Old operating systems and applications can still surprise. Every file sometimes hides a whole story.. Who is the real author of the Pinball Space Cadet demo game and is it true Bliss desktop wallpaper ("Serenity") were filmed in Sonoma County, State of California?
Such issues most often turn into fascinating research for any digital archaeologist. In this article, we would like to tell a short story about that, How the real author of the music file was found title.wma, better known as Windows XP Welcome Music.
What kind of file is this?
Before the start of the story, we suggest remembering, How this track sounds:
Funny paradox in that, that most users have never heard this track. He began to play during the first launch of the operating system, But only if your sound card was supported by Windows XP "out of the box". If not, That, more likely, You just forgot the dialogue of the initial registration and never returned to it. This was even the reason, on which Title.wma was often considered an “Easter egg” and even calledWindows XP hidden song.
If you installed the operating system not from scratch, And from the Recovery Diski, That is a great chance, that the drivers on your sound card have already been integrated into the distribution. Hence, At the first launch, this track began to play right away. But where is the file itself with this music and who is its real author?
File History and Technical Details
The original file is calledtitle.wma And he lies at the addressC:\WINDOWS\system32\oobe\images. By the way, Strange abbreviationOutayDeciphered asout-of-box experience. At that time there was a real "war of formats", and corporations tried to make their format to the leading. MP3 (MPEG-3) He competed with AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), Well, Microsoft actively promoted its WMA (Windows Media Audio). So instead of the traditional undressed WAV, it was the WMA Code that was used here.
The screenshot can be seen, that in metadata there is completely no information about the composer. If you tried a couple of years ago to look for him in Google on request Who Creed The Windows XP Welcome Music, you would get a name Bill Braun (Bill Brown). On many Internet resources, it is to him that the authorship of this composition is assigned to him.
Really, This composer has a hand in creating some system sounds, and also wrote music for the tour according to the capabilities of this operating system:
It would seem, Here it is, But it quickly became clear, that Bill Brown did not create title.wma. This meant, that the secret remained unsolved and it was possible to continue the search. The second most popular assumption was, that this composition was written by Brian Ino (Brian Eno), The author of the original sound of the windows 95:
Funny fact: In an interview, Brian Eno admitted, that PC has never used Windows operating system. All your work, Including the creation of the famous Windows sound 95, He did on Mac.
Another of the potential hooks was the composition A Thousand Words Australian group Savage Garden. This duet was very popular in the time interval of time with 1997 on 2000 year. Just listen, how similar these tracks are, Especially at the beginning:
One of YouTube users even built a simple, But the funny Mashup, connecting both original compositions into one:
One can only assume, that this track was inspired by Title.wma, But Savage Garden had nothing to do with its creation. It became clear, What to look for traces of the author in earlier Microsoft software products. It worked, and traces of music led to Microsoft Encarta.
Few people remember, But in 1993 Microsoft released its own Encarta encyclopedia. The idea was grandiose: acquire the rights to the text of the British Encyclopedia (Encyclopaedia Britannica) and American World Book EncyClopedia, and then release all this in electronic form on optical media. But the deal did not work, And after two failures, Microsoft was forced to conclude an agreement with the American publishing house Funk & Wagnalls, which published its own encyclopedia.
At that time, a new word "multimedia" was in the air, which was the marketing driver of the development of the Windows operating system starting with the version 95. So Microsoft Encarta was supposed to demonstrate not only boring text, but also be as interactive as possible, Combining computer graphics capabilities, video and audio. It did it great, and Encarta lasted already before 2009 year. Especially if you take into account, that with 2001 the year serious competition became created by Wikipedia.
One of the issues of Microsoft Encarta was called Virtual Globe 1998 Edition. He spread to one CD and was a rather curious prototype of modern Google Earth:
In addition to the possibility of twisting a virtual globe, The encyclopedia contained many photos, video- and audio -fragments, collected from all over our globe, as well as statistical information, relevant at the time of release. But there was another unique feature - Take A World Flight. After the launch, the track began to play, very reminiscent of the beginning of title.wma:
Everything secret becomes obvious
It was here that the researchers have finally stumbled upon the real author of the Windows XP Welcome Music composition, an American composer from Ceith Stan Lapard (Stan LePard):
This veteran of the musical industry worked on such gaming projects, How Halo Reach, Halo 3 Paragraph, Guild Wars 2, Fable 2 и Project Gotham Racing. Lapard actually confirmed his authorship 13 years ago, Having laid out On SoundCloud one of the original versions of the track, which was called Windows 98 Welcome:
The original was written in the distant 1996 year and intended, as follows from the name, for a welcoming screen of the home version of Windows 98. He, Slightly edited, was present in another product of Microsoft, namely - Internet Explorer 3.0 Starter Kit.
Ranie Versii Windows, such as 3.1, Windows NT® Workstation 4.0 and Windows 95, Supposed without built -in Internet Explorer. Microsoft sold it separately, as a convenient tool for that, To start working with the Internet.
Fun, But the same Starter Kit was also intended for Macintosh. Apparently, This was a kind of attempt to lure users on the Windows ecosystem.
Instead of conclusion
This ends the story of the musical composition, The authorship of which remained unknown for many years or erroneously assigned to other eminent composers.