Windows Blackcomb

Blackcomb (later renamed to Vienna) was the codename for a version of Microsoft Windows originally meant to be released in the second half of 2002 as a successor to Windows XP.

History
Windows "Blackcomb" was originally announced as the successor to Windows XP. It was intended to be a major release, including many substantial changes to Windows, such as a full .NET User Experience, integration with various Web services and an advanced storage system called WinFS. As Microsoft was finishing up the feature set, they had realized they couldn't hit the expected release date and started working on a smaller release, Windows Longhorn. This caused Blackcomb to be postponed to around 2003 or 2004. By the middle of 2003, Longhorn has acquired many features originally intended for Blackcomb. As a result, the release date for both projects was postponed even further.

When Microsoft announced the cancellation of Longhorn Server in late 2002, the name Blackcomb became synonymous with the successor of Windows .NET Server 2003. This was in line with Microsoft's vision for Blackcomb - by 2004 most, if not all, of the user experience ideas have been moved to Longhorn, and server-side features, such as improvements to the Dynamic Systems Initiative, became the main focus of Blackcomb. Despite this, certain Longhorn features were postponed back to Blackcomb after Longhorn's development reset in 2004, one such example being WinFS.

No builds are known to have been compiled under this name. In early 2006, as Windows Vista was being finished, Blackcomb was renamed to Vienna with the intention to introduce a new set of code names derived from popular cities and locations. Eventually, the project was canceled and replaced with a new project code named "Windows 7", as it was realized that the number of features that had been assigned to Blackcomb was simply too large to be completed in a reasonable time.

Alleged presentation
There is an alleged presentation of Blackcomb that is commonly shared across different media outlets, however the focus of that demonstration was actually an MSN Messenger user interface concept. As a result, many features never intended for the scrapped Blackcomb project have been attributed to the aforementioned presentation by various news sources.