktop backgrounds and icons were introduced, and Flip3D saw some layout tweaks. A new "Windows Aero" mouse cursor is set by default. The build was a huge performance improvement over Beta 2 and was comparable to and possibly even faster than that of Windows XP
.
During a demonstration of the speech recognition feature new to Windows Vista at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on July 27, 2006, the software recognized the phrase "Dear mom" as "Dear aunt". After several failed attempts to correct the error, the sentence eventually became "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all". A developer with Vista's speech recognition team later explained that there was a bug with the build of Vista that was causing the microphone gain level to be set very high, resulting in the audio being received by the speech recognition software to be "incredibly distorted".
On August 8, 2006 the Microsoft Security Response Center provided "critical" security fixes for Windows Vista beta 2, making it the first Microsoft product to get security updates while still in beta.
Build 5536 (build date of August 21, 2006) was released on August 24, 2006, and between August 29 and August 31 to the first 100,000 users who downloaded it from the Microsoft site. Among notable changes, it featured new ties to the Windows Live
online services by new icons in the Welcome Center, minor updates to the Aero appearance with a slightly more bluish tint to the glass effect, big speed improvements (including setup speed), many bug fixes and further tweaked anti-aliasing in the Flip 3D feature. It was released publicly on August 29, 2006.
The public release of Release Candidate 1 resulted in a number of extensive reviews and analyses on various technology news web sites, both immediately after its release, and in the weeks following. Ars Technica's Ken Fisher wrote that performance had improved significantly over Beta 2, suggesting that faster machines may perform better than Windows XP; he also criticised the usefulness of the Windows Sidebar and the continued intrusiveness of User Account Control. CRN's review noted five specific categories of improvements to Release Candidate 1: Installation speed, device driver support, performance improvements in several components, security, and multimedia capabilities. Criticism of Vista's user interface arose as well, with Chris Pirillo
describing the near-final state as "sloppy."
Build 5728 (build date of September 17, 2006) was released on September 22, 2006 to technical beta participants. The following day, Microsoft released a 32-bit version of the build to the public, with a 64-bit version arriving on September 25. On October 1, Microsoft reached its goals for program participation and no longer offered the build to the public. In response to a significant amount of feedback from RC1 testers, 5728 contained many improvements, one of which was the inclusion of a check box in the Sound properties that allowed the user to disable the Windows Vista startup sound. The Welcome Center was also improved with new icons, eliminating the use of one icon for several different items, and all of the old icons in the User folder were replaced. With this build, Microsoft neared its goal of Vista installing in 15 minutes, with some reviewers reporting that 5728 took as little as 16 minutes to do a clean install. However, performing an upgrade installation from Windows XP was still slow, sometimes taking more than an hour to complete.
, which continued to be improved, contained some minor tweaks, one of the more prominent of which was the new ability to customize the color, but not the transparency, of maximized windows. In previous builds, windows became predominantly black when maximized, an effect that could not be altered by users. A Control Panel icon for Windows Sideshow was also added.
Build 5808 (build date of October 12, 2006) was released to TAP testers on October 19, 2006. This build was notable because it was the first build released to testers since Microsoft entered RTM "escrow" with build 5800. This explains why the build numbers jumped from 57xx to 58xx.
Build 5824 (build date of October 17, 2006) was released to a wide number of internal testers later that day in the hope that this build would become the final RTM. However, a catastrophic "show-stopper" bug was found that destroyed any system that was upgraded from Windows XP. Only completely reinstalling Windows would fix the computer.
Build 5840 (build date of October 18, 2006) was made available to internal testers. According to Paul Thurrott, this build did not contain the major bug in build 5824, and testing produced very positive feedback. This build contained a large number of new and final icons, as well as a new set of final wallpapers, including a new default wallpaper based on the Aurora "swoosh" seen in prior builds.
The RTM's build number jumped to 6000 to reflect Vista's internal version number, NT
6.0. Jumping RTM build numbers is common practice among consumer-oriented Windows versions, like Windows 98
(build 1998), Windows 98 SE (build 2222), Windows Me
(b.3000) or Windows XP
(b.2600), as compared to the business-oriented versions like Windows 2000
(b.2195) or Server 2003
(b.3790). On November 16, 2006, Microsoft made the final build available to MSDN
and Technet Plus subscribers. A business-oriented Enterprise edition was made available to volume license customers on November 30. Windows Vista was launched for general customer availability on January 30, 2007.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Preview was only released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2007-11-12. With this release the build number for Vista increased to 6001.17042.071107.1618. Changes in this build are covered by the Microsoft Connect Non-Disclosure agreement
(NDA).
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate was first released to Microsoft Connect testers on 2007-12-04, with the same build released on MSDN and TechNet several weeks later. A few days after that, this build was released to the public officially on the Microsoft download center as a Public Preview of SP1. With this release the build number of Vista increased to 6001.17052.071129.2315. This build contained a number of notable changes and enhancements.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh was released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2008-01-09 and was released to the public on January 11, 2008. This release has a build number of 6001.17128.080101.1935.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh 2 was only released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2008-01-24 through Windows Update only. This release has a build number of 6001.18000. Details of this build are covered by the Microsoft Connect Non-Disclosure agreement
(NDA).
Service Pack 1 was released to manufacturing on Monday February 4, 2008. The final build of Service Pack 1 went live on Tuesday, March 18, 2008, over the Microsoft Download Center, and Windows Update. This build has been confirmed by sources at Microsoft as being exactly the same code as RC Refresh 2, also giving it exactly the same build number. The full build string of both this release and Refresh 2 is "6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840".
Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to be released for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista simultaneously, sharing the same binary.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Pre-Beta
Build Number 6002.16489.lh_sp2beta.080924-1740 (Version 105)
Released in October 2008.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta
Build Number 6002.16497.081017-1605 (Version 113)
Released December 4, 2008. Download became available in the Microsoft Download Center.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC Escrow
Build Number 6002.16659.090114-1728 (Version 275)
Released January, 2009.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate
Build Number 6002.16670.090130-1715 (Version 286)
Released February, 2009.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM Escrow build to Connect Beta Testers
Build Number 6002.17043.090312-1835 (Version ???)
Released March, 2009.
