Windows Neptune build 5111

Windows Neptune build 5111 is a Milestone 2 build of Windows Neptune that is currently the only available build of Windows Neptune. It is also known as "Microsoft Neptune Developer Release" and was sent to developers on 27 December 1999. The build still includes much of Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Professional branding, partially as the base for this build was Windows 2000 Professional build 2128, with Neptune files added on top. Although many files are version 5.50.5111.1, and this is even the true version in the kernel, the kernel actually reports 5.00.5111.1 to match the subsystem version field in its own PE header.

It includes the Activity Centers, a new login interface and user management application, as well as the new Help Center and AutoUpdate from Windows Me and several other improvements. It is also configured to hibernate rather than shut down by default.

Version number
This build has been subject to certain confusion regarding its version number. Firstly, the operating system binaries identify as build number 5111.1, however, several discs known to contain the build are labeled with the build number 5111.6. This is due to Microsoft's conflicting usage of the delta number field, which appears to have been used to mark recompiles of the same build as well as to distinguish different variants of the same compile.

Furthermore, the build identifies as version 5.00, although many files are marked with version 5.50 in their version information, and this is even the true version in the kernel. This is caused by a validation mechanism in the kernel, which compares the internal version against the Subsystem Version fields in its own executable header (offset ), and if they don't match, the kernel reports as the lesser of the two.

Multiple different copies
There have been several different disc images available online over the years, and most have been modified in various ways, with the timebomb being completely disabled in some instances. The copy that is currently on BetaArchive was dumped from the original disc and does not include any modifications. A product key is not required for this variant, but it contains an active 444-day timebomb. Modified copies of build 5111.1 ask for a Windows 98 product key.

Other disc
In 2011, a person with the nickname iapx432 revealed that they had an original disc of a Neptune Developer Release. The contents of the disc were reportedly the same as the leaked copy of 5111.1. The artwork printed on that disc differs greatly to the well known disc. Photos of the disc can be seen in the gallery below.

However, the disc label also says "Software Expires: 6/1/2001". The leaked copy of build 5111.1 has a 444-day timebomb since the date of installation (like all later builds of Windows 2000), and an additional date check during setup, which will display a warning but allow the installation to continue. The date which is checked by setup is neither 6 January 2001 nor 1 June 2001, casting doubt on the common belief that the build on this disc is indeed exactly the same as the leaked copy.

Activity Centers
Although this build includes the Activity Centers, they are largely broken and incomplete. Several members of the community have attempted to fix or recreate them over the years, with varying degrees of success.

The three main Activity Centers (Photo Center, Music Center and Game Center) and the Start Page are located primarily in, which needs to be registered to install the Activity Centers. You can do this by copying the file from the CD to  and running. Once this is done, the Activity Center files are located in. The Start Page can then be used as the Active desktop page.

The executables for the above mentioned centers are missing in this build, so the default links to them don't work. It's possible to open the individual centers with  instead.

Login screen
Although the new login screen is functionally identical to the one introduced later in Windows XP, it's actually another HTML application. It's located in, with some of the functionality in. This same login screen was later used in Whistler build 2211 and build 2223, with a new Windows logo in the latter, but then scrapped soon after in favor of a DirectUI-based one. The login screen is listed in the Add/Remove Programs control panel as "Microsoft Neptune Neptune Logon", but attempting to uninstall it fails.

The power button in the bottom left corner will initiate a hibernation by default. To restart the computer, hold down the ⇧ Shift key before clicking the button. To fully shutdown the computer, hold down the Ctrl key before clicking the button.

Windows Identities
This is the new user management control panel applet in, also an HTML application. While the old user management control panel applet from Windows 2000 is still present initially, it will be removed by the login screen code after it's opened for the first time. This feature is also functionally very similar to its successor in Windows XP.

Neptune defines four account types:


 * Owner - This type of account is intended for people who can make system-wide changes to the computer. A person with an Owner account can make changes to all Windows accounts that have been created for this computer, such as changing account names, pictures, passwords, and account types.
 * Adult - This type of account is intended for people who can make standard changes to the computer, such as installing applications and software.
 * Child - This type of account is intended for children whose activity should be monitored and who should be safeguarded against corrupting computer settings and deleting important system files. Restricted accounts have limited access to internet content and can have limited computer time. A person with a child account can only change his or her own account name and picture.
 * Guest - This type of account is intended for Guests to use the computer. Guest accounts have restricted access to this computer. Settings, Themes and web browsing history will be erased each time a person with a guest account turns off the computer. Only Documents created by a guest person will be saved.

