List of features removed in Windows XP

As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others. Following is a list of these.

Shell

• The balloon notification (or dialog box) that warns the users when removing external flash storage devices without safe unmounting has been removed. ^[1]
• The Line Up Icons command on the desktop was removed and replaced by the Align to Grid option. ^[2] Due to this being a toggle, simply aligning desktop icons once without further constraining their placement requires an extra click. ^{[3] : 47}
• The Minimize all windows command on the taskbar was removed. ^{[3] : 76} The purported replacement, Show the desktop, co-existed with this feature on Windows 2000 and in any case only hides windows temporarily instead of actually minimizing them. It is still accessible through the ⊞ Win +M keyboard shortcut but it is not available through the mouse.
• The Show icons using all possible colors (which was previously introduced in Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0) option in Display Properties has been removed. Icons are always shown using all possible colors. Microsoft states that this is by design. ^[4]
• The VGA screen resolution and 8-bit color depth options have been removed from the Settings tab of Display Properties. It is still possible to select these options using the Advanced button available under this tab, however Microsoft states that this workaround is unsupported. ^[5]
• In the Command Prompt, QuickEdit mode and Insert mode are disabled by default. ^[6]
• Links to Phone Dialer ^[7] and NetMeeting ^[8] were removed from the Start menu.

Boot

• The "Starting Windows..." message before the boot screen (which was present in Windows 2000) has been removed.
• The progress bar on the boot screen was changed from a determinate progress bar seen in Windows 2000 to an indeterminate one. The animated gradient bar seen on the boot screens of Windows 95, 98, Me and Windows 2000 was also removed, as was the text "Starting up…" which was located next to the progress bar in Windows 2000's boot screen.

Personalization

• With the Desktop Themes utility in 2000 becoming the Themes tab in Display Properties in XP, the Rotate theme monthly option in Desktop Themes, which was introduced in Microsoft Plus! 98 and later included in Windows 2000 and Me, and both the options to select what parts of a theme to apply and the previews for parts of a theme were removed.
• Some of the desktop themes that were once part of Windows 9x including Baseball, Dangerous Creatures, Inside your Computer, Jungle, Leonardo da Vinci, More Windows, Mystery, Nature, Science, Space, Sports, The 60's USA, The Golden Era, Travel, Underwater, Windows 98 and Windows Millennium were removed entirely. The Windows Default is now replaced by Windows XP and Windows Classic.
• The previous wallpapers and tiles from Windows 95–98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 including the Plus! wallpaper were removed.
• The Utopia sound scheme, first included in Windows 95 and included up to Windows Me, was removed. Despite this, the files for the sound scheme are still included on the Windows XP CD-ROM in the i386 folder and could be manually installed on Windows XP from the CD-ROM.
• Some of the sounds from Windows 2000 are The Microsoft Sound, Windows Logoff Sound and Windows Logon Sound are removed but the sounds in Media folder are stored.
• It is no longer possible to save or delete schemes under the Appearance tab of Display Properties.
• The option to select a Pattern under the Background (9x/NT)/Desktop (XP) tab of Display Properties was removed. Users can only set a pattern with the Registry Editor. ^[9]
• The 3D FlowerBox, 3D Flying Objects, 3D Pipes and 3D Text screensavers have been updated and dropped support for OpenGL in favor of Direct3D.
  • The 3D Flying Objects screensaver was updated to replace the classic Windows logo in use since Windows 3.1 with the then-new Windows logo introduced with Windows XP, while the 3D Maze and Flying Windows screensavers were removed entirely as they were never updated to accommodate the aforementioned Windows logo changes. The 3D Pipes teapot easter egg was also removed from Windows XP.

Windows Explorer

• Small Icons view was removed from Windows Explorer. ^[10]
• Web view in folders was disabled by default but can be reinstated by editing the registry. Additionally, the Customize This Folder Wizard was removed. ^[11] Due to the removal of Web view, pie charts showing disk space are no longer available immediately upon opening a drive. ^[12]
• The status bar no longer shows the free space remaining on the given disk when browsing through folder paths of shell namespace extensions, ^[13] removable drives, ^[14] and network shares when the navigation pane (Folders) in Windows Explorer is turned on, unlike in Windows 2000. It continues to show the free space remaining only for paths on local drives. In combination with the Web view-related lack of pie charts previously mentioned, this means it is no longer possible to immediately view the amount of space remaining in these three cases.
• The Directory icon was removed from My Network Places. ^[15]
• The default sort order in Windows Explorer has changed but can be restored by editing the registry. ^[16]