Available and can be installed via Windows Update
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM Escrow
Build Number 6002.17506.090313-1730 (Version ???)
Released March, 2009.
Leak to file sharing websites.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM
Build Number 6002.18005.090410-1830
Released 28 April 2009.
Official released by Microsoft via Windows Update on 26 May 2009.
– How to Find Build and Revision Number of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Installed
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
occurred over the span of five and a half years, starting in earnest in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
operating system, and continuing until November 2006.
Microsoft originally expected to ship the new version sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler") and Windows 7 (codenamed "Blackcomb" and "Vienna"). Vista's original codename, "Longhorn", was an allusion to this plan: While Whistler and Blackcomb are large ski resorts in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Longhorn is the name of a bar between the two mountains that Whistler's visitors pass to reach Blackcomb. Gradually, "Longhorn" assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for "Blackcomb", resulting in the release date being pushed back a few times. Many of Microsoft's developers were also re-tasked with improving the security of Windows XP. Faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on August 27, 2004 that it was making significant changes. "Longhorn" development basically started afresh, building on the Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
codebase, and re-incorporating only the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release. Some previously announced features, such as WinFS
WinFS
WinFS is the code name for a cancelled data storage and management system project based on relational databases, developed by Microsoft and first demonstrated in 2003 as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, designed for persistence and management of...
and NGSCB
Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base , formerly known as Palladium, is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which is expected to implement parts of the controversial "Trusted Computing" concept on future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. NGSCB is part of...
, were dropped or postponed.
After "Longhorn" was named Windows Vista in mid-2005, an unprecedented beta-test
Development stage
A software release life cycle refers to the phases of development and maturity for a piece of computer software—ranging from its initial development, to its eventual release, and updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix bugs still present in the software.- Pre-alpha...
program was started which involved hundreds of thousands of volunteers and companies. Between September 2005 and October 2006, Microsoft released regular Community Technology Previews (CTP) to beta testers, and two release candidates to the general public. Development of Windows Vista came to a conclusion with the November 8, 2006 announcement of its completion by co-president of Windows development, Jim Allchin.
2002: Early development
The early development stages of Longhorn were generally characterized by incremental improvements and updates to Windows XP. During this period, Microsoft was fairly quiet about what was being worked on, as their marketing and public relations focus was more strongly focused on Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
, which was released in April 2003. Occasional builds of Longhorn were leaked onto popular file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
networks such as IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
, BitTorrent, eDonkey
EDonkey network
The eDonkey network is a decentralized, mostly server-based, peer-to-peer file sharing network best suited to share big files among users, and to provide long term availability of files...
and various newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s, and so most of what is known about builds prior to the first sanctioned development release of Longhorn in May 2003, is derived from these builds.
Most builds of Longhorn and Vista were identified by a label that was always displayed in the bottom-right corner of the desktop. A typical build label would look like "Longhorn Build 3663.Lab06_N.020728-1728". Higher build numbers didn't automatically mean that the latest features from every development team at Microsoft was included. Typically, a team working on a certain feature or subsystem would generate their own working builds which developers would test with, and when the code was deemed stable, all the changes would be incorporated back into the main development tree at once. At Microsoft, a number of "Build labs" exist where the compilation of the entirety of Windows can be performed by a team. The lab in which any given build originated is shown as part of the build label, and the date and time of the build follows that. Some builds (such as Beta 1 and Beta 2) only display the build label in the version information dialog (Winver), The icons is Windows XP.
Milestone 2
Build 3663 (build date of July 28, 2002) was the first known build with some leaked screenshots. It was the first sighting of the "Plex" style which Microsoft regarded as a place-holder theme for their development versions, until they were ready to demonstrate AeroWindows Aero
Windows Aero is the graphical user interface and the default theme in most editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, operating systems released by Microsoft. It is also available in Windows Server 2008, but is not enabled by default. Its name is a backronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and...
.
Build 3670 (build date of August 19, 2002) where some screenshots of this build showed a variation of the Device Manager implemented inside Windows Explorer.
Milestone 3
Build 3683 (build date of September 23, 2002) was leaked on October 20, 2002, and was the first Longhorn build leaked to the Internet. This build was the first of several that had a working title of "Longhorn XP Professional". Visually it was not significantly different from Windows XP. One of the notable changes was that the Windows logo was only white, not colored like all the versions of Windows before it. Even early builds of Windows 95Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
had colored Windows logos. Also the templates in the My Documents and My Pictures were notably different as well as the Open and Save as dialog boxes also included the template, incorporating aesthetic changes and a few new user interface options. A new "Sidebar" was also present, which contained many of the gadgets that would much later be seen in Windows Sidebar, such as an analog clock, slide show, and search capability. An option in this version of the sidebar also made it possible to move the Start button into it, and disable the traditional taskbar entirely. An early revision of WinFS
WinFS
WinFS is the code name for a cancelled data storage and management system project based on relational databases, developed by Microsoft and first demonstrated in 2003 as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, designed for persistence and management of...
was also included, but very little in the way of a user interface was included, and as such it appeared to early testers to be nothing more than a service that consumed large amounts of memory and processor time. The "Display Properties" control panel was the first significant departure, being built on the new "Avalon
Windows Presentation Foundation
Developed by Microsoft, the Windows Presentation Foundation is a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI...
" API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
.
Build 3706 (build date of October 29, 2002) was leaked on May 22, 2006. It was one of the first builds to include the Desktop Window Manager
Desktop Window Manager
Desktop Window Manager is the window manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 that enables the Windows Aero graphical user interface and visual theme. The Desktop Window Manager requires video cards supporting DirectX 9.0 and Shader Model 2.0. DWM is not included with Windows Vista Starter edition...
(DWM), and the Desktop Composition Engine, which later became known as the Media Integration Layer. This build appeared on the Internet long after other builds from this time period, and included several of the changes that were first reported as being part of later milestone builds, including Internet Explorer 6.05 and the "Plex" theme.
Build 3718 (build date of November 19, 2002) was leaked on April 30, 2004. It included the DWM and some early hardware-accelerated alpha transparency and transition effects. As a demonstration of the DCE's capabilities, programs literally flipped into the taskbar
Taskbar
In computing, a taskbar is a bar displayed on a full edge of a GUI desktop that is used to launch and monitor running applications. Microsoft incorporated a taskbar in Windows 95 and it has been a defining aspect of Microsoft Windows's graphical user interface ever since. Some desktop environments,...
and twisted as they were minimized.
