Windows NT 4.0
Encyclopedia
Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive
, graphical
and business-oriented operating system
designed to work with either uniprocessor
or symmetric multi-processor
computers. It was the next release of Microsoft
's Windows NT
line of operating system
s and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996. It is a 32-bit
Windows
system available in both workstation and server editions with a graphical environment similar to that of Windows 95
.
, Windows NT 4.0 introduced the modern user interface of Windows 95
to the Windows NT product line, including the Windows Shell
, Windows Explorer
(known as Windows NT Explorer), and the use of "My" nomenclature (e.g. My Computer
). It also includes most applications introduced with Windows 95
. Internally, Windows NT 4.0 was known as the Shell Update Release (SUR). Various administrative tools, notably User Manager for Domains, Server Manager and Domain Name Service Manager have improved graphical user interfaces. The Start Menu
in Windows NT 4.0 separated the per-user shortcuts and folders from the All users shortcuts and folders by a separator line. Windows NT 4.0 includes some enhancements from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as the 3D Pinball game, font smoothing, full window drag, high color icons and stretching the wallpaper to fit the screen. Windows Desktop Update
could also be installed on Windows NT 4.0 to update the shell version and install Task Scheduler
. The Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit included the Desktop Themes utility.
Windows NT 4.0 is the last major release of Microsoft Windows to support the Alpha
, MIPS
or PowerPC
CPU architectures. It remained in use by businesses for a number of years, despite Microsoft's many efforts to get customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 and newer versions. It was also the last release in the Windows NT line to be branded as Windows NT.
Although the chief enhancement has been the addition of the Windows 95 shell, there are several major performance, scalability and feature improvements to the core architecture, kernel, USER32, COM
and MSRPC
. Windows NT 4.0 also introduced the concept of System Policies and the System Policy Editor
.
Other important features included with this release were the Crypto API, Telephony API 2.0
with limited Unimodem support, which was the first release of TAPI on Windows NT, DCOM
and new OLE
features, and Microsoft Transaction Server
for network applications, Microsoft Message Queuing
(MSMQ), which improved interprocess communication, Winsock 2
and the TCP/IP stack improvements, and file system defragmentation support.
The server editions of Windows NT 4.0 include Internet Information Services
2.0, Microsoft FrontPage
1.1, NetShow Services
, Remote Access Service
(which includes a PPTP
server for VPN functionality) and Multi-Protocol Routing service. There are new administrative wizards and a lite version of the Network Monitor utility shipped with System Management Server. The Enterprise edition introduced Microsoft Cluster Server
.
One significant difference from previous versions of Windows NT is that the Graphics Device Interface
(GDI) is moved into kernel mode rather than being in user mode in the CSRSS process. This eliminated a process to process context switch in calling GDI functions, resulting in a significant performance improvement over Windows NT 3.51, particularly in the graphical user interface. This however also mandated that graphics and printer drivers had to run in kernel mode as well, resulting in potential stability issues.
Windows NT 4.0 was the first release of Microsoft Windows to include DirectX
as standard—version 2 shipped with the initial release of Windows NT 4.0, and version 3 was included with the release of Service Pack 3 in mid-1997. Unlike Windows 95 (which did not include DirectX until the OSR2 release in August 1996), Windows NT 4.0 does not support Direct3D
and USB
. Later versions of DirectX were not released for Windows NT 4.0, although an unofficial DirectX 5 package was available. However, Open GL hardware-accelerated graphics were solidly supported since the very first moment and successfully used by many video games and 3D applications (i. e. Quake I, II and III, Unreal, 3D Studio MAX, SoftImage, Maya...).
In early releases of 4.0, numerous stability issues did occur as graphics and printer vendors had to change their drivers to be compatible with the kernel mode interfaces exported to them by GDI. The change to move the GDI to run in the same process context as its caller was prompted by complaints from NT Workstation users about realtime graphics performance, but this change put a considerable onus on hardware manufacturers to update device drivers. Even when manufacturers, primarily graphics hardware manufacturers, wrote 4.0-specific drivers, the BSOD
was much more prevalent in Windows NT 4.0 until these driver issues were resolved.
Windows NT 4.0 also included a new Windows Task Manager
application. Previous versions of Windows NT included the Task List application, but it only shows applications currently on the desktop. To monitor how much CPU and memory resources are being used, users were forced to use Performance Monitor. The task manager offers a more convenient way of getting a snapshot of all the applications running on the system at any given time.
With Windows NT 4.0, users could finally run a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer on an NT-based OS. Earlier versions of Windows NT supported running only 16-bit versions of Internet Explorer. Microsoft offered up to Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
for Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6. Sysprep
was introduced as a deployment tool with Windows NT 4.0.
As the Microsoft Management Console
was not developed yet (it debuted in Windows 2000
), Windows NT 4.0 administrative tools are standalone executables and not MMC snap-ins.
Windows NT 4.0 upgraded NTVDM's x86 emulation in the RISC versions from 286
to 486
.
