Windows Vista is a personal computer operating system that was produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and became generally available on January 30, 2007. It was succeeded by Windows 7, which was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009.

Windows Vista is built on the Windows Server 2003 kernel and shares some technology with Windows Server 2008, including the Windows Aero user interface, Windows Defender, and ReadyBoost.

Windows Vista is available in six editions: Starter, Home …