Windows XP simplified these account types into Administrators (Owner), Standard users (Adult) and a single Guest account which can be enabled.

Help and Support / PCHealth
Help and Support (previously called Help Center) has only loose ties to other Activity Centers, as it is actually stored separately from them in  and is built on top of the PCHealth framework. It appears to have been directly ported from a pre-release build of Windows Me (likely build 2429) as it includes many references to the aforementioned operating system. Despite the inclusion of the new Help Center, the older HTML Help application from Windows 2000 can still be accessed from the Start menu's Help option, although a link to it has been commented out in the new Help Center homepage. An invalid link to the System Restore executable, which is not present in this build, is provided within the Help and Support Center; it is unclear whether Neptune was to include the functionality in a later build.

Available support topics are stored in a Microsoft Access database file called  in. The whole program was designed so that the database can be updated, possibly from online sources, using the  program and   MS Cabinet archive.

PCHealth is set to run at every startup to monitor the minidump directory for new minidumps after system and application crashes. If it detects such an event, it will prompt the user to submit relevant information to Microsoft for analysis via the Bug Reporting page in the Help Center.

The Bug Reporting page can be accessed either through Help Center or its dedicated desktop shortcut. It's stored in  before it's installed. Although it originates from Windows Me build 2415, the bug reporter page was specifically adapted towards the Neptune project. The bug reporter identifies itself as version 5.00.00.5112, and reports are saved to the  directory by default. The Bug Reporting page contains two hidden sections with instructions for submitting additional files which are specifically tailored towards the DirectX and System Restore functionalities.

Post-Neptune
The Help and Support Center (and its respective bug reporting page) would be later brought over to the Whistler project from as early as build 2211, although it still saved bug reports in the same  directory at the time of porting.

Windows Update Auto Update
Windows Update Auto Update is another HTML application shared between Millennium and Neptune. It was meant to facilitate automatic updates via Windows Update, but doesn't seem to be fully working yet. The initial dialog will only be shown on the first run, allowing the user to read the license agreement and change AutoUpdate settings. Auto Update version in this build is 5.4.284.1, and is located in the  directory. The main executable is, while the HTML UI components are in.

Mars
An executable named  can be found in several early builds of Windows Me, as well as in Neptune. In early Millennium builds, the icon is a blue lower-case "m" on white background. Later on, it was changed to a yellow square smiley (";-]") with black borders. The  description states "Microsoft(R) Mars (R) Communications System".

interprets commands by forwarding user input to  that loads   and   into a windowed shell application, giving the web pages the appearance of an actual program. It seems to have been folded into the PCHealth framework during Millennium's development and was later reused by the Whistler project as part of Help and Support migration.

WIA
The new Windows Image Acquisition technology is present in this build. This includes the Still Image Service, new drivers for various scanner and camera models, and a new Control Panel folder for managing them, although the older Scanners and Cameras applet from Windows 2000 is still present as well. However, Still Image Service appears to be broken in this build, see the Known issues section for more information.

Fast boot
Fast boot is a new feature presumably designed to speed up system boot time. It's contained in  and installed as a service. It can be enabled in the Power options, but only if Neptune is installed on a FAT partition. On the next boot, Neptune will display a bitmap saying "Optimizing boot". At some point it creates a roughly 2-2.5 MB large file named  in the   folder. The image appears to contain the initial memory snapshot of boot drivers and the kernel. The specifics of how this helps speed up the boot process remain unclear.

Internal strings call this "Profile Assisted Boot Accelerator" or "PABA". , the Disk Performance Driver, has also been extended to support this feature. The boot screen is displayed with a lime progress bar instead of the usual blue if Neptune boots in fast boot mode. Additionally, the blue animation bar does not move.

A similar feature named Fast Startup would later appear in Windows 8.

Prefetcher
This build is the first to have the Prefetcher feature which was later introduced by Windows XP. It's meant to speed up system boot and application loading time by caching the required files. files are stored in the  folder. Prefetcher is enabled by default, although it can be disabled by the following registry patch:

Application Manager
Application Manager was envisioned as a new component for centralized management of games and other applications, providing functionality such as disk quotas and file clean-up. This functionality is provided by  and , while the user interface was added to the Game Controllers control panel applet. However, the latter is only present in Windows Me builds 2404-2452, but not in Neptune.