While nearly all programs written for Windows 95 will run on Windows NT, many 3D games would not, due in part to Windows NT 4.0 having limited support for DirectX
(however, it was possible to play many of them in Open GL). Third-party device drivers were an alternative to access the hardware directly, but poorly written drivers became a frequent source of "stop errors". Such failures began to be referred to as the "blue screen of death" or BSOD
and would require the system to be restarted in such cases. These errors were very rare if using the appropiate drivers and it was not uncommon for NT servers or workstations to run for months at a time without failure. By comparison, Windows consumer versions at the time were much less stable and popularized the belief that all Windows versions were unreliable..
Windows NT 4.0 is also less user-friendly than Windows 95 when it comes to certain maintenance and management tasks; for instance, in spite of shipping a year later than Windows 95, by default there is no Plug and Play support and no Device Manager
(although limited support could be installed later) which greatly simplifies installation of hardware devices. Many basic DOS applications would run, however graphical DOS applications would not run due to the way they accessed graphics hardware. Although Windows NT 4.0 introduced APIs for defragmentation , there was no built-in defrag utility, unlike Windows 95.
The difference between the NT/2000 and 95/98 lines of Windows ended with the arrival of the different versions of Windows XP
. At that time, the APIs —such as OpenGL
and DirectX
— had matured sufficiently to be more efficient to write for common PC hardware. On the other hand, the hardware itself had become powerful enough to handle the API
processing overhead acceptably.
Windows NT 4.0 Server was included in versions 4.0 and 4.5 of BackOffice Small Business Server
suite.
4.0 with Active Server Pages
, FrontPage Server Extensions
, Certificate Server, MTS
, MSMQ, CDONTS
, Internet Authentication Service
(IAS), Indexing Service
, Microsoft Management Console
1.0, Microsoft Site Server
, SMTP and NNTP services and other new software.
Several features such as Distributed File System
and Windows NT Load Balancing Service
(WLBS) were delivered as addons for Windows NT Server 4.0. The Routing and Remote Access Service
was also a downloadable feature which replaced Windows NT 4.0's separate RAS and Multi-Protocol Routing services.
The last version of Microsoft Office
to run on Windows NT 4.0 is Office XP.
Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 service pack
s primarily to fix bugs
. Windows NT 4.0, during the product's lifecycle, had several service packs, as well as numerous service rollup packages and option packs. The last full service pack was Service Pack 6a (SP6a).
A SP7 was planned at one stage in early 2001, but this became the Post SP6a Security Rollup and not a full Service Pack, released on 26 July 2001, 16 months after Windows 2000 and nearly three months prior to Windows XP.
The service packs also added a multitude of new features such as newer versions of or improvements to Internet Information Services
, public-key and certificate authority functionality, user accounts and user profile improvements, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, COM
support improvements, User Profile Disk Quotas, Event Log service, Security Configuration Manager MMC
snap-in, MS-CHAPv2 and NTLMv2, SMB
packet signng, SYSKEY
, boot
improvements, WINS
improvements, Routing and Remote Access Service
(RRAS), PPTP
, DCOM/HTTP tunneling improvements, IGMPv2, WMI
, Active Accessibility
and NTFS 3.0 support among others.
(original release plus four supplements) which contained a large number of tools and utilities as well as third-party software.
Between June 2003 and June 2007, 127 security flaws were identified and patched in Windows 2000 Server, many of which may also affect Windows NT 4.0 Server; however, Microsoft does not test security bulletins against unsupported software.
or Windows 98
. It was later succeeded by Windows 2000
which was based on NT and largely bridged the gap between NT and consumer Windows versions. Windows XP
and later versions were released which completed the unification of the core architecture of all currently marketed Windows versions around NT.
Preemption (computing)
In computing, preemption is the act of temporarily interrupting a task being carried out by a computer system, without requiring its cooperation, and with the intention of resuming the task at a later time. Such a change is known as a context switch...
, graphical
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
and business-oriented operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
designed to work with either uniprocessor
Uniprocessor
A uniprocessor system is a computer system with a single central processing unit. As more and more computers employ multiprocessing architectures, such as SMP and MPP, the term is used to refer to systems that still have only one CPU. Most desktop computers are now shipped with multiprocessing...
or symmetric multi-processor
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
computers. It was the next release of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
'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 a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
line of operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996. It is a 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
system available in both workstation and server editions with a graphical environment similar to that of 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 Windows products...
.
Overview
The successor to Windows NT 3.51Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems. It was released on 30 May 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows on the...
, Windows NT 4.0 introduced the modern user interface of 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 Windows products...
to the Windows NT product line, including the Windows Shell
Windows Shell
The Windows shell is the main graphical user interface in Microsoft Windows, and since Windows 95 hosted by Windows Explorer. The Windows shell includes well-known Windows components such as the Taskbar and the Start menu...
, Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
(known as Windows NT Explorer), and the use of "My" nomenclature (e.g. My Computer
My Computer
My Computer may refer to:* A component of Windows Explorer, a Microsoft file system browser* My Computer , from Manchester, England...
). It also includes most applications introduced 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 Windows products...
