Windows retrospective: boot screens through the ages

With Windows 7 upon us next week, it's time to take a quick look back at the good, bad and downright ugly of Windows versions past and present.

So our first look down memory lane focuses on the mighty boot screen. Windows boot screens aren't exactly a scientific representation of the performance of each version of Windows, but the sea changes in the move to Windows 95 and then to XP are clear, while Vista's blank space probably said more than we ever knew at the time about how the OS would be received. Anyway, on with the (slide)show!

Windows 1.0

From 20 November 1985, here's the first Windows boot screen featuring the old Microsoft logo. Key fact: you couldn't overlap windows in this version - they were all tiled. Interestingly, Microsoft still supported Windows 1.0 until the end of December 2001. Seriously.

Windows 2.1

While an earlier version (2.03) emerged in 1987, it wasn't until 1988 that Windows 2.1 properly arrived, in the form of the 286 and 386 versions. The not-so-different boot screen also features the new Microsoft logo. The first versions of Word and Excel ran on Windows 2.0. You could also overlap windows. Which was good.

Windows 3.0

Into the nineties and Windows 3.0 shows plenty of signs of graphical improvement - indeed the graphics were much improved from 2.x. The MS-DOS Executive file manager was replaced with the Program Manager (which remained a feature of Windows 3.1).

Windows 3.1

The first version to include Minesweeper, Windows 3.1 (codenamed Janus) was released in 1992 and contained advanced personalisation and featured 32-bit disk access. It also introduced the Windows flag to the boot screen for the first time.

• The most successful game ever: a history of Minesweeper

Windows for Workgroups 3.11

Windows for Workgroups saw the light of day in October 1992 and featured native network support and sharing. It was an essential for business back in the early nineties. We don't know about you, but these boot screens look almost like a step back from Windows 3.0!

Windows 95

Introducing the clouds! Windows 95 was a great leap forward in terms of productivity and introduced THE INTERNET, albeit in limited fashion. It was seriously better looking than earlier versions of Windows and was seriously successful as a result. It laid the graphical foundations (if not the codebase) for the Windows we still use today.