Yeah. There were two entirely independant operating systems. Dave Cutler developed the very advanced "NT" system, which was originaly seen as a server and professional workstation system. Then there was "Windows 95" which as a smaller timesharing desktop system for consumers.
Windows 95 was a nice little system in its day, but it had very different requirements than NT. It had to support DOS-like games and applications that could access the hardware in very unprotected ways. It also churned a lot, with so many new standards and features being invented around that time. Stability was pretty difficult to achieve.
XP was a big task, basically the NT kernel with "applications compatability" so it could run the crazy Windows 95 applications, make them think they were still playing fast and loose with the hardware, but not really letting them do.
I'm guessing we've kind of given up on the theme of this thread. LOL.