Milestone 4
After several months of relatively little news or activity from Microsoft with Longhorn, Build 4008 (with a build date of February 19, 2003) made an appearance on the Internet around February 28, 2003. It was also privately handed out to a select group of software developers. As an evolutionary release over build 3683, it contained a number of small improvements, including a modified blue "Plex" theme and a new, simplified Windows Image-based installer that operates in graphical mode from the outset, and completed an install of the operating system in approximately one third the time of Windows XP on the same hardware. An optional "new taskbar" was introduced that was thinner than the previous build and displayed the time differently.The most notable visual and functional difference, however, came with Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
. The incorporation of the Plex theme made blue the dominant color of the entire application. The Windows XP-style task pane was almost completely replaced with a large horizontal pane that appeared under the toolbars. A new search interface allowed for filtering of results, searching of Windows help, and natural-language queries that would be used to integrate with WinFS. The animated search characters were also removed. The "view modes" were also replaced with a single slider that would resize the icons in real-time, in list, thumbnail, or details mode, depending on where the slider was. File metadata was also made more visible and more easily editable, with more active encouragement to fill out missing pieces of information. Also of note was the conversion of Windows Explorer to being a .NET
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
application.
Milestone 5
Build 4015 (build date of March 28, 2003) was leaked to the Internet on April 28, 2003. A number of features Microsoft had been working on were rolled into this build, such as a range of parental controls, also moved and enlarged the Windows logo to the left side of the Start button a lot of additional configurability for the sidebar (including being able to put it below the start bar at the bottom of the screen), and the notion of "Libraries" (later known as virtual folders) of files. These libraries collected content from around the hard drive. The user could then filter this content and save it in a folder. Microsoft had originally intended to replace all special shell folders (My Documents, My Music, etc.) with virtual folders. However, this change was deemed too drastic and was dropped after Beta 1's release in mid-2005. Libraries were later included in Windows 7. This build was also notable for the debut of the boot screen progress bar that is seen in the final release (though 4015's version was blue, not green). A new Download Manager shell location suggested that Internet Explorer would get a MozillaMozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
-style download manager, though no such functionality was apparent. Significant memory leak
Memory leak
A memory leak, in computer science , occurs when a computer program consumes memory but is unable to release it back to the operating system. In object-oriented programming, a memory leak happens when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code...
problems with Windows Explorer and the Sidebar made this build difficult to use, which resulted in some third-party hacks to mitigate the problem. The back-end database of Outlook Express changed completely, and became dependent on WinFS to store its email. WinFS itself still had significant performance and memory usage issues, and so it became common for testers to disable WinFS entirely, thus rendering Outlook Express inoperative.
At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference
Windows Hardware Engineering Conference
The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference is the annual software and hardware developer-oriented trade show and business conference where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Microsoft Windows-compatible PCs...
(WinHEC) conference in May 2003, Microsoft gave their first public demonstrations of the new Desktop Window Manager and Aero. The demonstrations were done on a revised build 4015 which was never released. A number of sessions for developers and hardware engineers at the conference focused on these new features, as well as the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base , formerly known as Palladium, is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which is expected to implement parts of the controversial "Trusted Computing" concept on future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. NGSCB is part of...
(previously known as "Palladium"), which at the time was Microsoft's proposed solution for creating a secure computing environment whereby any given component of the system could be deemed "trusted". Also at this conference, Microsoft reiterated their roadmap for delivering Longhorn, pointing to an "early 2005" release date.
Build 4028 (build date of July 1, 2003) was the first known Server build, and was based on Windows Server.NET RC1, which later became Windows Server 2003. Traditional client bits, such as visual style and look, were present but disabled by default.
Build 4029 (build date of June 19, 2003), was leaked on September 23, 2003. This build contained few of the technologies new to build 4015. Windows Explorer went through a number of other changes. Larger image and video previews were displayed in a tooltip when the mouse hovered over a file, column-level filtering of results was introduced, and overall performance of Explorer was somewhat improved over build 4015, though the memory leak issues were not entirely resolved. There was also a new analog clock user interface. Batch image processing of images was also introduced, making it possible for a user to rotate a number of images at once.
Build 4029's name was displayed as "onghornLay rofessionalPay" (Pig Latin
Pig Latin
Pig Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Pig Latin form of an English word the first consonant is moved to the end of the word and an ay is affixed . The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules...
for Longhorn Professional) in various places around the operating system. While some had presumed that screenshots of this build were fake because of this seemingly obvious mistake, Microsoft later explained that this was merely a test of some new code to locate and reduce the number of places in the operating system code that the name was defined.
Milestone 6
Build 4033 (build date of July 17, 2003) was similar to 4029, but contained some UI improvements, including an updated Plex theme.Build 4039 (build date of August 27, 2003) was leaked on August 22, 2007. This build includes Phodeo, a 3D view of displaying photos, and full DWM and glass. This was the last build to contain the Plex visual style.
Build 4042 (build date of September 9, 2003) was probably the earliest build to have the Slate theme (Lab06) instead of the Plex theme (winmain) seen in the previous builds. However, the Aero glass from Build 4039 was still present.
Build 4050 (build date of September 28, 2003) was shown at TechEd 2004 in Israel and was one of the many 4050-numbered builds used in Microsoft demos, notably in the 2003 Professional Developers Conference
Professional Developers Conference
Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is a conference for software developers, normally Windows developers.It covers new and upcoming technology from Microsoft, and so only occurs in the years when there is something new to talk about...
.
Official PDC 2003 build (build date of October 1, 2003 with a build number of 4051) was not released to the general public, but it did leak on October 20, 2003. It introduced the Slate theme, which first debuted in 4042.Lab06. Some visual changes included:
- Added the Documents folder, for sharing documents with other users.
- Added the Photos and Videos folder, for sharing pictures and videos with other users.
- My Contacts was replaced by Contacts.
- My Computer was replaced by Computer.
- My Network Places was replaced by Network Places.
This build also contained an updated version of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
with a version number of 6.05. New features noted by reviewers included a Download Manager, pop-up blocker, add-on manager and a tool to clear browsing history. With the exception of the download manager, which was eventually discarded, these features all appeared in builds of Internet Explorer included with preview builds of Windows XP Service Pack 2 a few months later. It also did not have the classic Start Button with "Start" written on it - a development used later in Windows Vista.
Build 4053 (build date of October 22, 2003) was leaked on March 2, 2004 and had some minor changes.
Build 4066 (build date of February 26, 2004). Although this build identified itself as a "Server" build, it contained many of the features only ever seen and associated with desktop builds. An updated version of Phodeo was included, as well as the Sidebar, a Mini-Windows Media Player and associated sidebar tiles, a functioning build of the Desktop Window Manager and the Jade theme. This build was leaked on December 20, 2008.
Milestone 7
Build 4074 (build date of April 25, 2004) - Official WinHEC 2004 preview build. Leaked in May 2004. This build introduced a new Jade theme, and replaced many XP icons with new Longhorn icons. Also, the font Segoe UISegoe UI
Segoe is a Humanist typeface family that is best known for its usage by Microsoft. The company uses Segoe in their online and printed marketing materials, including recent logos for a number of products...
was introduced for the Jade theme.
In May 2004, Microsoft changed its plans to include the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base , formerly known as Palladium, is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which is expected to implement parts of the controversial "Trusted Computing" concept on future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. NGSCB is part of...
technology with Longhorn. The technology, better known by its original code-name of "Palladium", had garnered much criticism from analysts, security specialists and researchers, and was often cited by advocates of non-Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
operating systems as a reason to migrate to their preferred platform. Ross Anderson, for example, published a paper, collating many of these concerns and criticisms as part of a larger analysis on Trusted Computing
Trusted Computing
Trusted Computing is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group. The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning. With Trusted Computing, the computer will consistently behave in expected ways, and those behaviors will be enforced by...
. In light of a large amount of negative response not only from analysts, but enterprise customers and software developers, Microsoft shelved many aspects of the NGSCB project for an indefinite period of time. The only aspect of NGSCB that was included with the final release of the operating system is "BitLocker
BitLocker Drive Encryption
BitLocker Drive Encryption is a full disk encryption feature included with the Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows 7 desktop operating systems, as well as the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 server platforms. It is designed to protect data by...
", which can make use of a Trusted Platform Module chip to facilitate secure startup and full-drive encryption.
Build 4083 (build date of May 16, 2004) – Leaked on November 10, 2004. Both Sidebar and WinFS were dropped from this release. Considered highly unstable, including the absence of programs in the start menu and driver and installation issues.
Build 4093 (build date of August 19, 2004) – It was the last build compiled before the development reset. Considered highly unstable, it contained Sidebar, WinFS, and an Avalon
Windows Presentation Foundation
Developed by Microsoft, the Windows Presentation Foundation is a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI...
-based Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application, included in Microsoft Windows Me, XP, and Vista. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be...
. There was an Avalon-based Display Properties control panel applet hidden in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder, similar to the one in Build 3683.
Mid-2004 to Mid-2005: Development "reset"
By the end of 2003, it had become obvious to the Windows team at Microsoft that they were losing sight of what needed to be done to complete the next version of Windows and ship it to customers. Internally, some Microsoft employees were describing the Longhorn project as "another Cairo" or "Cairo.NET", referring to the Cairo development projectCairo (operating system)
Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996. Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips." Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since...
that the company embarked on through the first half of the 1990s, which never resulted in a shipping operating system (though nearly all the technologies developed in that time did end up in Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
and Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
.)
In a September 23, 2005 front-page article on The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin
James Allchin
James "Jim" Edward Allchin is a former executive at Microsoft, where he was responsible for many of the platform components from Microsoft including Microsoft Windows, Windows Server, server products such as SQL Server, and developer technologies. He may be most known for building Microsoft's...
, who had overall responsibility for the development and delivery of Windows, explained how development of Longhorn was "crashing into the ground" due in large part to the haphazard methods by which features were introduced and integrated into the core of the operating system, without a clear focus on an end-product. In December 2003, Allchin enlisted the help of two other senior executives, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, the former being experienced with shipping software at Microsoft, most notably Windows Server 2003, and the latter having spent his career at Microsoft researching and developing methods of producing high-quality testing systems. Srivastava employed a team of core architects to visually map out the entirety of the Windows operating system, and to proactively work towards a development process that would enforce high levels of code quality, reduce interdependencies between components, and in general, "not make things worse with Vista". These things, in conjunction with the fact that many of Microsoft's most skilled developers and engineers had been working on Windows Server 2003, led to the decision to "reset" development of Longhorn, building on the same code that would become Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, instead of the older Windows XP. This change, announced internally to Microsoft employees on August 26, 2004, began in earnest in September, though it would take several more months before the new development process and build methodology would be used by all of the development teams. A number of complaints came from individual developers, and Bill Gates himself, that the new development process was going to be prohibitively difficult to work within. Changes at the build labs also resulted in a period of time of several months where no builds of Longhorn were leaked onto the Internet.
Longhorn "D1" or Milestone 8/9
Build 3790.1232 (build date of August 19, 2004, leaked on August 14, 2011 by an anonymous user (although speculation points to a BetaArchive user called soulman)) is notable, as it was the first build of Longhorn based on the Server 2003 codebase, but with the Windows XP interface. Successive internal builds over several months gradually integrated a lot of the fundamental work that had been done over the previous three years, but with much stricter rules about what code could be brought into the main builds. Builds in this period of time were described variously as Longhorn "D1", and as Milestone 8 / 9, depending on whether the new or old build tree was being worked on. Evidence of a similar build marked as Build 5000 (built on September 8, 2004) has also been found.Build 5001 (build date of September 12, 2004) the other Windows Longhorn build also has a Windows XP Interface. The wallpaper is same of Windows XP, but has a bull with a long horn. The bootscreen also is same of Windows XP, but has "lh" replaxing "xp". The "lh" represents "Longhorn" the codename of Windows Vista
Build 5048 (built on April 1, 2005) was the official WinHEC 2005 preview build, described as the Longhorn Developer Preview, and made available to WinHEC attendees on April 24, 2005. It was the only build from this time period that was made available by Microsoft; it was not officially distributed outside of WinHEC, but the build quickly appeared on file sharing networks. The Aero
Windows Aero
Windows Aero is the graphical user interface and the default theme in most editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, operating systems released by Microsoft. It is also available in Windows Server 2008, but is not enabled by default. Its name is a backronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and...
visual style made its first appearance in this build, and the Desktop Window Manager was present but disabled and hidden by default. At the keynote presentation, Bill Gates also announced that many of the WinFX developer APIs that were originally planned exclusively for Longhorn were going to be backported
Backporting
Backporting is the action of taking a certain software modification and applying it to an older version of the software than it was initially created for. It is part of the maintenance step in a software development process....
to Windows XP and Server 2003, and that the final user interface for Longhorn would not be seen for a while longer. Other features such as device-independent resolutions, rasterized icons, virtual folders, and registry virtualization were discussed as well.
