Microsoft Corporation (/ˈmaɪkrəˌsɒft/,[6][7] abbreviated as MS) is an American multinational

technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures,

licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and
services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems,
the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship
hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As
of 2016, it is the world's largest software maker by revenue,[8] and one of the world's most
valuable companies.[9] The word "Microsoft" is a portmanteau of "microcomputer" and
"software".[10]

Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell
BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating
system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The
company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three
billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s,
it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of
corporate acquisitions—their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in
December 2016,[11] followed by Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.[12]

CES -- formerly an acronym for the Consumer Electronics Show[1] -- is an annual trade show
organized by the Consumer Technology Association. Held in January at the Las Vegas
Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, the event typically hosts presentations
of new products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry.

The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its
readily identifiable elements consists of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and
the Autoplay feature. On some versions of Windows, it also includes Flip 3D and the charms. However,
the Windows shell also implements a shell namespace that enables computer programs running on
Windows to access the computer's resources via the hierarchy of shell objects. "Desktop" is the top
object of the hierarchy; below it there are a number of files and folders stored on the disk, as well as a
number of special folders whose contents are either virtual or dynamically created. Recycle Bin,
Libraries, Control Panel, This PC and Network are examples of such shell objects.

Modern UI" redirects here. For Nullsoft's installation system, see Nullsoft Scriptable Install
System § Modern user interface.
"Microsoft Metro" redirects here. For the file format codenamed Metro, see Open XML Paper
Specification.

Metro (officially known as Microsoft design language or MDL)[1] is a design language created
by Microsoft. This design language is focused on typography and simplified icons, absence of
clutter, increased content to ratio ("content before chrome"), and basic geometric shapes. Early
examples of Metro principles can be found in Encarta 95 and MSN 2.0.[2][3] The design language
evolved in Windows Media Center and Zune and was formally introduced as "Metro" during the
unveiling of Windows Phone 7. It has since been incorporated into several of the company's
other products, including the Xbox 360 system software, Xbox One, Windows 8, Windows
Phone, and Outlook.com.[4][5] Before the "Microsoft design language" title became official,
Microsoft representative Qi Lu referred to it as the modern UI design language in his MIXX
conference keynote speech.[6] According to Microsoft, "Metro" has always been a codename and
was never meant as a final product, but news websites attribute this change to trademark
issues.[4]

Advanced Format is a generic term pertaining to any disk sector format used to store data on
magnetic disks in hard disk drives (HDDs) that exceeds 512, 520, or 528 bytes per sector,[2] such
as the 4096, 4112, 4160, and 4224-byte (4 KiB) sectors of the Advanced Format hard disk
drives. Larger sectors enable the integration of stronger error correction algorithms to maintain
data integrity at higher storage densities.

Advanced Format is also considered a milestone technology in the history of HDD storage,
where data has been generally processed in 512-byte segments since at least the introduction of
consumer-grade HDDs in the early 1980s, and in similar or smaller chunks in the professional
field since the HDD's invention in 1956.

Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to
shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly
provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the Internet. Cloud computing relies on
sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, similar to a utility.

Third-party clouds enable organizations to focus on their core businesses instead of expending
resources on computer infrastructure and maintenance.[1] Advocates note that cloud computing
allows companies to avoid or minimize up-front IT infrastructure costs. Proponents also claim
that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with
improved manageability and less maintenance, and that it enables IT teams to more rapidly
adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.[1][2][3] Cloud providers
typically use a "pay-as-you-go" model, which can lead to unexpected operating expenses if
administrators are not familiarized with cloud-pricing models.[4]

Since the launch of Amazon EC2 in 2006, the availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost
computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization,
service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing has led to growth in cloud
computing.[5][6][7]

Anti-phishing software consists of computer programs that attempt to identify phishing content
contained in websites and e-mail or block users from being tricked. It is often integrated with
web browsers and email clients as a toolbar that displays the real domain name for the website
the viewer is visiting, in an attempt to prevent fraudulent websites from masquerading as other
legitimate web sites.

