So this is me installing Windows Neptune and messing around with setting it up until I get bored or the VirtualPC crashes on me. Whoo!
First a little background:
Neptune was the
codename for a version of
Microsoft Windows under development in 1999. It was based on
Windows 2000 and was scheduled to be the first consumer version of Windows built on
Windows NT code and to replace the
Windows 9x series (like XP was).
[3]Neptune largely resembled Windows 2000, but some of the new features introduced, such as the
firewall, were later integrated into Windows XP as the
Windows Firewall. Neptune introduced a logon screen similar to that later used in Windows XP.
[2] Neptune also experimented with a new
HTML and
Win32-based user interface originally intended for
Windows ME,
[4][5] called Activity Centers, for task-centered operations.
[6][7]Only one
alpha build of Neptune, 5111, was released to
testers under a
non-disclosure agreement,
[2] and later made its way to various beta collectors' sites and virtual museums.
[8][9] Build 5111 included Activity Centers, which could be installed by copying ACCORE.DLL from the installation disk to the hard drive and then running
regsvr32 on ACCORE.DLL.
[10][11] The centers contained traces of
Windows ME, then codenamed-Millennium,
[12]but were broken due to
JavaScript errors, missing links and executables to the Game, Photo, and Music Centers. In response, some Windows enthusiasts have spent years fixing Activity Centers in build 5111 close to what Microsoft intended.
[13][14]In early 2000, Microsoft merged the team working on Neptune with that developing
Windows Odyssey, the upgrade to Windows 2000 for business customers. The combined team worked on a new project codenamed Whistler,
[15][16] which was released at the end of 2001 as
Windows XP.
[17][18] In the meantime, Microsoft released another home user DOS-based operating system called
Windows Me.
[16]In the early roadmap for Neptune's development (shown in the Anti-Trust documents) there were five service packs planned. In the Microsoft Anti-Trust documents, it shows that Neptune was to have a successor named Triton which would be a minor update with very few user interface changes, and service packs were planned for it. Internally, the project's name was capitalized as NepTune.
For starters, version that I have gotten my hands on does not have a bootable disc. Therefore clean install doesn't happen natively. I installed Windows 2000 Professional so that I could start the Neptune installation and run the upgrade.
But there is a functional autorun...Because that is so hard to make!
Follow through the Windows part of the setup...
Pretty standard stuff so far. Mostly because they reused the Windows 2000 setup wizard, but they have mostly reskinned it.
Now we restart and move to the blue screen Pre-Windows GUI setup. Again, same basic premise we all know and love.
Yada yada, copy more files Bluey McGee! Doing great! Keep it up!
Here we go...Starting up our shiny new, albeit very incomplete, operating system...Are you all ready for this?
Time to create an identity for myself! Whoo! Although why this happens now, rather than during the actual installation is beyond me.
Whoo! It is not actually Windows 2000, it is more of an aggregate of Windows 2000 and Windows ME. Which, ironically, is what they were going for.
So we have the OS version. It is a tick above the Win2K version, but they haven't renamed that part in English yet.
Now we have an identity management page. It is a much nicer interface than we are used to with earlier versions, and it was clearly the inspiration for the Windows XP account page.
So after some serious work and scouring the internets, I managed to install the "Activity Centers." Do not get me wrong, they never bothered to finish them, and the more you try to do anything with, the less useful they seem to be.
The help and support system works...Assuming whatever you wanted to do was already something that already exists in Windows ME!
Also we have the Kodak Imaging program that has been around for a while. Still doesn't really do much. The link on the desktop doesn't really work. Had to get to it via the Start Menu.
I feel like had they finished this part up and had they made it into Windows XP, we would have seen something similar Metro long before Windows 8. I also suspect Metro would have been a lot more user friendly.
Note the lack of functioning Games link. I suspect the intended result was to be something similar to the Games Explorer that made it into Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Command Prompt link works! Not that you can really mess that one up.
The basic Windows games are all there. Directly carried over from Windows ME or Windows 2000. Not that they have actually changed since Windows 3.1.
The Start Menu link to start the Activity Center screen is also super incomplete...I guess they didn't need to make that part work since the Activity Center weren't even enabled by default during the installation.
Desktop Customizing...At least there is that. These Activity Centers are literally all Java Script and HTML based. Which means Active Desktop is required to be on. Also not exactly the best thing they could have used.
Just some basic Windows Explorer exploring.
Ah, the Control Panel. Again, note the lack of changes from previous versions of Windows. Let us mess about with the Users settings and see if I can find this Login screen I have read so much about.
I did! I did find a login screen! It is a primitive version of the Welcome screen we will all come to know and...well know in future versions of Windows. We have user accounts, we have a shut down option, and we even have the computer's name in the lower right corner!
Oh Windows Neptune, what you could have been.
Allegedly there is a person who managed to actually more or less finish it on his own. But he won't share more than screenshots with anyone, so who knows.
