I know this is still off topic but I do envy you people for having those OS boxes, the ones posted here looked in good condition too...

Though I don't have them myself I am very glad people are keeping hold of them. I have some recent stuff, mostly the stuff from the Free Stuff thread if I'm honest and I'm swimming in Windows Server 2003 evaluations but besides that I don't really have much in the way of official packaging. Kudos for grabbing stuff where you could and keep hold of them! In 10 years time I still wanna see people with Win9x CDs/packaging!

My 9x CDs are pretty much dead now, they're scratched to hell and back, I think I'm going to frame my 95, 98SE and 98 Starts Here discs so I don't throw them out, I'd love to have those on my wall with a nice frame and some backing behind them.

I know my Uncle has a 95 Disk with a Manual but I only have evaluations.

The only ones I've got are old ones that I've seen offered either for free or very cheap (I wouldn't pay more than about £3 for a boxed copy of Windows/Dos), as I can never afford them at the prices they charge when they're new! I am hoping to get a free copy of Vista (don't know what edition it is yet, if it's Home Basic I don't even want it lol) from this Microsoft Student Rep thingy that I'm doing but I don't know if it'll be boxed or just a download (it would still be my first legit "new" copy of Windows, as opposed to vintage stuff).

Here's one you don't see everyday, & again, more proof that Windows
Millennium was never called " Georgia " as so many refer it to..
Millennium was actually it's codename that remained it's final name...




. : & more proof : .




& yet again, more proof that Millennium was it's codename...

@KenOath
I was never quite sure about the code name of ME myself, but I also found out it was in fact "Millennium" because I have the exact same TechNet CD of Beta 2 (and 3) as you have.

Wow that one with the picture of the moon on it is so cool!

Where did the name Georgia come from, as it must have been used somewhere if people think that was it's codename?

interesting picture on that case

Everytime I look at the pic & read it, I think of Millennium Bug..

OK, while we're at it, here's another one that might be rare, don't know. NT 3.1 Advanced Server (German)... Sorry for the orientation, I didn't watch when I scanned it

n1 pics...where did you get the cds?

From the beta test (regarding the betas, I guess) and on several other opportunities...

k thx...when i'll get my centro dvds i will post some pics,too

Okay, to bring the topic back to its actual discussion, here are some pics of Windows XP (Pro) RME (Reduced Media Edition). This was the initial name of XP (Home/Pro) N, but the EU commission rejected it and MS had to think of something new. XP N was then apparently accepted. And this is an OS you won't ever see a retail box of because there were none produced! MS had not begun shipping when the EU commission told them their "crippled" OS was in need of a new name. Just as the "final" product, RME doesn't contain any Media Player and stuff like that.

So is this identical to the real N Edition, except in the name? Or is it like a beta, where there are other differences too? Also I assume you put in the different icons/image in System properties/Start button image, as they're nothing like the normal XP ones? And what's with the 6.51 GHz CPU?

One more question: does it say Reduced Media/N anywhere else apart from in System Properties? eg the image on the left of the Classic start menu, the Winver image, the logon/shutdown dialog, the Help and Suport Centre etc?

And where did you find this? I didn't even know that they had produced one with the RME name, I thought that was dropped at the planning stage...

I knew this would attract someone It's real, though.

The two ISOs I have are as follows:

XP Pro RME: volume label WINXPRMC, size 607.252.480 bytes
XP Pro N: volume label V2NPRMVOL_EN, size 625.739.776 bytes

They seem to be identical in the facts that they have SP2 integrated and are VLKs. I wonder why they are different in size by about 20MB. Also, the volume label of the RME ISO looks a bit strange, it doesn't seem to follow MS' naming scheme, also the ISO seems to have been made bootable manually. Wonder what's going on with it. The N image "looks" quite normal, the label is following MS' naming scheme and all.


Yep, it seems it's identical. I don't think there are other differences because they're both based on XP RTM with SP2. Maybe there are some differences in the post-install setup (where you enter your user names and stuff) but I can't tell for sure as I had installed the "N" edition unattendedly and so skipped that step. The RME edition (installed attendedly) displayed the information that media components are missing, as you can see on the screenshot. I'll reinstall the "N" edition to check that. One difference that might be is the fact that there are both Home and Pro N editions, but only a Pro RME as far as I know.
These icons are custom ones, yes, I just love them, they look so professional and cool. If you're interested, here's the pack to change that all (including all the banners and images, just have a look at the screenshots): http://tango.benpbrown.com/
The CPU – it's running at 1.83GHz as shown in the text above the clock speed indicator, XP's just a bit confused about the fact it's running in a VM. Additionally, the CPU dynamically adjusts its clock between 1.5 and 1.83GHz depending on the load, confusing the poor XP even more


Not in the Start menu image, not in the Winver image, not in the logon/-off dialogues. I haven't checked the Help and Support Center yet because I don't use it, but I'll check. However, it looks as the only way to safely recognize these editions is by having a look at the System Properties. Even the version string (lower right corner of the screen, active in betas and evals) says just XP Pro, at least in N.


Well, I didn't know that either, until I stumbled upon it on, err, hmm, a site that shares some of this stuff (you get what I mean, right? ) . First, I thought it was the "N" but when I realized the ISO had a different size, I thought I had made a little discovery here and added it to my OS collection.

Isn't this something like with Neptune, a bit at least?

