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Windows NT 3.51
 
 
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Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
's Windows NT
Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix....
 line of operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s. It was released on May 30 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5

Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on September 21 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in reference to the Daytona International Speedway...
. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 on the PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
 CPU architecture. The second most significant enhancement offered through the release was that it provides client/server support for interoperating with Windows 95
Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Microsoft Windows products....
, which was released three months after NT 3.51.






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Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
's Windows NT
Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix....
 line of operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s. It was released on May 30 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5

Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on September 21 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in reference to the Daytona International Speedway...
. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 on the PowerPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
 CPU architecture. The second most significant enhancement offered through the release was that it provides client/server support for interoperating with Windows 95
Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Microsoft Windows products....
, which was released three months after NT 3.51. Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0 is a Preemption , Graphical user interface and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or Symmetric multiprocessing computers....
 became its successor a year later; Microsoft continued to support 3.51 until December 31 2001.

Overview

The release of Windows NT 3.51 was dubbed "the PowerPC release" at Microsoft. The original intention was to release a PowerPC edition of NT 3.5, but according to Microsoft's David Thompson, "we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware". Editions of NT 3.51 were also released for Intel
Intel Corporation

Intel Corporation is the world's largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the X86 architecture series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers....
's x86
X86 architecture

The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful instruction set architecture in the history of personal computing. It derived from the model numbers, ending in "86", of the first few processor generations Backward compatibility with the original Intel 8086....
, MIPS
MIPS architecture

MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations....
, and DEC Alpha
DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations....
 architectures.

Despite the significant difference in the kernel base, Windows NT 3.51 is readily able to run a large number of Win32 applications designed for Windows 95
Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Microsoft Windows products....
. Most recent 32-bit applications will not work as the developers have prevented their application from working with any Windows version earlier than Windows 98, also because some applications do not work properly with the older Windows NT 3.51 interface. Despite this, Microsoft in their application releases muddied the issue, releasing 32-bit
32-bit

The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding....
 versions of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a popular set of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services. Microsoft Office is collectively referred to as an office suite, for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems....
 right up to Office 97 SR2b, but relying upon 16-bit
16-bit

16-bit architectureThe HP 2100#Descendants and variants , introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor.Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816....
 versions of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical user interface web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995....
 technology. This is probably because 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer 4.0
Internet Explorer 4

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Solaris , and HP-UX....
 and later integrated with the Windows 95 desktop, and NT 3.51 still used the Windows 3.1 desktop. Later on, up to IE 5.0
Internet Explorer 5

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Microsystems Solaris , and HP-UX....
, but not later 5.x versions, were offered.

Microsoft also released test versions of a shell refresh, named the Shell Technology Preview. The update was designed to replace the Windows 3.x Program Manager/File Manager based shell with a Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards....
-based graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
. The release provided capabilities quite similar to that of the Windows "Chicago" (codename for Windows 95) shell during its late beta phases, however was intended to be nothing more than a test release. There were two public releases of the Shell Technology Preview, made available to MSDN and CompuServe
CompuServe

CompuServe, , was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of information services such as AOL that charged monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates....
 users; May 26 1995 and August 8 1995. Both held Windows Explorer builds of 3.51.1053.1. The Shell Technology Preview program never saw a final release under NT 3.51. The entire program was moved across to the Cairo
Cairo (operating system)

Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996 . Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips." Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since appeared in other products....
 development group who finally integrated the new shell design into the NT code with the release of NT 4.0 in July 1996.

Five Service Packs
Service pack

A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes and/or enhancements to a computer program delivered in the form of a single installable package....
 were released for NT 3.51, which introduced both bug fixes and new features. Service Pack 5, for example, fixed issues related to the Year 2000 problem
Year 2000 problem

The Year 2000 problem was a notable computer bug resulting from the practice in early computer program design of representing the year with two digits....
.

NT 3.51 was the last of the series to run on a Intel 80386
Intel 80386

The Intel 80386, otherwise known as the i386 or just 386, is a microprocessor which has been used as the central processing unit of many personal computers and workstations since 1986....
 processor. This, its ability to use HPFS
HPFS

HPFS or High Performance File System is a file system created specifically for the OS/2 operating system to improve upon the limitations of the File Allocation Table file system....
 partitions (which Windows 2000 and later could not), and its ability to run at least some of the common control API, means that it still finds a place for occasional use on older machines.

Hardware requirements

 Windows NT 3.51 hardware requirements
"Windows NT Workstation" "Windows NT Server"
Processor
Central processing unit

A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage....
 386 or 486/25 processor 386 or 486/25 processor
Memory 12 MB RAM 16 MB RAM
Video VGA video VGA video
Hard disk drive free space 90 MB 90 MB


Windows NT 3.51 supports IDE, EIDE, SCSI
SCSI

Small Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices....
 and ESDI
Enhanced Small Disk Interface

Enhanced Small Disk Interface was a disc interface designed by Maxtor Corporation in the early 1980s to be a follow-on to the ST-506 interface....
 hard drives. The only EIDE addressing schemes supported are Logical block addressing
Logical block addressing

Logical block addressing is a common scheme used for specifying the location of blocks of data stored on computer storage devices, generally secondary storage systems such as hard disks....
, ONTrack Disk Manager, EZDrive, and Extended cylinder-head-sector.

External links