Most popular web browsers comes with built-in anti-phishing and anti-malware protection
services, but almost none of the alternate web browsers have such protections.[1]

Password managers can also be used to help defend against phishing, as can some Mutual
authentication techniques.
Secure boot
See also: Secure boot criticism

The UEFI 2.3.1 Errata C specification (or higher) defines a protocol known as secure boot,
which can secure the boot process by preventing the loading of drivers or OS loaders that are not
signed with an acceptable digital signature. The mechanical details of how precisely these drivers
are to be signed are not specified.[46] When secure boot is enabled, it is initially placed in "setup"
mode, which allows a public key known as the "Platform key" (PK) to be written to the
firmware. Once the key is written, secure boot enters "User" mode, where only drivers and
loaders signed with the platform key can be loaded by the firmware. Additional "Key Exchange
Keys" (KEK) can be added to a database stored in memory to allow other certificates to be used,
but they must still have a connection to the private portion of the Platform key.[47] Secure boot
can also be placed in "Custom" mode, where additional public keys can be added to the system
that do not match the private key.[48]

Secure boot is supported by Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and 2012 R2, and
Windows 10, VMware vSphere 6.5[49] and a number of Linux distributions including Fedora
(since version 18), openSUSE (since version 12.3), RHEL (since RHEL 7), CentOS (since
CentOS 7[50]) and Ubuntu (since version 12.04.2).[51] As of January 2017, FreeBSD support is in
a planning stage.[52]

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software
interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI replaces the Basic
Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface originally present in all IBM PC-compatible
personal computers,[1][2] with most UEFI firmware implementations providing legacy support for
BIOS services. UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no
operating system installed.[3] The user can enter a setup utility by pressing their manufacturer's
specific setup keys. Most common keys are Delete , F2 , F12 , Esc , etc.

Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification. Some of the
EFI's practices and data formats mirror those from Microsoft Windows.[4][5] In 2005, UEFI
deprecated EFI 1.10 (the final release of EFI). The Unified EFI Forum is the industry body that
manages the UEFI specification.

An Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) is a company that produces parts and

equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. For example, if Acme Manufacturing
Co. makes power cords that are used on IBM computers, Acme is an OEM.

However, the term is used in several other ways, which causes ambiguity. It sometimes means
the maker of a system that includes other companies' subsystems, an end-product producer, an
automotive part that is manufactured by the same company that produced the original part used
[
in the automobile's assembly, or a value-added reseller.[1]

General Introduction
A system on a chip or system on chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated circuit (also known as an
"IC" or "chip") that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic systems. It may
contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single
substrate. SoCs are very common in the mobile computing market because of their low power
consumption.[1] A typical application is in the area of embedded systems.

SoC integrates a microcontroller (or microprocessor) with advanced peripherals like graphics
processing unit (GPU), Wi-Fi module, or coprocessor. If the definition of a microcontroller is a
system that integrates a microprocessor with peripheral circuits and memory, the SoC is to a
microcontroller what a microcontroller is to processors, remembering that the SoC does not
necessarily contain built-in memory.

In general, there are three distinguishable types of SoCs. SoCs built around a microcontroller,
SoCs built around a microprocessor (this type can be found in mobile phones), and specialized
SoCs designed for specific applications that do not fit into the above two categories. A separate
category may be Programmable SoC (PSoC), where some of the internal elements are not
predefined and can be programmable in a manner analogous to the FPGA or CPLD.

When it is not feasible to construct a SoC for a particular application, an alternative is a system
in package (SiP) comprising a number of chips in a single package. When produced in large
volumes, SoC is more cost-effective than SiP because its packaging is simpler.[2]

Another option, as seen for example in higher-end cell phones, is package on package stacking
during board assembly. The SoC includes processors and numerous digital peripherals, and
comes in a ball grid package with lower and upper connections. The lower balls connect to the
board and various peripherals, with the upper balls in a ring holding the memory buses used to
access NAND flash and DDR2 RAM. Memory packages could come from multiple vendors.

