| Component |
Description |
Introduced |
| Control Panel |
| Control Panel |
Allows users to view and manipulate basic system settings and controls, such as adding hardware, adding and removing software, controlling user accounts, changing accessibility options, and so on. |
Windows 1.0 |
| Device Manager |
Allows the user to display and control the hardware attached to the computer, and control what device drivers are used. |
Windows 95 |
| Windows Mobility Center |
Centralizes the most relevant information related to mobile computing. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Security Center |
Centralizes and reports on the status of anti-virus, Automatic Updates, Windows Firewall, and other security-related components of the operating system. |
Windows XP SP2 |
| Administrative Tools |
| Microsoft Management Console |
Provides system administrators and advanced users with a flexible interface through which they may configure and monitor the system. |
Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack |
| Windows System Assessment Tool |
A built-in benchmarking tool that analyzes the different subsystems (graphics, memory, etc), and uses the results to allow for comparison to other Windows Vista systems, and for software optimizations. It rates the computer's performance using the Windows Experience Index. |
Windows Vista |
| System Restore |
Allows for the rolling back of system files, registry keys, installed programs, etc., to a previous state in the event of a system failure. |
Windows Me |
| Windows Recovery Environment |
Helps diagnose and recover from serious errors which may be preventing Windows from booting successfully, or restore the computer to a previous state using System Restore or a backup image. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Disk Defragmenter |
Rearranges files stored on a hard disk to occupy contiguous storage locations in order to optimize computer performance. |
Windows 95, Windows 2000 |
| Event Viewer |
Lets administrators and users view the event logs on a local or remote machine. |
Windows NT 3.1 |
| Reliability and Performance Monitor |
Lets administrators view current system reliability and performance trends over time. |
Windows Vista |
| Logical Disk Manager |
A logical volume manager developed by Microsoft in conjunction with Veritas Software. |
Windows NT 4.0 (as a separate Tool) 2000 (integrated in the Management Console) |
| Registry Editor |
Edits the Windows registry. |
Windows 3.1 |
| Task Scheduler |
Allows users to script tasks for running during scheduled intervals |
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Software installation and deployment |
| Windows Update |
An online service which provides critical updates, service packs, device drivers, and other updates. A variation called Microsoft Update also provides software updates for several Microsoft products. |
Windows 98 |
| Windows Installer |
A packaging format and engine for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software. Includes a GUI framework, automatic generation of the uninstallation sequence and deployment capabilities for corporate networks. |
Windows 2000 |
| ClickOnce |
Technology for deploying .NET Framework-based software via web pages, with automatic update capabilities. Intended for per-user only applications. |
.NET Framework 2.0 |
| Component |
Description |
Introduced |
| Windows Shell |
The most visible and recognizable aspect of Microsoft Windows. The shell is the container inside of which the entire graphical user interface is presented, including the taskbar, the desktop, Windows Explorer, as well as many of the dialog boxes and interface controls. In Windows Vista, a new compositing glass-like user interface called Windows Aero has been shown. |
Windows 1.0 |
| Windows Explorer |
Provides an interface for accessing the file systems, launching applications, and performing common tasks such as viewing and printing pictures. |
Windows 95 |
| Windows Search |
Starting with Windows Vista, search is a tightly shell-integrated component of Windows. A downloadable Windows Desktop Search software is available for Windows XP and older versions. |
Windows Vista, downloadable for older versions |
| Special Folders |
Folders which are presented to the user through an interface as an abstract concept, instead of an absolute path. This makes it possible for an application to locate where certain kinds of files can be found, regardless of what version or language of operating system is being used. See also, Windows Shell namespace. |
Windows 95 |
| Start menu |
Serves as the central launching point for applications. It provides a customizable, nested list of programs for the user to launch, as well as a list of most recently opened documents, a way to find files and get help, and access to the system settings.
