Back in 1992, Jim Allchin, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows development, announces that the company is beginning work on Cairo, which will include a new "object file system" for storing document files, spreadsheets, multimedia files and other information in a unified way. The goal is to enable searching not only by file name, but by also file content. Cairo is due in 1994.
In 1994, after two years of relentless hype, Microsoft announces that Cairo's debut will "slip" into 1996. The company later moves Cairo's debut to 1997. Then catching up to Netscape and the Internet boom becomes Microsoft's top priority, and work on Cairo is "reassessed." In 1996, Bill Gates says Cairo's storage system is a vision, not a product, leading none other than Rick Sherlund--the Goldman Sachs analyst who helped Microsoft to go public--to say that Cairo has "lost its definition."
http://news.com.com/The+long+march+to+Longhorn/2010-1016_3-5360695.html
Cairo, a major update of NT that will add the Chicago user interface and an object file system, also has quietly slipped from delivery in the first to the second half of 1995.
http://www.computerworld.com/news/1994/story/0,11280,4170,00.html