For the Australian architectural firm, see ARM Architecture (Ashton Raggatt McDougall).
ARM architectures

Machine, later Advanced RISC Machine, is a family of reduced instruction set computing
(RISC) architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. British
company ARM Holdings develops the architecture and licenses it to other companies, who
design their own products that implement one of those architectures—including systems-on-
chips (SoC) and systems-on-modules (SoM) that incorporate memory, interfaces, radios, etc. It
also designs cores that implement this instruction set and licenses these designs to a number of
companies that incorporate those core designs into their own products.

Processors that have a RISC architecture typically require fewer transistors than those with a
complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture (such as the x86 processors found in most
personal computers), which improves cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation. These
characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices—including smartphones,
laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems.[3][4][5] For supercomputers, which
consume large amounts of electricity, ARM could also be a power-efficient solution.[6]
ARM Holdings periodically releases updates to architectures and core designs. All of them
support a 32-bit address space (only pre-ARMv3 chips, made before ARM Holdings was
formed, as in original Acorn Archimedes, had smaller) and 32-bit arithmetic; instructions for
ARM Holdings' cores have 32-bit fixed-length instructions, but later versions of the architecture
also support a variable-length instruction set that provides both 32- and 16-bit instructions for
improved code density. Some older cores can also provide hardware execution of Java
bytecodes. The ARMv8-A architecture, announced in October 2011,[7] adds support for a 64-bit
address space and 64-bit arithmetic with its new 32-bit fixed-length instruction set.

With over 100 billion ARM processors produced as of 2017, ARM is the most widely used
instruction set architecture in terms of quantity produced.[8][9][10][11][12] Currently, the widely used
Cortex cores, older "classic" cores, and specialized SecurCore cores variants are available for
each of these to include or exclude optional capabilities.

Steven Jay Sinofsky (born 1965)[1] is a former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft
from July 2009 until his departure on November 13, 2012.[2][3] He was responsible for the
development and marketing of Windows, Internet Explorer as well as online services such as
Outlook.com and SkyDrive.[4] Sinofsky is currently a board partner at Andreessen Horowitz,
where he serves on boards of investments.[ Steven Anthony Ballmer (/ˈbɔːlmər/; born March
24, 1956[3]) is an American businessman, investor and philanthropist who was the chief
executive officer of Microsoft from January 2000 to February 2014,[4] and is the current owner of
the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). As of August 23, 2017,
his personal wealth is estimated at US$33.1 billion,[5] ranking him the 21st richest person in the
world.[6]

Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980 after dropping out of Stanford University.
He eventually became President in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. It was announced
on August 23, 2013, that he would step down as Microsoft's CEO within 12 months. On
February 4, 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was succeeded by Satya Nadella; Ballmer
resigned from the Board of Directors on August 19, 2014 to prepare for teaching a new class and
for the start of the NBA season.[7][8] On May 29, 2014, Ballmer placed a bid of $2 billion to
purchase the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers after NBA commissioner Adam Silver forced Donald
Sterling to sell the team.[9] He officially became the Clippers owner on August 12, 2014;
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is a fellow owner in the NBA, himself having owned the
Portland Trail Blazers since 1988.