By default, the Start Button is visible at all times in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
|
Windows 95 |
| Taskbar |
The application desktop bar which is used to launch and monitor applications. |
Windows 95 |
| Windows Sidebar |
A new panel on the side of the screen to place gadgets. |
Windows Vista |
| File associations |
Used to open a file with the correct program. File associations can be uniquely assigned to specific actions, known as verbs. |
Windows 3.0 |
| Component |
Description |
Introduced |
| Accessories |
| Windows Easy Transfer |
File transfering. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Calendar |
Calendaring and task tracking application. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Contacts |
Keeps a single list of contacts that can be shared by multiple programs. |
Windows Vista |
| Calculator |
A calculation application. |
Windows 1.0 |
| Character Map |
Utility to view and search characters in a font, copy them to the clipboard and view their Windows Alt keycodes and Unicode names |
Windows 3.1 |
| Paint |
A simple graphics painting program. |
Windows 1.0 |
| Notepad |
A simple text editor. |
Windows 1.0 |
| Narrator |
A screen reader utility that reads dialog boxes and window controls in a number of the more basic applications for Windows. |
Windows 2000 |
| Sound Recorder |
A simple audio recording program that can record from a microphone or headset, and save the results in WAVE format and Windows Media Audio format in some Windows versions. |
Windows 3.1 |
| Command Prompt |
A text-based shell (command line interpreter) that provides a command line interface to the operating system. |
MS-DOS 1.0 |
| WordPad |
A simple word processor that is more advanced than Notepad. It has facilities to format and print text, but lacks intermediate features such as a spell checker and thesaurus. |
Windows 95 |
| Private Character Editor |
Utility to create private use characters as defined under Unicode and various East Asian encoding schemes. |
|
| Remote Desktop Connection |
A client implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol; allows a user to securely connect to a computer running Terminal Services (Remote Desktop on Windows XP and Server 2003) and interact with a full desktop environment on that machine, including support for remoting of printers, audio, and drives. |
Windows XP, downloadable for previous Windows versions |
| Remote Assistance |
Allows a user to temporarily take over a remote computer over a network or the internet to offer help with and resolve issues. |
Windows XP |
| Internet Explorer |
A graphical web browser and FTP client.
See also: IE1, IE2, IE3, IE4,IE5, IE6, IE7, Features, History, Removal, Browser Helper Objects
|
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Windows Mail |
An e-mail and news client. |
Windows Vista, Outlook Express was introduced in Windows 98 |
| Windows Fax and Scan |
An integrated faxing and image scanning application. |
Windows Vista, older faxing and scanning applications were present in previous Windows versions |
| Windows Media Player |
A digital media player and media library application that is used for playing audio, playing video and viewing images. In addition to being a media player, Windows Media Player includes the ability to rip music from, and copy music to compact discs, synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and let users purchase or rent music from a number of online music stores. |
Windows Me, downloadable for previous Windows versions |
| Windows Photo Gallery |
A photo management application. Lets users organize their digital photo collection in its Gallery view, by adding titles, rating, captions, and custom metadata tags to photos. Photos can be edited for exposure, color correction, resizing, cropping, red-eye reduction, etc. and also allows printing photos via the Photo Printing Wizard. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Movie Maker |
A video editing software that is intended for use in editing home movies. Source footage can be split into clips, and the final movie created by combining multiple clips along with effects such as transitions, titles/credits, separate audio track, timeline narration etc. |
Windows Me |
| Windows DVD Maker |
A DVD movie encoding and authoring software. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Journal |
A notetaking application that allows for the creation of handwritten notes. |
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Vista |
| Windows Media Center |
Designed to serve as a home-entertainment hub, to be viewed from a distance up to 3 meters (~10 feet) and controlled by specially designed remote controls. Lets users browse and view pictures, videos, and music from local hard drives, optical drives, and network locations, along with viewing, recording and deferred-playing live TV. Features an interactive TV guide with scheduled recording capabilities. Can also be used for visualization of other information (like sports scores) within the interface. |
Windows XP Media Center Edition |
| Windows Meeting Space |
A peer-to-peer collaboration program which lets multiple users start collaboration sessions. Supports desktop sharing , distribution and collaborative editing of documents, and passing notes to other participants. |
Windows Vista |
| Windows Task Manager |
Provides information about computer performance and displays details about running applications, processes, network activity, logged-in users, and system services. |
Windows 3.0 |
| Disk Cleanup |
A utility for compacting rarely used files and removing files that are no longer required. |
Windows 98 |
| Shadow Copy |
A graphical front end for the Shadow Copy service that lets users choose from multiple versions of a file. The shadow copy service creates multiple copies of a file as they are changed over time, so that users can revert to previous versions. |
Windows Vista. Windows Server 2003 included Previous Versions support only for client computers. |
| Snipping Tool |
A screen-capture tool that allows for taking screen shots (called snips). |
Experience Pack for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 |
| Component |
Acronym |
Description |
Supported by |
| Windows Server domain |
|
A logical group of computers that share a central directory and user database. |
All Windows NT-based versions |
| Active Directory |
AD |
A set of technologies introduced with Windows 2000 that allows administrators to assign enterprise-wide policies, deploy programs to many computers, and apply critical updates to an entire organization. Active Directory stores information and settings relating to an organization in a central, organized, accessible database. Networks can vary from a small installation with a few objects, to global-scale directories with millions of objects.