This feature appears to have also facilitated Game Activity Center's game discovery feature at some point, before the Game Center was dropped. It briefly returned as part of DirectX 8.0, as it is present in the early beta build, but was subsequently removed again before the final release. Microsoft later developed similar products such as the Games for Windows Live platform and the Games Explorer feature in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Resource Manager
This appears to be a new driver-related component, but its purpose is not yet understood. It's comprised of two files, a "WDM Resource Manager" driver, and the "Resource Manager User Mode". It was later added to Windows XP build 2202 as well, but was then removed again soon after.

Network
Net crawler was introduced in Windows Me and then ported to Neptune. It automatically searches the local network for shared folders and printers, and then creates shortcuts for them in the My Network Places folder. When shortcuts become "stale" (the device or location is no longer accessible within a reasonable time period), they are removed. This feature is enabled by default in this build, but can be disabled by checking the "Disable auto browse for shared folders and printers" checkbox in the advanced folder view options.

There is a checkbox to "Enable Firewall mode for this connection" on every network connection's Sharing options page, which suggests a firewall feature of some sort may have been planned for Neptune. It doesn't appear to be functional, though. A built-in firewall was later included with Windows XP.

Submit a comment
Also a first appearance in this build is the "Comments?" link in the title bar of most dialog windows. Clicking it brings up a feedback dialog from  with a brief form to explain the problem. This would then be sent anonymously, along with a screenshot of the offending window, to Microsoft.

The "Comments?" link in dialog title bars can be disabled by changing the DWORD registry value  in   from 1 to 0. This feature was also added to Windows XP build 2202, but the relevant registry key has changed and also allows for changing the link text itself as well. A similar feature was added to Windows Me as well in the form of a "Survey..." button on all message boxes.

Setup
One-touch setup is used to launch an automatic unattended upgrade, possibly intended to be launched from a network share with the build's files. Upon launching, it copies  to temporary files and displays a user account name prompt. It then attempts to modify the file with the specified name and the current computer name. This is negatively affected by Windows marking files copied from a CD-ROM as read-only, making the application silently fail unless one removes said attribute from the copied file when the initial window appears. Finally, it launches the regular setup executable in unattended mode.

The executable has a file version of 5.00.1636.1, the same as the setup billboard library in Windows XP build 2250. It is unknown whether this is coincidental or the two features are related in some way. Timestamps in the unattend file suggest that the feature was implemented around 9 August 1999 and updated or expanded on 4 November 1999:

and  setup libraries also contain two extra dialogs, one of which has a placeholder string saying "Files for Neptune build 5XXX are now available.". This dialog actually stays hidden, but is needed to run the second dialog with the postpone options, which is then displayed to the user. also contains a commented line which would add  (this program is missing from the leaked copy) to the list of programs to be started on system startup; the program is labeled as "Neptune Self-Host Reporting Daemon". The dialog can also be manually triggered by running. Clicking Upgrade Now will begin the installation.

It is believed these were all part of Neptune's new self-hosting update system. NTCSelfh would probably regularly check for new builds in the background and run  with the   and   parameters on a network share. Setup would then copy temporary files to the machine and display the mentioned dialogs to inform the user a new update is available, with the build number obtained from the copied.

is set to run at first login and is used to create the first user account of the Owner type. Once you enter your desired account name, you are asked to restart the computer. After that, you can login into the new user account. It's described as a "pre-release Microsoft utility" in the UI, several strings inside this file suggest it's part of the out-of-the-box experience (OOBE), while the file description says "Neptune-to-Neptune Upgrade".

Neptune Credential Manager
appears to be the precursor to the Credentials Manager from later versions of Windows, meant for managing various user credentials in one place. It's described as an "internal Microsoft tool" in the UI, while the file description says "Neptune-to-Neptune Upgrade".

Trying to add a credential on a non-owner account will result in an error message saying you can only add credentials on accounts with administrator rights in this build.

.NET Framework
The file  references various nonexistent files, one being. In the context of the .NET project, Fusion was the codename for the CLR Loader, a component that loads CLR assemblies into .NET AppDomains. In the .NET Framework 1.0 Beta 1 (the earliest version available as of 2023)  is present and is a component of the Common Language Runtime. In addition, functions within  reference .NET components such as   and assembly creation. This file, while non-functional due to missing imports, is a component of an extremely early version of the .NET Framework, several months before its PDC tech preview (from July 2000) and potentially even before the introduction of the .NET name.

Another component of the .NET framework found in Neptune is. This is a .NET assembly using what appears to be an earlier header format and cannot be opened in .NET decompilation tools, although the Cor20 header does show in dnSpy. It is the  component used in .NET apps for interfacing with XML files and refers to itself as such internally, although it refers to itself as "Microsoft(R) XML+", with the file description being "XML+ (MSXML for COM+)". COM+ is a preliminary name for the .NET Framework.