Media components

• Deluxe CD Player, which was also first part of Microsoft Plus! 98 before being included in Windows 2000, was removed. ^[17] Some functionality, including uploading ^[18] and on-demand (as opposed to automatic) downloading of audio track information and track previewing was not available in the replacement, Windows Media Player.
• DVD Player is no longer usable as it is now a stub that simply opens Windows Media Player.
• The WinMe 3D preset in the Musical Colors visualization was replaced with Ice Crystals in Windows Media Player version 8. The name still exists within the files of the visualization. Some of the previous Windows Media Player skins that were in Windows Me was removed entirely. Musical Colors was not included with Windows Media Player version 9 on clean installs of Windows XP starting with Service Pack 2, but is retained if the player is upgraded from version 8 to 9.
• Imaging for Windows was removed. ^[19] It was replaced by the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and Scanner and Camera Wizard but these two programs do not include some of its advanced functionality. ^[20]

Protocols

• NetDDE ^[21] and NetBEUI, ^[22] which are included in earlier versions of Windows, are no longer installed by default but can still be manually installed from the Windows XP CD-ROM.
• The DLC network protocol is no longer included. A download was made available by Microsoft. ^[23]
• The AppleTalk protocol is no longer included and was not made available for download from Microsoft. ^[24]

Subsystems

• The Microsoft POSIX subsystem was removed. ^[25] Windows Services for UNIX is available as a replacement. ^[26]
• The Microsoft OS/2 subsystem, which supports 16-bit character-based OS/2 applications and emulates OS/2 1.x but not 32-bit or graphical OS/2 applications as used with OS/2 2.x or later, was removed. ^[25]

Hardware support

• Both graphical and command-line formatting options for floppy disks of capacities other than 1.44 MB were removed. ^{[27] [28] [29]}
• Support for non-Plug and Play networking devices, such as modems and NICs, and native support for modems slower than 28.8  kbps was removed. ^[30]
• Support for serial mouse was removed.
• A number of SCSI host adapters are no longer supported. ^[31]
• Support for NEC's PC-98 series, the i486 Instruction Set and Silicon Graphics' Visual Workstation 320 and 540 was removed. ^[25]
• New printer installations are required to use user-mode rendering components. ^[21]

Windows 9x

• WebTV for Windows was removed. ^[32]
• DriveSpace was removed in favor of native NTFS compression. ^[33]
• The NTBackup tool included in Windows XP does not support certain backup formats available for use in the MSBackup tool in Windows 9x. ^[34]
• COMMAND.COM, which is a command interpreter exclusive to MS-DOS and Windows 9x, is no longer included with Windows XP. ^{[35] [ failed verification ]}

Later versions

Service Pack 2

• The following raw socket functionality was removed: sending TCP network packets, sending UDP packets with invalid source network addresses, and associating local addresses. ^[36]
• Support for TCP half-open connections was removed. ^[37]
• Program Manager was removed and replaced with Windows Explorer. The executable is still present, but it was replaced with a stub that redirects to Explorer.
• Media Bar, which replaced the Radio Toolbar in Internet Explorer 6, ^[38] was removed. ^[39]
• Background message compaction was removed from Outlook Express. ^[40] Outlook Express in Service Pack 2 automatically compacts messages every hundredth time it is run.
• The radio edit of David Byrne's "Like Humans Do", as previously included in the original and Service Pack 1 releases of Windows XP, was removed.
• The Windows Movie Maker Sample File (generated by Windows Movie Maker 1.1 when it is started for the first time), which consisted of clips of a male child riding a tricycle, playing in a playground, and then running in a field, was removed.
• The boot screens for all editions of Windows XP have been unified by Service Pack 2 for Windows XP with a new one that no longer displays the SKU, with the boot screen for Home Edition using a blue progress bar instead of green. The copyright years on the boot screen were also removed.

Service Pack 3

• The Address bar toolbar on the taskbar was removed for legal reasons, according to Microsoft. Windows Desktop Search is touted as a replacement. ^[41]
• The ability to use boot disks to boot into setup was removed.
• The option to display the special Internet Explorer icon on the desktop was removed. ^[42]
• The ability to install service packs cumulatively is no longer available in Service Pack 3 as it requires at least Service Pack 1 to be installed first (Service Pack 2 in the cases of the original Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004). ^{[43] [44]} Cumulative slipstreaming, however, is still possible and supported. ^[45]
• The Energy Star logo in the Display Properties dialog, first introduced with Windows 95 and included up to Windows XP Service Pack 2, was removed. ^[46]
• The copyright information in the About Windows (winver.exe) box was updated from "1985-2001" to "2007". The banner itself remains unchanged, however.

Media Center Edition 2005

• Despite this edition being developed from Windows XP Professional, domain support is unavailable. Microsoft states that this is due to Windows Media Center Extenders requiring fast user switching. ^[47] The exceptions to this are if it is selected during installation or already in use before an upgrade, but leaving the domain will still disable the feature.
• Windows Media Player 6.4, which was hidden in Windows XP and came shipped with Windows 2000 and can be installed on Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98, was removed.

See also

• Windows Server 2003
• New features by Windows version:
  • XP
  • Vista
  • 7
  • 8
  • 10
  • 11
• Removed features by Windows version:
  • XP
  • Vista
  • 7
  • 8
  • 10
  • 11

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