Related topics: Active Directory Service Interfaces, Flexible single master operation, IntelliMirror, Active Directory Application Mode |
Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 |
| Domain controller |
DC, PDC, BDC |
A server that responds to security authentication requests (logging in, checking permissions, etc.) within a Windows Server domain. Prior to Windows 2000, a domain controller was either a Primary Domain Controller (PDC), of which there could only be one with this role; or a Backup Domain Controller (BDC). In Windows 2000 and later the concept of primary and secondary domain controllers were eliminated, partially to emphasize the multi-master replication technology available in Windows. |
All Windows NT-based versions |
| Group Policy |
GP, GPO |
Provides centralized management of user and computer settings in an Active Directory environment. Group policy can control a target object's registry, NTFS security, audit and security policy, software installation, logon/logoff scripts, folder redirection, and Internet Explorer settings. Policy settings are stored in Group Policy Objects (GPOs), and may be linked to one or more sites, domains or organizational units.
Related topics: Administrative Templates |
Windows 2000 and later |
| Internet Information Services |
IIS |
Web server |
Windows NT family |
| Component |
Acronym |
Description |
Supported by |
| File Allocation Table |
FAT, FAT12, FAT16 |
The original file systems used with MS-DOS. The standard file systems used with Windows 1.0 through Windows 95. |
All versions |
| FAT32 |
FAT32 |
Extensions to FAT supporting larger disk sizes. The standard file system for Windows 98 and Me. |
Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista |
| NTFS |
NTFS |
Standard file system of Windows NT; supports security via access control lists, as well as file system journaling and file-system metadata. Windows 2000 added support for reparse points (making NTFS junction points and Single instance storage possible), Hard links, file compression, and Sparse files. Encryption of data is provided by Encrypting File System. Symbolic links and transactioning of file operations via Transactional NTFS are features new to Windows Vista. Windows 95 also supports reading NTFS partitions, over a network. |
Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista |
| ISO 9660 |
ISO 9660 ("CDFS") |
The predominant file system for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM media. Windows includes support for Joliet extensions and the ISO 9660:1999 standard. ISO 9660:1999 is supported since Windows XP. |
MS-DOS and Windows 9x via extensions, such as MSCDEX.EXE (Microsoft CDROM Extension), natively in Windows NT |
| Universal Disk Format |
UDF |
A file system for storing files on optical media. It is an implementation of the ISO/IEC 13346 standard (also known as ECMA-167). It is considered to be a replacement of ISO 9660. Successive versions of Windows have supported newer versions of UDF. |
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista |
| HPFS |
HPFS |
High-Performance File system, used on OS/2 computers. Read and write capability in Windows 95 (where it also listed network computer NTFS-formatted drives as "HPFS", even though it had no direct NTFS capabilities). HPFS write support was dropped in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98, and dropped altogether shortly before the release of Windows 2000. |
Windows 95 (Read/write), Windows 98, Windows NT (read), 3.1/3.51 (read/write/boot) |
| Component |
Acronym |
Description |
Windows kernel (Windows NT)
-
|
| Ntoskrnl.exe |
|
The Windows kernel image. Provides the kernel and executive layers of the kernel architecture, and is responsible for services such as hardware virtualization, process and memory management, etc. |
| hal.dll |
HAL |
Provides and handles the interaction between software and hardware via the Hardware Abstraction Layer. |
| Core processes (Windows NT) |
| System idle process |
SIP |
A counter which measures how much idle capacity the CPU has at any given time. The process runs in the background and monitors processing bandwidth, occupied memory and the Windows virtual paging file. |
| Session Manager Subsystem |
SMSS |
Performs several critical boot-time operations, such as the creation of environment variables, starting CSRSS, and performing file-copy operations that were queued up from before the system was booted (pending file rename operations). During system operation, it handles Windows File Protection and the creation of logon sessions via Winlogon. |
| Client/Server Runtime Subsystem |
CSRSS |
User-mode side of the Win32 subsystem. Provides the capability for applications to use the Windows API. |
| Local Security Authority Subsystem Service |
LSASS |
Responsible for enforcing the security policy on the system. Verifies users logging on to the computer and creates security tokens. |
| Winlogon |
|
