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+Mkeyboard 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 VGAscreen 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]
All mentions of Windows 2000 on the boot loader were changed to just say "Windows".
The "Starting Windows..." message and its associated text before the boot screen (which was present in Windows 2000) has been removed. The "Resuming Windows..." message and its associated text when the computer is turned on after hibernation remains, but with the mention of "Windows 2000" being replaced with "Windows" (see above).
The boot screen has been simplified to an extent, with the progress bar being 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. The "Built on NT Technology" text from Windows 2000 was also removed.
The "Built on NT Technology" text on the login screen (as present in Windows 2000) was removed.
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.
The old desktop themes included with Windows 98 and Windows Me including the 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. Windows Default is 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.
The Microsoft Sound, as well as Windows 2000's startup and shutdown sounds under the names Windows Logon Sound and Windows Logoff Sound respectively were removed in favor of the new startup and shutdown sounds introduced with Windows XP.
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 to use Direct3D instead of OpenGL.
The Channel Screen Saver and Plus! themed screensavers were completely removed as well.
The 3D Flying Objects screensaver was updated to replace the classic Windowslogo in use since Windows 3.1 with the then-new Windows logo introduced with Windows XP, while the 3D Maze and Flying Windowsscreensavers were removed entirely as they were never updated to accommodate the aforementioned Windows logo changes. The 3D Pipesteapoteaster egg was also removed from Windows XP.
The ability to View my Active Desktop as a web page in the Web tab has been removed due to the removal of Active Channels.
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]
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.
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 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]
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.
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, which was a short video file consisting of clips of a male child riding a tricycle, playing in a playground, and then running in a field, is no longer generated by Windows Movie Player 2.1 when it is started for the first time, as was the case with Windows Movie Maker 1.1 in the original and Service Pack 1 releases of Windows XP.
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.
^ abKarp, David A.; O'Reilly, Tim; Mott, Troy (2005). Windows XP in a Nutshell (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN0596009003. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
^Mark Edward Soper (2004). Absolute Beginner's Guide to A+ Certification. Indianapolis, IN: Que Publishing. p. 519. ISBN0789730626. Archived from the original on January 11, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2020. Other size options are also available in Windows 2000; the /f:size option is not supported in Windows XP.