He is known for his charismatic and enthusiastic personality.[10] His time as Microsoft CEO has
been seen as mixed, with critics noting the company's tripling of sales and doubling of profits,
but losing its market dominance and missing out on 21st century technology trends.[11][12][13]

Microsoft Silverlight (or simply Silverlight) is a deprecated[5] application framework for

writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is
still available for some browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming
media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation and gave developers
support for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was also one of the two application
development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages that use Silverlight did not run on the
Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight
plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.[6]

Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2012. In 2013, Microsoft announced that
they had ceased development of Silverlight except for patches and bugfixes.[citation needed]
Microsoft has set the support end date for Silverlight 5 to be October 2021.[7] Silverlight is no
longer supported in Google Chrome since September 2015,[8] and in Firefox since March 2017.[9]
There is no Silverlight plugin available for Microsoft Edge.[10]

Silverlight was used to provide video streaming for the NBC coverage of the 2008 Summer
Olympics in Beijing,[11] the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver,[12] and the 2008 conventions
for both major United States political parties.[13] Silverlight was also used by Amazon Video and
Netflix for their instant video streaming services,[14][15] but Netflix said in its Tech Blog in 2013
that, since Microsoft had announced Silverlight's end-of-life, they would be moving to HTML5
video.[16]

Microsoft Build (often stylised as //build/) is an annual conference event held by Microsoft,
aimed towards software engineers and web developers using Windows, Windows Phone,
Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a successor for
Microsoft's previous developer events, the Professional Developers Conference (an infrequent
event which covered development of software for the Windows operating system) and MIX
(which covered web development centering on Microsoft technology such as Silverlight and
ASP.net). The attendee price was (US)$2,195 in 2016, up from $2,095 in 2015.[1] It has sold out
quickly, within one minute of the registration site opening in 2016. Microsoft Corp v
Commission (2007) T-201/04 is a case brought by the European Commission of the European
Union (EU) against Microsoft for abuse of its dominant position in the market (according to
competition law). It started as a complaint from Sun Microsystems over Microsoft's licensing
practices in 1993, and eventually resulted in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain
information about its server products and release a version of Microsoft Windows without
Windows Media Player. The European Commission especially focused on the interoperability
issue.[1]

Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) is the portion of Microsoft responsible for managing
the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the
operating system (OS), and software developers developing on the various OS platforms or using
the API or scripting languages of Microsoft's applications. The relationship management is
situated in assorted media: web sites, newsletters, developer conferences, trade media, blogs and
DVD distribution. The life cycle of the relationships ranges from legacy support through
evangelizing potential offerings.[citation needed]

Microsoft TechNet is a Microsoft web portal and web service for IT professionals. It includes a
library containing documentations and technical resources for Microsoft products, a learning
center which provides online training, discussion forums, an evaluation center for downloading
trialware, blogs for Microsoft employees and a wiki.
TechNet originally provided a software subscription service similar to Office 365 and Adobe
Creative Cloud that allowed subscribers to download Microsoft software under a software as
service license for private use. On July 1, 2013, it was announced that Microsoft is discontinuing
the TechNet subscription service, with the purchase and renewal of subscriptions to be closed by
August 31, 2013.[1]

TechNet also included a web-based TechNet Magazine which is discontinued since October
2013. Past issues are still available for reading.

Microsoft Imagine, formerly known as DreamSpark and MSDN-AA, is a Microsoft program

to provide students with software design and development tools at no charge. The program is
available for university/college and K-12 students in more than 120 countries.[1] To register,
students must visit the Microsoft Imagine website and verify their identity through their verified
.EDU institution. If an institution is not listed on the available list, the user may manually verify
their student status by uploading a proof such as an ID card.

The Microsoft Imagine program was announced by Bill Gates as DreamSpark on February 20,
2008 during a speech at Stanford University.[1][2] It is estimated that up to 35 million students
will be able to access these software titles free of charge through this program.[3] The service was
renamed to Microsoft Imagine on September 7, 2016, to better align with the annual Imagine
Cup competition hosted by Microsoft.[4]

Features
"Kernel (computer science)" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Compute kernel, Kernel
method, or Kernel (image processing).
"Kernel (computing)" redirects here. For other uses, see Kernel#Computing.

The kernel is a computer program that is the core of a computer's operating system, with
complete control over everything in the system.[1] On most systems, it is one of the first
programs loaded on start-up (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of start-up as well as
input/output requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the
central processing unit. It handles memory and peripherals like keyboards, monitors, printers,
and speakers.
A kernel connects the application software to the hardware of a computer.

The critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a protected area of memory, which prevents
it from being overwritten by applications or other, more minor parts of the operating system. The
kernel performs its tasks, such as running processes and handling interrupts, in kernel space. In
contrast, everything a user does is in user space: writing text in a text editor, running programs in
a GUI, etc. This separation prevents user data and kernel data from interfering with each other
and causing instability and slowness.[1]

The kernel's interface is a low-level abstraction layer. When a process makes requests of the
kernel, it is called a system call. Kernel designs differ in how they manage these system calls and
resources. A monolithic kernel runs all the operating system instructions in the same address
space for speed. A microkernel runs most processes in user space,[2] for modularity.[3]

In computer interface design, a ribbon is a graphical control element in the form of a set of
toolbars placed on several tabs. In 2007 Microsoft products began to introduce a form of modular
ribbon as their main interface where large, tabbed toolbars, filled with graphical buttons and
other graphical control elements, are grouped by functionality. Such ribbons use tabs to expose
different sets of controls, eliminating the need for numerous parallel toolbars. Contextual tabs are
tabs that appear only when the user needs them. For instance, in a word processor, an image-
related tab may appear when the user selects an image in a document, allowing the user to
interact with that image.

The usage of the term ribbon dates from the 1980s and was originally used as a synonym for
what is now more commonly known as a (non-tabbed) toolbar. However, in 2007, Microsoft
Office 2007 used the term to refer to its own implementation of tabbed toolbars bearing
heterogeneous controls, which Microsoft calls "The Fluent UI". Thus, Microsoft popularized the
term with a new meaning, although similar tabbed layouts of controls had existed in previous
software from other vendors. The new design was intended to alleviate the problem of users not
finding or knowing of the existence of available features in the Office suite.[1][2]

Breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs trail is a graphical control element used as a navigational aid in

user interfaces. It allows users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents, or
websites. The term comes from the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the fairy
tale of the same name.[1]

"BSOD" and "BSoD" redirect here. For other uses, see Black Screen of Death.
The Blue Screen of Death in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 includes a sad emoticon

A stop error, better known as a Blue Screen of Death (also known as a blue screen or BSoD)
is an error screen displayed on a Windows computer system after a fatal system error, also
known as a system crash: when the operating system reaches a condition where it can no longer
operate safely.

In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic
waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to
or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from certain discs, but recent drives can both
read and record, also called burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are
common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives. Optical disc
drives that are no longer in production include CD-ROM drive, CD writer drive, combo (CD-
RW/DVD-ROM) drive, and DVD writer drive supporting certain recordable and rewritable DVD
formats (such as DVD-R(W) only, DVD+R(W) only, DVD-RAM only, and all DVD formats
except DVD-R DL). As of 2015, DVD writer drive supporting all existing recordable and
rewritable DVD formats is the most common for desktop PCs and laptops. There are also the
DVD-ROM drive, BD-ROM drive, Blu-ray Disc combo (BD-ROM/DVD±RW/CD-RW) drive,
and Blu-ray Disc writer drive.

Optical disc drives are an integral part of standalone appliances such as CD players, DVD
players, Blu-ray disc players, DVD recorders, certain desktop video game consoles, such as Sony
PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, and Sony PlayStation 3, and certain
portable video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStation Portable. They are also very commonly
used in computers to read software and consumer media distributed on disc, and to record discs
for archival and data exchange purposes. Floppy disk drives, with capacity of 1.44 MB, have
been made obsolete: optical media are cheap and have vastly higher capacity to handle the large
files used since the days of floppy discs, and the vast majority of computers and much consumer
entertainment hardware have optical writers. USB flash drives, high-capacity, small, and
inexpensive, are suitable where read/write capability is required.

Disc recording is restricted to storing files playable on consumer appliances (films, music, etc.),
relatively small volumes of data (e.g. a standard DVD holds 4.7 gigabytes) for local use, and data
for distribution, but only on a small scale; mass-producing large numbers of identical discs is
cheaper and faster than individual recording.

Optical discs are used to back up relatively small volumes of data, but backing up of entire hard
drives, which as of 2015 typically contain many hundreds of gigabytes or even multiple
terabytes, is less practical. Large backups are often instead made on external hard drives, as their
price has dropped to a level making this viable; in professional environments magnetic tape
drives are also used

Windows Media Center (WMC) is a discontinued digital video recorder and media player
created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP
Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate editions of
Windows Vista, as well as all editions of Windows 7 except Starter and Home Basic. It was also
available on Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro as a paid add-on, before being discontinued in
Windows 10, although it can be reinstalled unofficially through a command script installer.

Media Center can play slideshows, videos and music from local hard drives, optical drives and
network locations. Users can stream television programs and films through selected services
such as Netflix. Content can be played back on computer monitors or on television sets through
the use of devices called Windows Media Center Extenders. It is also possible to watch and
pause live TV. Up to six TV tuners on a tuner card are supported simultaneously. Both standard-
and high-definition unencrypted video are supported through DVB-T and ATSC standards. It is
possible to view encrypted cable television channels by using an internal or external tuner that
supported CableCARD.

Shortly after Windows 7's 2009 release, Microsoft disbanded the Media Center development
team, thus abandoning any further software developments. Consequently, the Media Center
interface remained unchanged for Windows 8 and 8.1 users. In May 2015 Microsoft announced
that Windows Media Center would be discontinued on Windows 10, and that it would be
removed when upgrading; but stated that those upgrading from a version of Windows that
included the Media Center application would receive the paid Windows DVD Player app for free
to maintain DVD playback functionality.[1]

Backup software are computer programs used to perform backup; they create supplementary
exact copies of files, databases or entire computers. These programs may later use the
supplementary copies to restore the original contents in the event of data loss.[1]


 1 Key features
o 1.1 Volumes
o 1.2 Data compression
o 1.3 Access to open files
o 1.4 Differential and incremental backups
o 1.5 Schedules
o 1.6 Encryption
o 1.7 Transaction mechanism

Not to be confused with Depreciation.

In several fields, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design,
or practice; typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe –
but without completely removing it or prohibiting its use.

Contents
 1 Etymology
 2 Software deprecation
 3 Other usage
  4 See also
 5 References
 6 External links

Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service,[1] Volume Shadow Copy Service[2] or VSS[2]) is a
technology included in Microsoft Windows that allows taking manual or automatic backup copies or
snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is implemented as a Windows
service called the Volume Shadow Copy service. A software VSS provider service is also included as part
of Windows to be used by Windows applications. Shadow Copy technology requires the file system to be
NTFS in order to create and store shadow copies. Shadow Copies can be created on local and external
(removable or network) volumes by any Windows component that uses this technology, such as when
creating a scheduled Windows Backup or automatic System Restore point.

Windows Server is a brand name for a group of server operating systems released by Microsoft. It
includes all Windows operating systems branded "Windows Server", but not any other Microsoft
product. The first Windows server edition to be released under that brand was Windows Server 2003.
However, the first server edition of Windows was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server, followed by
Windows NT 3.5 Server, Windows NT 4.0 Server, and Windows 2000 Server; the latter was the first
server edition to include Active Directory, DNS Server, DHCP Server, Group Policy, as well as many other
popular features used today.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT
In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE), sometimes referred to as Page Address
Extension,[1] is a memory management feature for the x86 architecture. PAE was first
introduced by Intel in the Pentium Pro, and later by AMD in the Athlon processor.[2] It defines a
page table hierarchy of three levels (instead of two), with table entries of 64 bits each instead of
32, allowing these CPUs to directly access a physical address space larger than 4 gigabytes (232
bytes).