Responsible for handling the secure attention key, loading the user profile on logon, and optionally locking the computer when a screensaver is running. On Windows NT systems prior to Windows Vista, Winlogon is also responsible for loading GINA libraries which are responsible collecting logon credentials from the user. |
| Svchost.exe |
|
A generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). Several Svchost processes are typically present on a Windows machine, each running in a different security context, depending on what privileges the contained services require. |
| Windows on Windows and WOW64 |
WoW |
An abstraction layer that allows legacy code to operate on more modern versions of Windows; typically this means running 16-bit Windows applications on 32-bit Windows, and 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows. |
| Virtual DOS machine |
NTVDM |
Allows MS-DOS programs to run on Intel 80386 or higher computers when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware. Introduced in Windows 2.1; not available in any 64-bit edition of Windows. |
System startup (Windows NT)
-
|
| NTLDR, IA64ldr, Winload |
|
The boot loader; performs basic system initialization options such as loading the hardware abstraction layer and boot-time device drivers, prior to passing control to the Windows kernel. In versions prior to Vista, NTLDR and IA64ldr also display menus to the user if multiple operating systems are defined in boot.ini, or if F8 is pressed. |
| Recovery Console |
|
Provides the means for administrators to perform a limited range of tasks using a command line interface, primarily to aid in recovering from situations where Windows does not boot successfully. |
| ntdetect.com |
|
Used during the boot process to detect basic hardware components that may be required during the boot process. |
| Windows Boot Manager |
|
In Windows Vista and later operating systems, displays boot menus to the user if multiple operating systems are configured in the system's Boot Configuration Data. |
| Graphical subsystem |
| Graphics Device Interface |
GDI/GDI+ |
The kernel graphics component for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. |
| Desktop Window Manager |
DWM |
The compositing manager introduced in Windows Vista that handles compositing and manages special effects on screen objects in a graphical user interface. |
| Display name |
Service name |
Description |
Introduced |
| Alerter service |
Alerter |
Sends administrative alerts over the network to client computers, administrators and users. |
Windows NT |
| Application Layer Gateway service |
ALG |
Provides support for plugins that allow network protocols to pass through Windows Firewall and work behind Internet Connection Sharing. |
Windows 2000 |
| Application Management |
|
Processes requests to enumerate, install, and remove applications that are installed on the computer or deployed through an organization’s network. |
Windows 2000 |
| Background Intelligent Transfer Service |
BITS |
Transfers files between machines using idle network bandwidth. Used by Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services, and Systems Management Server to deliver software updates to clients, as well as by Windows Messenger. |
Windows XP |
| Distributed Transaction Coordinator |
MSDTC |
Allows transactional components to be configured through COM+ by coordinating transactions that are distributed across multiple computers and/or resource managers, such as databases, message queues, file systems, and other transaction–based resource managers. |
Windows 2000 and later NT-based |
| Network Location Awareness |
NLA |
Manages network configurations and information, and notifies applications of changes. |
Windows XP |
| NT LM Security Support Provider |
NTLMSSP |
Uses the NTLM MS-CHAP protocol to encapsulate and negotiate options in order to provide signed and sealed communication. Deprecated now in favor of Kerberos authentication. |
Windows NT |
| Print Spooler |
Spooler |
Manages printer devices and moves files into memory for printing. |
Windows 95, Windows NT |
| Security Account Manager |
SamSs |
Manages user account security information. |
Windows NT family |
| Task Scheduler |
Schedule |
Lets users setup and schedule automated tasks. |
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) |
STISvc |
Handles scanner and camera inputs. |
Windows Me |
| Windows Time |
W32Time |
Synchronizes the system time with external time servers. |
Windows NT family |
| Wireless Zero Configuration |
WZCSvc |
Configures and manages 802.11 wireless adapters |
Windows XP, Server 2003 only |
| Messenger service |
Messenger |
Allows users to send pop-up messages to other computers over the network. |
Windows NT family |
| MSRPC |
RPCSs |
Provides Remote Procedure Call(RPC) technique via remotely accessible Named Pipes. |
Windows NT family |
| Volume Shadow Copy Service |
VSS |
Create multiple versions of files that change. |
Windows XP, ability to store persistent snapshots in Windows Server 2003 |
| Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing |
SharedAccess |
|
Windows XP |
