Several days ago, two files containing Microsoft source code began circulating on the Internet. One contains a majority of the NT4 source code: this is not discussed here. The other contains a fraction of the Windows 2000 source code, reportedly about 15% of the total. This includes some networking code including winsock and inet; as well as some shell code. Some other familiar items include the event log, and some of the default screensavers.

The timestamps on the files generally say 25 July 2000. The source is contained in a Zip file of size 213,748,207 bytes, named windows_2000_source_code.zip, which has been widely circulated on P2P networks. Some dummy files of similar size, containing just strings of zeroes, have also circulated.

There has been some speculation that while the bulk of the source is genuine, some of the comments have been tampered with to embarrass Microsoft. This is difficult to disprove, but I find it implausible. The embarrassing comments occur on thousands of lines, in realistic places. Furthermore, if someone had done that, it would have been easy to make the comments far more incriminating.

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thx for this ... Update !!

Heh, I guess it shows MS developers are human.

I found a few hillarious things the article failed to mention;

Bitmaps in "\win2k\private\windows\shell\control\bitmaps" - take a look at nt.bmp and std.bmp :D :D :D

Makes that "Windows Really Good Edition" flash spoof kinda redundant ;)

From the same news article...

Access Start->Shutdown, then while holding CTRL-ALT-SHIFT, left click on CANCEL. This will kill Windows Explorer, leaving a system where you can only access the last application you used. Great for Internet Caffee's and libraries, since you cannot access the TaskBar, StartMenu, Desktop or anything else. Reminds me of BeOS without Tracker/Deskbar.

Unless you have a terminal open (or a scheduled wake up task), you wont be able to restart explorer, hence you'll be forced to reboot afterwards. But that doesn't stop 50% of windows geeks from trying...

This works with Windows XP too. -- McoreD

Those BMPs were in the source code? Omfg. :D

Hmm... Just tried this... I could just press CTRL+ALT+DEL, bring up the Task Manager, and run explorer.exe again. Interesting easter egg, but it's unlikely to be useful for securing your PC in the way you suggested.

I wonder how many other easter eggs the source will reveal.

Yes, I was able to re-run Explorer too. Easy with Windows 2000/XP. ;)

I then tried it in Windows 98. Obviously f**cked. Had to restart.

After the Windows 98's Deskbar Options easter egg, this is my first easter egg for Windows XP.

Edit: Confirmed it to be working Zone-MR. Elseif you do not have a OpenFileDialog at that time you are....:D

I don't have Win98 installed anywhere, but you could try this out of interest...

If there is any program running (internet explorer/notepad/whatever) which allows you to open/save files, use the "save as" dialog, type in c:\windows\*.* in the path, you should see everything including EXE files. Find explorer.exe, right click it, click open, and it should start.

Of course. Same way you can access hidden drives. Like my school hides drive c completey. Just hidden. Pretty damn stupid. Normally I just do it through using microsoft word. ;)