My Pictures Slideshow screensaver
This new screensaver first appeared in Windows Me build 2394, and was ported to Neptune sometime after that. It plays a slideshow of the pictures in the My Pictures folder as the screensaver.

Neptune Server
This build includes the "Configure my server" wizard from Windows 2000 Server editions, which is rather unusual for home and professional editions. An interesting fact about this particular component is that it's also an HTML application, although it predates the HTML application efforts in Millennium and Neptune.

There are also several "Neptune Server" strings inside several setup files, though this could simply be the result of a mass rebranding effort. Although multiple SKUs are defined in the anti-trust documents from 1998, it's not entirely clear whether Neptune would also include a server edition.

Driver signer
Drivers in this build are signed by "Microsoft Consumer Windows Publisher", which was also used in Windows Me, but not in Windows 2000.

Multiple desktops
The  program found on the disc enables the creation and use of multiple desktops. Although this was first introduced in the Resource Pack for Windows NT 4.0, this build is the first to include it with the base OS.

Internet Explorer
Although most of Internet Explorer in this build is version 5.0 (5.00.2919.3800 from Windows 2000 build 2128.1, to be specific), some files have been added in from a pre-release version of Internet Explorer 5.5 (version 5.50.3825.1300), among them, which contains the About dialog graphic. This results in the About dialog displaying a version 5.5 graphic but saying version 5.0 just below it.

Upgrading Internet Explorer to version 6.0 is not recommended, as it tends to break the HTML applications, especially the new login screen, which renders the build unusable. Some people have supposedly managed to workaround this issue and got a working install of Neptune with Internet Explorer 6.0, but the details of how to achieve this are unknown.

Installation

 * It is recommended to use a PS/2 keyboard for setup, as there is a small chance that USB devices will not work.

IDE driver bug
Like many late builds of Windows 2000, this build also suffers from a race condition in the IDE driver. The bug usually manifests by the computer rebooting during component installation, and Setup restarting from scratch afterwards. Often, this can be prevented by mashing keys and rapidly moving the mouse during the problematic phase, which slows the system down slightly, as it has to process the extra mouse and keyboard input, thus avoiding the bug.

When using VirtualBox, the bug can also be worked around by using the  utility in the VirtualBox installation directory to enable an artificial delay when processing IDE requests. This can be done by the following command:. After the installation completes, the delay can be disabled by setting the delay to 0.

Fast Startup
When Fast Startup is enabled and the user attempts to boot into safe mode, the system will boot normally.

Hardware

 * Most USB mice do not work.
 * Attempting to start an application from USB mass storage may result in a "not a valid Win32 application" error. Copying the application to the system will allow the user to run the application.
 * Some built-in display drivers may result in a "The graphics driver returned an unexpected error" when attempting to change display settings.

Still Image Service
The Still Image Service is broken in this build and will fail to start. Because it's set to start automatically by default, it causes a delay when Windows Explorer is loading. Attempting to open the new "Scanners and Cameras" Control Panel folder will fail for the same reason, hanging the Explorer window in the process. Although this can be prevented by setting the startup type to either "Manual" or "Disabled" - to prevent the service from starting automatically - there is a way to stop the service from malfunctioning.

A backstory to what causes imgsvc to break is whenever the service is initialized, it utilizes one of the few svchost processes, however this results into issues due to the COM and Runtime Object Table code getting in the way of the service's startup. Whilst an instance of the Image Acquisition (WIA) logger is being created, Windows checks if said svchost process is linked to the same AppID as the logger, however this isn't the case.

To get Windows to succeed in checking if the AppID is equivalent, a registry edit can be made for Windows to succeed in checking svchost.exe's AppID. To carry out such registry edit, create a new .reg file with the following script: If done correctly, Windows should succeed in checking whether the AppID is equivalent, and the service should load correctly.

Hibernation and shutdown
As mentioned at the start, this build is configured to hibernate by default. If ACPI is not supported or properly implemented on the (virtual) machine, the system state will still be saved, but a non-ACPI shutdown dialog will be displayed, telling you it's now safe to turn off your computer.

Shutting down can in some cases also result in a restart instead, most likely also due to ACPI issues.

Earlier build reference
This build includes the file  with version number 5.50.5095.1, but it is unknown whether this file is from this build of Neptune. It's possible this could be a late Milestone 1 or an early Milestone 2 build. Judging by the PE timestamp, it would have been compiled on or before 6 November 1999.

File differences
The following files have been introduced or removed compared to build 2128.1 Professional: