Today (October 25th) is the 20th anniversary of Windows XP, Microsoft replacement for Windows 2000 and Windows ME. For the first time it brough the modern 32bit version of Windows NT to consumers.

Windows XP started development as project code named “Neptune” and was merged with the business Windows project into a development coded named Windows Whistler. Windows XP introduced tablet PC support, Windows Media Center, automatic updates and many other features that are still in Windows 11 today.

In this video I recorded a couple of years ago I look at the development of Windows XP via four development builds ranging from March 2020 to January 2001 which track the progress of Windows XP from its Windows 2000 start to the Windows XP UI that we all became familiar with.

In the video I look at:

  • Build 2211 from March 2000, which still very much looked like Windows 2000 and still included things like Active Desktop.
  • Build 2276 from September 2000, which looks like a hybrid of Windows 2000 and XP with a changed started menu.
  • Build 2446 from February 2001 which looks very much like the finished UI and no longer contained Active Desktop
  • Build 2419 from January 2001 which as has a quite different theme to the finished product which I quite liked.

From the tour in the videos, you can see how the UI of Windows XP progressed from Windows 2000 to the finished product. If you like my tours of obsolete version of Windows checkout my look at two cancelled version of Windows: Windows Longhorn and Windows Neptune.

Leave a Reply