The page table structure used by x86-64 CPUs when operating in long mode further extends the
page table hierarchy to four levels, extending the virtual address space, and uses additional
physical address bits at all levels of the page table, extending the physical address space. It also
uses the topmost bit of the 64-bit page table entry as a no-execute or "NX" bit, indicating that
code cannot be executed from the associated page. The NX feature is also available in protected
mode when these CPUs are running a 32-bit operating system, provided that the operating
system enables PAE.

NX bit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The NX bit, which stands for No-eXecute, is a technology used in CPUs to segregate areas of
memory for use by either storage of processor instructions (code) or for storage of data, a feature
normally only found in Harvard architecture processors. However, the NX bit is being
increasingly used in conventional von Neumann architecture processors, for security reasons.

An operating system with support for the NX bit may mark certain areas of memory as non-
executable. The processor will then refuse to execute any code residing in these areas of
memory. The general technique, known as executable space protection, is used to prevent certain
types of malicious software from taking over computers by inserting their code into another
program's data storage area and running their own code from within this section; one class of
such attacks is known as the buffer overflow attack.

Intel markets the feature as the XD bit, for eXecute Disable. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
uses the marketing term Enhanced Virus Protection. The ARM architecture refers to the
feature, which was introduced in ARMv6, as XN for eXecute Never.[1] The term NX bit itself is
sometimes used to describe similar technologies in other processors.

Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), also known as nested paging, is a hardware-
assisted virtualization technology which makes it possible to avoid the overhead associated with
software-managed shadow page tables.

AMD supports SLAT through the Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) technology since the
introduction of its third-generation Opteron processors (code name Barcelona). Intel's
implementation of SLAT, known as Extended Page Table (EPT), was introduced in the Nehalem
microarchitecture found in certain Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 processors.

ARM's virtualization extensions support SLAT, known as Stage-2 page-tables provided by a

Stage-2 MMU. The guest uses the Stage-1 MMU. Support was added as optional in the
ARMv7ve architecture and is also supported in the ARMv8 (32-bit and 64-bit) architectures.

Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian[1] and formerly known as Windows Server

Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running
Windows.[2] Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Windows Virtual PC as the
hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer
running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more
networks.

Hyper-V was first released alongside Windows Server 2008, and has been available without
charge for all the Windows Server and some client operating systems since.

Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)[1] is the graphic driver architecture for video card
drivers running Microsoft Windows versions beginning with Windows Vista.[2]

It is a replacement for the previous Windows 2000 and Windows XP display driver model
XDDM/XPDM[3] and is aimed at enabling better performance graphics and new graphics
functionality and stability.[2] Display drivers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 can choose to
either adhere to WDDM or to XDDM.[4] With the removal of XDDM from Windows 8,
however, WDDM became the only option.[5]

WDDM provides the functionality required to render the desktop and applications using Desktop
Window Manager, a compositing window manager running on top of Direct3D. It also supports
new DXGI interfaces required for basic device management and creation. The WDDM
specification requires at least Direct3D 9-capable video card and the display driver must
implement the device driver interfaces for the Direct3D 9Ex runtime in order to run legacy
Direct3D applications; it may optionally implement runtime interfaces for Direct3D 10/10.1 and
higher.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is an international standard for a secure cryptoprocessor,

which is a dedicated microcontroller designed to secure hardware by integrating cryptographic
keys into devices. TPM's technical specification was written by a computer industry consortium
called Trusted Computing Group (TCG). International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standardized the specification as ISO/IEC
11889 in 2009.[1]

TCG continues to revise the TPM specification. It published revision 116 to version 1.2 of the
TPM specification on March 3, 2011,[2] Draft revision 1.07 to version 2.0 of TPM specification
was published for public review on March 13, 2014 as a library specification that provides
updates to the previously published main TPM specifications. Trusted Platform Module Library
Specification Revision 01.38 was released in September 2016 as the latest TPM 2.0 release.[