Build 5048's closer resemblance to Windows XP than to the prior Longhorn builds from 2003 surprised many, leading well-known Windows enthusiast Paul Thurrott
Paul Thurrott
Paul Brian Thurrott is a technology reporter, published author, podcaster, and the news editor for Windows IT Pro magazine...
to write: "My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck." Months later, Thurrott stated that the Vista development process has since recovered in the more recent builds.
Build 5060 (build date of April 17, 2005) Not much difference to Build 5048, except it had a new style logon screen.
Mid-2005 to November 2006: Windows Vista
By the beginning of July 2005, having painted itself into a corner, so to speak, by choosing names like Windows Me and XP for previous client releases of Windows, Microsoft now had to find an even more interesting name for "Longhorn", to avoid the perception that this was a boring release (supposing that Windows 2006 would sound less exciting than Windows XP). The company considered several names from simple to fanciful and inventive. In the end, Microsoft chose Windows Vista, believing it to be a "wonderful intersection of what the product really does, what Windows stands for, and what resonates with customers, and their needs." Group Project Manager Greg Sullivan told Paul Thurrott—"You want the PC to adapt to you and help you cut through the clutter to focus on what’s important to you. That's what Windows Vista is all about: "bringing clarity to your world." (a reference to the three marketing points of Vista—Clear, Connected, Confident), so you can focus on what matters to you." Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin also loved the name, saying that "Vista" creates the right imagery for the new product capabilities and inspires the imagination with all the possibilities of what can be done with Windows—making people’s passions come alive."Beta 1
Windows Vista Beta 1 (build 5112, build date of July 20, 2005) which was released on July 27, 2005, was the first Longhorn build to be called Windows VistaWindows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
and was available to Microsoft Developer Network
Microsoft Developer Network
The Microsoft Developer Network is the portion of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers: hardware developers interested in the operating system , developers standing on the various OS platforms, developers using the API and scripting languages of...
(MSDN) and TechNet subscribers as well as a select group of Microsoft Beta testers.
Compared with the WinHEC build released earlier in the year, Vista Beta 1 was a large advancement in introducing new user interface features. The Windows Shell was drastically changed yet again, introducing virtual folders, a new search interface, a number of new high-resolution icons, and a revamped Windows Explorer interface which did away with the menus and most of the toolbar buttons that were present in previous versions. Beta 1 also introduced many of the underlying technologies slated for Vista, including the new networking and audio stacks, parental controls, and fairly complete working build of .NET Framework 3.0
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
, then still referred to as WinFX.
Community Technology Previews
Build 5219 (build date of August 30, 2005), Microsoft started releasing regular Community Technical Previews (CTP) to beta testers, with less stability work made to them than actual betas.Build 5219, also known as CTP1 and September CTP, was distributed among 2005 PDC attendees on September 13, 2005, and has been released to Microsoft Beta testers and MSDN subscribers. This was the first public "Ultimate Edition"
Windows Vista editions
Windows Vista is available in six different marketing editions. With the exception of Windows Vista Starter, all editions support both 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures....
build, and included Super Fetch. Although not enabled by default, this refresh saw the return of the Windows Sidebar, which had been removed as part of the development reset, and the introduction of Desktop Gadgets
Microsoft Gadgets
Microsoft Gadgets are lightweight single-purpose applications, or software widgets, that can sit on a Microsoft Windows user's computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page...
, both of which are part of Microsoft gadgets
Microsoft Gadgets
Microsoft Gadgets are lightweight single-purpose applications, or software widgets, that can sit on a Microsoft Windows user's computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page...
line of mini-applications. Microsoft stated that they intended to make additional gadgets available for download from a web site over time. This build also supported a new version of Windows Media Center
Windows Media Center
Windows Media Center is a digital video recorder and media player developed by Microsoft. It is an application that allows users to view and record live television, as well as organize and play music and videos...
code-named "Diamond".
Although Microsoft had stated that WinFS will not make its debut in Windows Vista, users of build 5219 noticed that WinFS was in fact included in that version. Several Windows 'rumor' sites and newsgroups such as Neowin and Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows speculated that WinFS would in fact be ready on time for Windows Vista's release.
Build 5231 (build date of October 4, 2005), also known as CTP2 or the October 2005 CTP, was released to MSDN subscribers and Microsoft Beta Testers on October 17, 2005. This "Ultimate" build introduced Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
version 11. Paul Thurrot stated that he hated Windows Media Center in this build.
Build 5259 (built on November 17, 2005) was released to Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) members on November 22, 2005. It was originally announced to be released on November 18 as a November CTP. Microsoft cancelled the November CTP due to its instability, however, and released this build only to TAP members. Sidebar was temporarily removed; the build had a few new UI changes, including the ability to change the color and clarity of the UI. Windows AntiSpyware (soon to be "Windows Defender") was integrated. Also, this build featured an updated version of Windows Mail. It was an IDW build and therefore had not gone through the CTP testing process. It leaked to the Internet on December 7, 2005.
December CTP (built on December 14, 2005 with a build number of 5270), was released to testers and MSDN on December 19, 2005 and was very close to feature-complete. Since then, the feature complete build was delayed until late January, 2006. In this build, Windows AntiSpyware was renamed Windows Defender, and IE7 had a new icon/logo. There were some minor UI changes.