Hmmm...strange. Are you sure this isn't some sort of faked release, like Windows 99 and all that stuff? (I'm not suggesting that you faked it, I mean you might have found it and thought it was real, but someone else faked it)

Regarding the different sizes, is some of the stuff in the other folders on the image apart from the i386 folder missing, as if it's a dodgy release then it may be missing some of that? If it all appears to be there and it is the i386 folder that is 20 MB larger on the N version, did they perhaps integrate the hotfixes released between SP2 and the N version into the larger one? (is there any evidence of hotfixes on your N installation?) Is the number of files in i386 the same? If so, I think there was a utility someone posted on here recently that compares two i386 folders and tells you which files are different sizes, which might show up where the extra has come from.

PS I had a look on Wikipedia for more information about the N edition, and found that it says "Consumer interest has been low, with roughly 1,500 units shipped to OEMs, and no reported sales to consumers" - if this is true, then as OS collectors we NEED to get a boxed copy of this!! This is going to be RARE!

Honestly, I am not sure. It could be that it's a fake, but I don't know how I can verify or proove that. I've found some other screenshots of it here: http://air101.betablogs.net/xp.php?gallery=RME This looks exactly like my copy. And if it's fake, I surely didn't do it because this would be pointless in my eyes. And, something more about RME, a review, along with screenshots identical to mine: http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=85


No, nothing is missing apart from i386. The other folders are all there and are of the same size. The i386 folder is where the size difference lies, however, and the N edition has five files more in the root of i386 than RME. Will do a deep comparison of the directory to find out which files are different exactly. XP-N does indeed contain some hotfixes, as does RME, but N contains more. So, I guess there are hotfixes installed automatically.

Okay, I did that (the file comparison). the N edition does indeed have 5 files more than RME in \i386, but the main differences are that some files which are compressed (.CH_, e.g.) on the RME image are uncompressed (.CHM, e.g.) on the N image and vice versa. And these five files that are actually really different could have come from the fact that N is newer than RME and MS might have done some fixing on it that wasn't done in RME. As I said, the other differences are indeed only compressed or uncompressed files.

If you want to dive into it, here's the report (did a "dir /s /b" on both i386 folders and then compared the lists):
http://geocities.com/unixfreak87/result.txt


I might snag one if these appear here in Germany. If it's that rare, even the Home Edition will do, right?

@Vista Ultimate R2

An update on the hotfixes integrated:
- XP Pro N contains these which get automatically installed

KB891646
KB893470

- XP Pro RME, however, only ontains

KB891646

And they both identify themselves as the normal XP Pro in Help and Support Center as well, I have just looked it up.

Interesting that the RME has some WMA files eg that music that plays during the OOBE sequence but they had rooted them out for the N edition - I guess the OOBE is silent in the N edition, just to give the full "reduced media" experience? The difference in size looks to be mainly that some files aren't compressed in the N edition - wonder why they did that? I see also there are some extra files in N that are related to new updates having been put in eg XPSP3RES.DLL. Thanks for taking the time to look into this by the way

One thing: what does the application SETUPN.EXE that is in N but not RME do?



It certainly sounds pretty rare...I'm not convinced that absolutely no copies have gone to consumers, as Weird says, but when you think about it there is no reason why anyone would buy this, so it must still be pretty rare. A boxed retail version of XP Home N Upgrade (the cheapest one) is £97.99 including postage on Amazon UK - still way way too expensive to consider picking one up just for collectability, sadly Maybe in a few years time it'll be dirt cheap like NT4 is now, but then again they might all have disappeared by then...

No idea why they did that compressed/uncompressed game. As for the remaining WMA files, I guess RME was just not completely "finished up", but N was. I can't tell if OOBE was silent in N, did an unattended install, skipping that. No problem, I was interested myself to find out if the copy I got was "okay" or not. I mean, it might be something that not everyone has.


The picture says it all, doesn't it?. Now is this some sort of joke from MS or what?



I guess we'll just have to wait to see how things come out, then. Apparently, no shop here in Germany has these...

Surely somewhere must have it?!

I just found you can get a copy for £80 over here, which seems to be as cheap as the retail boxes get sadly - there's OEM for £60 but that's not collectable. Most online stores that list it do say "out of stock" (ever in stock?) though, suggesting rarity. Oh well, keep an eye out for a box in a few years time I suppose... I looked to see if there were any on eBay and there are not, and there haven't been any for the past 3 months either (Home or Pro), which must be a sign that it's rare as usually if you can't get something on eBay it means that it's rare!

I've been waiting and looking for a boxed copy of it. Maybe in some time, they will appear, but I kinda doubt it. Maybe a copy of these will appear on eBay sooner or later, but your statement that if something is not acquirable on eBay, it's rare, is also true in my eyes because I have gotten so much weird stuff on eBay myself

BTW, to finish it up, here's the info on the XP Home N ISO (sadly, it's not an unmodified copy):

volume label: V2NHRMFPP_EN
size: 604,246,016 bytes

Right then... I've got original CDs for Win95B, Win98, Win98SE & Windows NT4 SP5 that still work... and floppies that still work for Win95...

And ages back (when Whistler was still in beta) I had an MSDN Whistler CD for Home & Pro (either Beta 1 or 2) which got given to me by someone then given back when they didn't work (because the processor speed in the PC I had at the time was 200MHz and thus not enough to run Whistler so the install failed).

I have an original CD for Microsoft "Dangerous Creatures" plus box, given to me last summer. I'm thinking about ISO'ing the CD (ripping out all the bits that aren't needed) and releasing it. I've also got an original CD for Microsoft Java VM (in all languages).

Yeah sure I have this (as an ISO). I wonder how rare this is?