A variety of programming languages are supported by windows xp. It is also able to connect to the Internet and receive software updates. It allows multiple users to use the same computer, each with his or her own personal settings and documents.
In addition, it includes a remote desktop capability that lets you control the computer remotely. There is even a version for processors that are 64-bit, which adds additional capabilities for a business environment.
System Requirements
Microsoft issued a set of minimum system requirements that must be met to install Windows XP. It also recommended a more stringent set of specifications for hardware performance and capabilities. The latter specification is far more restrictive, but should result in optimum performance on most systems.
The maximum amount of RAM that Windows XP can address is 4GB. However, some of this address space is reserved for hardware and other system resources, leaving only around 3.5GB of usable RAM. 32-bit Windows XP supports PAE mode, which allows it to use more than 4GB of memory if the motherboard and chipset support it.
Some older motherboards and hardware devices may not have XP-specific drivers, or may require drivers that were available only for earlier versions of Windows. In these cases, you should attempt to contact the manufacturer’s tech-support personnel and see if they have drivers that work with Windows XP.
Installation
During installation, the Windows XP disk will ask you to choose your language and region settings. You will also need to enter the 25-character product key.
Once you have chosen the correct options, you will see a screen that looks like the first picture on this page. The program will then start to check your hard drive and will need to delete the partition that is currently on your hard drive.
When this is done the program will restart your computer. After a few moments you will be asked if you would like to switch user or log off. The option to switch user allows another person to log on to the computer while you continue to run your applications in the background. If you choose to log off the computer will shut down all of your applications and will close the screen. You can then log back on to the computer when you are ready.
System Configuration
The msconfig configuration utility can be used to disable and enable the individual services and startup programs that load during Windows boot. This can be a useful troubleshooting tool when an application causes a problem during startup or shut-down. To use this utility, choose Start-Run, type msconfig in the Open text box and click OK.
The Logical Prefetcher in windows xp reduces the time it takes to boot by caching files and folder metadata in an improved manner, optimizing the locations of these files on disk, overlapping device detection and initialization and by minimizing the number of asynchronous I/O operations. Windows XP also features push locks to protect handle table entries and memory management improvements for increasing the contiguous paged pool size to 1.3 GB, which allows more cache and better address translation performance.
The Processes tab in Windows Task Manager displays process names up to 16 characters, a change from the truncated 15-character limit in Windows 2000. A new Networking tab shows adapter status and link speed and a graph of recent activity.
Security
There are a lot of myths floating around about windows xp security. In reality, it depends on the overall setup and usage. If an XP machine is not connected to the internet it is probably fairly safe (though i would still run a firewall and antivirus software).
However, for those who can’t move to something new, Microsoft has added some basic security measures in XP service packs. For example, XP SP2 will not install on systems using volume license product keys that were used for unauthorized installations.
In addition, XP SP2 includes an Attachment Execution Service that records the origin of files downloaded through Internet Explorer or sent as attachments in Outlook Express. This will alert a user if a program is downloading malware and may prompt them to choose another download source.
Lastly, XP can also run many old DOS programs by running them in DOS emulators. This is due to the fact that XP is based on the Windows NT architecture rather than DOS.