The December CTP was also the last build of Windows Vista that supported the bypassing of the WDDM driver model requirement, hence allowing the Desktop Window Manager (UXSS at the time of the build) to run using software vertex emulation. Because of this change post the 5270 builds, the well known keys 'UseMachineCheck' and 'EnableMachineCheck do not allow running the Desktop Window Manager in software emulation mode.
February CTP (built on February 17, 2006 with a build number of 5308), was released on February 22, 2006 and was the first feature-complete CTP. This build was meant for enterprises. It was also the first build to have the upgrade
Upgrade
The term upgrade refers to the replacement of a product with a newer version of the same product. It is most often used in computing and consumer electronics, generally meaning a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date...
compatibility. This build, according to Microsoft, had all but one feature (which should appear in the next CTP) that customers will see in the final release. However, later builds brought more improvements than previously expected. An unstaged revision was made to this build and was released on February 28, 2006 as build 5308.60 (built on February 23), which was released as a result of Windows Server "Longhorn" having many issues.
At the Intel Developer Forum
Intel Developer Forum
Intel Developer Forum , is a gathering of technologists to discuss Intel products and products based around Intel products. The first IDF was in 1997...
on March 9, 2006, Microsoft announced a change in their plans to support EFI in Windows Vista. The UEFI
UEFI
The Unified EFI Forum or UEFI Forum is an alliance between several leading technology companies to modernize the booting process...
2.0 specification (which replaces EFI 1.10) was not completed until early 2006, and at the time of Microsoft's announcement, no firmware manufacturers had completed a production implementation which could be used for testing. As a result, the decision was made to postpone the introduction of UEFI support to Windows; support for UEFI on 64-bit platforms was postponed until Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 and 32-bit UEFI will not be supported, as Microsoft does not expect many such systems to be built as the market moves to 64-bit processors.
February CTP Refresh (built on March 21, 2006 with a build number of 5342) was released March 24, 2006. This build was shipped to technical beta testers and some corporate customers by Microsoft and was being used as a testing board for the extensive feedback they got from the February CTP. They described this release as an "External Developer Workstation", with the intent of providing an interim build between CTPs. Microsoft claimed it was still on track to deliver the next CTP in the second quarter, the build that will be the last in the Beta 2 fork. The build included minor UI changes, most notably improvements to the Media Center, new Aero and Aurora effects, a faster setup process, some new Sidebar gadgets, and slight improvements in overall performance and stability. Paint was also slightly improved, there's a new screenshot snapping/saving tool included, and a slightly redesigned Network Center. This build did not meet CTP quality measurements, and was available only in Ultimate Edition, for both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) systems.
April EDW (built on April 19, 2006 with a build number of 5365), which was released on April 21, 2006, introduced more changes to visual user interface elements, and to the behavior of User Account Control. A number of new backgrounds were also introduced, and two new screensavers were added as well. The Sidebar was enabled by default, as was automatic defragmentation of the hard drive. Hold'em, a game that shipped with some previous CTPs, was dropped due to apparent "political sensitivity" issues; Microsoft now offers it as a separate web download for Windows Vista Ultimate users.
Windows Vista Beta 2 Preview (built on May 1, 2006 with a build number of 5381) leaked on May 3, 2006 and was officially released on May 6, 2006 to Microsoft's technical beta testers. It featured mostly performance tweaks and only a few minor changes compared to build 5365. With this build, Microsoft entered Beta 2 "escrow".
Beta 2
Windows Vista Beta 2 (built on May 18, 2006 with a build number of 5384), was released to Microsoft Developer Network subscribers (the first since 5308) and Microsoft Connect testers on May 23, 2006 in conjunction with Bill Gates's keynote presentation at the WinHEC 2006 conference. On June 6, Microsoft extended the availability of Beta 2 to all users, making Vista available as a free download in several languages from their web site. Some technology web sites described this release as "the largest download event in software history".In June, Microsoft made two significant changes to their plans for Windows Vista. One issue, the inclusion of XML Paper Specification
XML Paper Specification
Open XML Paper Specification , is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format originally developed by Microsoft as XML Paper Specification that was later standardized by Ecma International as international standard ECMA-388...
support in Vista and Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
, had become a major point of dispute with Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
. When it was first introduced May 2005, XPS (known at the time as "Metro") was characterized as a "PDF-killer", but an Adobe representative stated that they were "not threatened" by its addition to "Longhorn". However, a year later, Adobe had changed their stance, and saw the inclusion of the new document format as an anti-competitive attack on their Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
. While Microsoft refused to remove XPS altogether, noting that it is at the core of Vista's print spooling
Spooling
In computer science, spool refers to the process of placing data in a temporary working area for another program to process. The most common use is in writing files on a magnetic tape or disk and entering them in the work queue for another process. Spooling is useful because devices access data at...
system, they have offered the ability to system builders and OEMs to remove any user-visible aspects of the document format from the operating system. A few days later, it was announced that PC-to-PC Sync would not ship with Windows Vista.
On June 14, 2006, Windows developer Philip Su posted a blog entry which decried the development process of Windows Vista, stating that "the code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process. " The same post also described Windows Vista as having approximately 50 million lines of code, with about 2,000 developers working on the product.
Pre-RC1
Build 5456 (build date of June 20, 2006) was released on June 24, 2006. Some of the new features included a revamped Aero subsystem, and a completely overhauled and significantly less obtrusive User Account Control interface. "List view" in Windows Explorer was brought back, after having been removed in Beta 1. Microsoft developer Ben Betz later explained in a blog entry that, while they felt that removing List mode made sense based on usability research and its inability to support Windows Explorer's new "grouping" feature, the feature was restored based on a great deal of feedback from beta testers.The release notes for the build state that the Time Zone bug that plagued almost all previous builds of Windows Vista had been patched, and quite a few issues in the Regional Settings and IME had also been resolved. A new "Windows Aero" mouse pointer scheme was introduced, which introduced anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
to the mouse pointer for the first time, and many of the remaining Windows XP-style icons have been replaced with new icons. The disk space used by a clean installation was also significantly reduced.
Build 5472 (build date of July 13, 2006) was released on July 17, 2006. Aside from incorporating a number of bug fixes and localization improvements, the build also introduced a revised "Basic" theme that replaces the gray theme seen in previous builds with a light blue theme. The Network Center was significantly revised as well, collating more status information in one place, and reducing the number of steps to get to most configuration options. More desktop backgrounds and icons were introduced, and Flip3D saw some layout tweaks. A new "Windows Aero" mouse cursor is set by default. The build was a huge performance improvement over Beta 2 and was comparable to and possibly even faster than that of Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
.
