{"id":92731,"date":"2015-12-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=92731"},"modified":"2019-03-13T12:23:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T19:23:19","slug":"20151229-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20151229-00\/?p=92731","title":{"rendered":"Why are Windows setup logs stored in a Panther directory? Does it have anything to do with the abandoned Panther project from the precursor to Windows 95?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I discussed the fates of the various cat projects that led to Windows 95<\/a>, which was in turn a follow-up to a list of cat-related code names from projects that led to Windows 95<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In summary: There were a bunch of projects with cat-related code names. Only one of the projects survived to Windows 95 in its originally-envisioned form. Two of the projects were morphed into other projects that became part of Windows 95. One (Panther) was cancelled outright. <\/p>\n

More than<\/a> one person<\/a> asked whether the canceled Panther project is why Windows Setup logs are in a directory called “Panther”. <\/p>\n

I doubt it. <\/p>\n

After all, the Panther project was cancelled early in the exploratory phase of the product that eventually became Windows 95. No public builds were ever released that contained Panther. <\/p>\n

You launched Panther by launching Windows 3.1, then going to Program Manager, and double-clicking the icon of a Hallowe’en pumpkin. <\/p>\n

I don’t know why the Panther icon was a Hallowe’en pumpkin. Maybe the project started on Hallowe’en? <\/p>\n

On the other hand, the Panther subdirectory that people are asking about was introduced in Windows Vista, and it is highly unlikely that Windows Vista cared about a long-dead experimental project from over 15 years ago. Windows Vista didn’t support upgrading from anything older than Windows 2000; it certainly didn’t care about upgrading from an experimental operating system from the early 1990s that never even made it as far as a beta. <\/p>\n

From looking at the source code history, it appears that Panther was the code name for what is now known as Windows Deployment Services. <\/p>\n

Another case of code name reuse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unrelated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-92731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Unrelated.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}