During a demonstration of the speech recognition feature new to Windows Vista at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on July 27, 2006, the software recognized the phrase "Dear mom" as "Dear aunt". After several failed attempts to correct the error, the sentence eventually became "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all". A developer with Vista's speech recognition team later explained that there was a bug with the build of Vista that was causing the microphone gain level to be set very high, resulting in the audio being received by the speech recognition software to be "incredibly distorted".
On August 8, 2006 the Microsoft Security Response Center provided "critical" security fixes for Windows Vista beta 2, making it the first Microsoft product to get security updates while still in beta.
Build 5536 (build date of August 21, 2006) was released on August 24, 2006, and between August 29 and August 31 to the first 100,000 users who downloaded it from the Microsoft site. Among notable changes, it featured new ties to the Windows Live
Windows Live
Windows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft, part of their software plus services platform. A majority of these services are Web applications, accessible from a browser, but there are also client-side binary applications that require...
online services by new icons in the Welcome Center, minor updates to the Aero appearance with a slightly more bluish tint to the glass effect, big speed improvements (including setup speed), many bug fixes and further tweaked anti-aliasing in the Flip 3D feature. It was released publicly on August 29, 2006.
RC1
Release Candidate 1 (RC1) (built on August 29, 2006 with a build number of 5600.16384) was released to a select group of beta testers on September 1, 2006. On September 6, RC1 was released to MSDN and Technet subscribers, as well as registered Customer Preview Program (CPP) members with Beta 2 PID's. On September 14, Microsoft re-opened the CPP to new members. The CPP ended on November 26, 2006.The public release of Release Candidate 1 resulted in a number of extensive reviews and analyses on various technology news web sites, both immediately after its release, and in the weeks following. Ars Technica's Ken Fisher wrote that performance had improved significantly over Beta 2, suggesting that faster machines may perform better than Windows XP; he also criticised the usefulness of the Windows Sidebar and the continued intrusiveness of User Account Control. CRN's review noted five specific categories of improvements to Release Candidate 1: Installation speed, device driver support, performance improvements in several components, security, and multimedia capabilities. Criticism of Vista's user interface arose as well, with Chris Pirillo
Chris Pirillo
Christopher Joseph Pirillo is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome, which is a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities. He spent two years hosting the TechTV television program Call for Help, where he also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon...
describing the near-final state as "sloppy."
Pre-RC2
Build 5700 (build date of August 10, 2006), the first build of the RTM branch, was shown at the Student Day Presentation of Microsoft Tech-Ed 2006 in Australia. It appeared to run faster than the previous Pre-RC1 build 5472 with a few UI improvements. A higher build number does not necessarily indicate a newer build. Microsoft began work on the RTM branch at the same time as it was wrapping up the RC1 branch, allowing for mainstream RC1 developers to more easily "flow" into the new development stage. This parallel development helps explain why build 5700 is older than even some pre-RC1 builds.Build 5728 (build date of September 17, 2006) was released on September 22, 2006 to technical beta participants. The following day, Microsoft released a 32-bit version of the build to the public, with a 64-bit version arriving on September 25. On October 1, Microsoft reached its goals for program participation and no longer offered the build to the public. In response to a significant amount of feedback from RC1 testers, 5728 contained many improvements, one of which was the inclusion of a check box in the Sound properties that allowed the user to disable the Windows Vista startup sound. The Welcome Center was also improved with new icons, eliminating the use of one icon for several different items, and all of the old icons in the User folder were replaced. With this build, Microsoft neared its goal of Vista installing in 15 minutes, with some reviewers reporting that 5728 took as little as 16 minutes to do a clean install. However, performing an upgrade installation from Windows XP was still slow, sometimes taking more than an hour to complete.
RC2
Release Candidate 2 (RC2) (built on October 3, 2006 with a build number of 5744.16384), was released to CPP members, TAP testers, MSDN/Technet subscribers, and other technical beta testers on Friday, October 6, 2006, and was available for download until October 9. Because of an aggressive development schedule, this was the final build that would be officially released to the general public for testing. Nevertheless, all pre-release product keys will work until the final RTM build. Several testers reported that RC2 was faster and more stable than build 5728. However, because RC2, which was a regular interim build, and not a major milestone as the name suggests, was not as rigorously tested as RC1, RC1 may have been more stable in certain situations. This build fixed many compatibility issues that plagued previous builds. Vista's GUIGraphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
, which continued to be improved, contained some minor tweaks, one of the more prominent of which was the new ability to customize the color, but not the transparency, of maximized windows. In previous builds, windows became predominantly black when maximized, an effect that could not be altered by users. A Control Panel icon for Windows Sideshow was also added.
Pre-RTM
Because a release to manufacturing (RTM) build is the final version of code shipped to retailers and other distributors, the purpose of a pre-RTM build is to eliminate any last "show-stopper" bugs that may prevent the code from responsibly being shipped to customers, as well as anything else that consumers may find annoying. Thus, it is unlikely that any major new features will be introduced; instead, work will focus on Vista's "fit-and-finish". In just a few days, developers had managed to drop Vista's bug count from over 2470 on September 22 to just over 1400 by the time RC2 shipped in early October. However, they still had a way to go before Vista was ready to RTM. Microsoft's internal processes required Vista's bug count to drop to 500 or fewer before the product could go into escrow for RTM. For most of these builds, only 32-bit versions were released.Build 5808 (build date of October 12, 2006) was released to TAP testers on October 19, 2006. This build was notable because it was the first build released to testers since Microsoft entered RTM "escrow" with build 5800. This explains why the build numbers jumped from 57xx to 58xx.
Build 5824 (build date of October 17, 2006) was released to a wide number of internal testers later that day in the hope that this build would become the final RTM. However, a catastrophic "show-stopper" bug was found that destroyed any system that was upgraded from Windows XP. Only completely reinstalling Windows would fix the computer.
Build 5840 (build date of October 18, 2006) was made available to internal testers. According to Paul Thurrott, this build did not contain the major bug in build 5824, and testing produced very positive feedback. This build contained a large number of new and final icons, as well as a new set of final wallpapers, including a new default wallpaper based on the Aurora "swoosh" seen in prior builds.
RTM
Release to Manufacturing (RTM) (built on November 1, 2006 with a build number of 6000.16386) is the version of Windows Vista that ships to customers. Microsoft announced this build had been finalized on November 8, 2006, after over five years of development.The RTM's build number jumped to 6000 to reflect Vista's internal version number, NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
6.0. Jumping RTM build numbers is common practice among consumer-oriented Windows versions, like Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
(build 1998), Windows 98 SE (build 2222), Windows Me
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
(b.3000) or Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
(b.2600), as compared to the business-oriented versions like Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
(b.2195) or Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
(b.3790). On November 16, 2006, Microsoft made the final build available to MSDN
Microsoft Developer Network
The Microsoft Developer Network is the portion of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers: hardware developers interested in the operating system , developers standing on the various OS platforms, developers using the API and scripting languages of...
and Technet Plus subscribers. A business-oriented Enterprise edition was made available to volume license customers on November 30. Windows Vista was launched for general customer availability on January 30, 2007.
Mid-2007 to February 2008: Service Pack 1
Service Pack 1 Beta was only released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2007-09-24. This build was offered optionally through Windows Update through a registry key installed by the tester. This key was later leaked to the net resulting in its deactivation by Microsoft. With this release the build number for Vista jumped to 6001.16659.070916-1443. This build also removed the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) from client computers, to be replaced by a downloadable version at a later date. Also removed was the "Search" menu option from the right hand bar of the start menu (including the option to re-add it from the Start Menu customization list). This build broke the "HP Touch smart" family of applications, and also caused bugs with resuming from sleep, and in some cases rendered some 64-bit PCs with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips unable to finish booting. This build also contained unspecified improvements in Speed and responsiveness of the OS.Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Preview was only released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2007-11-12. With this release the build number for Vista increased to 6001.17042.071107.1618. Changes in this build are covered by the Microsoft Connect Non-Disclosure agreement
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement , also known as a confidentiality agreement , confidential disclosure agreement , proprietary information agreement , or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties...
(NDA).
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate was first released to Microsoft Connect testers on 2007-12-04, with the same build released on MSDN and TechNet several weeks later. A few days after that, this build was released to the public officially on the Microsoft download center as a Public Preview of SP1. With this release the build number of Vista increased to 6001.17052.071129.2315. This build contained a number of notable changes and enhancements.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh was released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2008-01-09 and was released to the public on January 11, 2008. This release has a build number of 6001.17128.080101.1935.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh 2 was only released on Microsoft Connect to selected testers on 2008-01-24 through Windows Update only. This release has a build number of 6001.18000. Details of this build are covered by the Microsoft Connect Non-Disclosure agreement
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement , also known as a confidentiality agreement , confidential disclosure agreement , proprietary information agreement , or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties...
(NDA).
Service Pack 1 was released to manufacturing on Monday February 4, 2008. The final build of Service Pack 1 went live on Tuesday, March 18, 2008, over the Microsoft Download Center, and Windows Update. This build has been confirmed by sources at Microsoft as being exactly the same code as RC Refresh 2, also giving it exactly the same build number. The full build string of both this release and Refresh 2 is "6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840".
Post-Service Pack 1
Build 6001.18063 (release date of June 24, 2008). Microsoft Released KB952709 as a Reliability and Performance update for Windows Vista this build is notable for two reasons. First, This is the first publicly released update that increases Vista build number beyond the 6001.18000 (final) build of Service Pack 1. Second, this build replaces the 6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840 build string of SP1 with 6001.vistasp1_gdr.080425-1930. The longhorn build string was present during the early development of Vista but was not seen in the official release build or any update after until it was reintroduced during the SP1 beta and was left in when SP1 was released, this build marks its removal from the only release version of Vista to contain the longhorn codename in a prominent manner.Late 2008 to April 2009: Service Pack 2
Microsoft started work on Service Pack 2 soon after Service Pack 1 was released, as Windows Server 2008 uses the same codebase as Windows Vista Service Pack 1.Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to be released for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista simultaneously, sharing the same binary.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Pre-Beta
Build Number 6002.16489.lh_sp2beta.080924-1740 (Version 105)
Released in October 2008.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta
Build Number 6002.16497.081017-1605 (Version 113)
Released December 4, 2008. Download became available in the Microsoft Download Center.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC Escrow
Build Number 6002.16659.090114-1728 (Version 275)
Released January, 2009.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate
Build Number 6002.16670.090130-1715 (Version 286)
Released February, 2009.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM Escrow build to Connect Beta Testers
Build Number 6002.17043.090312-1835 (Version ???)
Released March, 2009.
Available and can be installed via Windows Update
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM Escrow
Build Number 6002.17506.090313-1730 (Version ???)
Released March, 2009.
Leak to file sharing websites.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM
Build Number 6002.18005.090410-1830
Released 28 April 2009.
Official released by Microsoft via Windows Update on 26 May 2009.
See also
- Development of Windows 7Development of Windows 7Development of Windows 7 began when Windows Vista was released. Milestone 1, Milestone 2, and Milestone 3 were sent to Microsoft's partners in 2008...
- Development of Windows XPDevelopment of Windows XPDevelopment of Windows XP started in 1999 in the form of Windows Neptune. Windows XP was developed for 18 months, from December 1999 to August 2001, and was released on October 25, 2001.-Neptune and Odyssey:...
- History of Microsoft WindowsHistory of Microsoft WindowsIn 1983, Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface for its own operating system , which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981...
External links
- Windows Vista Bug Reports: An Analysis – Robert McLaws' analysis of bug counts through the Windows Vista beta test period
- Windows Vista Builds List – A complete list of every known build of Longhorn and Vista, including build date, leak/release date, and which lab compiled it.
- Windows Vista Localization – Video on the international development of Windows Vista
– How to Find Build and Revision Number of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Installed
- Windows Vista: Road to Gold – Paul Thurrott's story of his long journey with the development of Windows Vista (Part 1 of 7).
- Windows Vista Screen Shot Gallery – Screenshots of Windows Vista beta versions and development progress
- Early Longhorn concept dating back to 2003