. Internally, Windows NT 4.0 was known as the Shell Update Release (SUR). Various administrative tools, notably User Manager for Domains, Server Manager and Domain Name Service Manager have improved graphical user interfaces. The Start Menu
Start menu
The Start Menu and Start Button are user interface elements used in the later versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems and in some X window managers...
in Windows NT 4.0 separated the per-user shortcuts and folders from the All users shortcuts and folders by a separator line. Windows NT 4.0 includes some enhancements from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as the 3D Pinball game, font smoothing, full window drag, high color icons and stretching the wallpaper to fit the screen. Windows Desktop Update
Windows Desktop Update
Microsoft's Windows Desktop Update was an optional feature included with Internet Explorer 4 , which introduced several updated shell features to the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems...
could also be installed on Windows NT 4.0 to update the shell version and install Task Scheduler
Task Scheduler
Task Scheduler is a component of Microsoft Windows that provides the ability to schedule the launch of programs or scripts at pre-defined times or after specified time intervals. It was first introduced in the Windows 95 Plus! pack as System Agent but was renamed to Task Scheduler in Windows 98...
. The Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit included the Desktop Themes utility.
Windows NT 4.0 is the last major release of Microsoft Windows to support the Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is 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. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
, MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
or PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
CPU architectures. It remained in use by businesses for a number of years, despite Microsoft's many efforts to get customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 and newer versions. It was also the last release in the Windows NT line to be branded as Windows NT.
Features
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...
and MSRPC
MSRPC
Microsoft RPC is a modified version of DCE/RPC. Additions include support for Unicode strings, implicit handles, inheritance of interfaces , and complex calculations in the variable-length string and structure paradigms already present in DCE/RPC.- Example :The DCE 1.0 reference implementation...
. Windows NT 4.0 also introduced the concept of System Policies and the System Policy Editor
System Policy Editor
System Policy Editor is a graphical tool provided with Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 98. System policies are made up from a set of registry entries that control the computer resources available to a user or group of users...
.
Other important features included with this release were the Crypto API, Telephony API 2.0
Telephony Application Programming Interface
The Telephony Application Programming Interface is a Microsoft Windows API, which provides computer telephony integration and enables PCs running Microsoft Windows to use telephone services. Different versions of TAPI are available on different versions of Windows...
with limited Unimodem support, which was the first release of TAPI on Windows NT, DCOM
Distributed component object model
Distributed Component Object Model is a proprietary Microsoft technology for communication among software components distributed across networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the communication substrate under Microsoft's COM+...
and new OLE
Object Linking and Embedding
Object Linking and Embedding is a technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control eXtension , a way to develop and use custom user interface elements...
features, and Microsoft Transaction Server
Microsoft Transaction Server
Microsoft Transaction Server was software that provided services to Component Object Model software components, to make it easier to create large distributed applications. The major services provided by MTS were automated transaction management, instance management and role-based security...
for network applications, Microsoft Message Queuing
Microsoft Message Queuing
Microsoft Message Queuing or MSMQ is a Message Queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95. The latest Windows 7 also includes this component...
(MSMQ), which improved interprocess communication, Winsock 2
Winsock
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
and the TCP/IP stack improvements, and file system defragmentation support.
The server editions of Windows NT 4.0 include Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
2.0, Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage was a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003...
1.1, NetShow Services
Windows Media Services
Windows Media Services is a streaming media server from Microsoft that allows an administrator to generate streaming media . Only Windows Media, JPEG, and MP3 formats are supported...
, Remote Access Service
Remote Access Service
Remote Access Services refers to any combination of hardware and software to enable the remote access tools or information that typically reside on a network of IT devices. A RAS server is a specialized computer which aggregates multiple communication channels together...
(which includes a PPTP
Point-to-point tunneling protocol
The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol is a method for implementing virtual private networks. PPTP uses a control channel over TCP and a GRE tunnel operating to encapsulate PPP packets....
server for VPN functionality) and Multi-Protocol Routing service. There are new administrative wizards and a lite version of the Network Monitor utility shipped with System Management Server. The Enterprise edition introduced Microsoft Cluster Server
Microsoft Cluster Server
Microsoft Cluster Server is software designed to allow servers to work together as a computer cluster, to provide failover and increased availability of applications, or parallel calculating power in case of high-performance computing clusters .Microsoft has three technologies for clustering:...
.
One significant difference from previous versions of Windows NT is that the Graphics Device Interface
Graphics Device Interface
The Graphics Device Interface is a Microsoft Windows application programming interface and core operating system component responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers....
(GDI) is moved into kernel mode rather than being in user mode in the CSRSS process. This eliminated a process to process context switch in calling GDI functions, resulting in a significant performance improvement over Windows NT 3.51, particularly in the graphical user interface. This however also mandated that graphics and printer drivers had to run in kernel mode as well, resulting in potential stability issues.
Windows NT 4.0 was the first release of Microsoft Windows to include DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
as standard—version 2 shipped with the initial release of Windows NT 4.0, and version 3 was included with the release of Service Pack 3 in mid-1997. Unlike Windows 95 (which did not include DirectX until the OSR2 release in August 1996), Windows NT 4.0 does not support Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
and USB
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
. Later versions of DirectX were not released for Windows NT 4.0, although an unofficial DirectX 5 package was available. However, Open GL hardware-accelerated graphics were solidly supported since the very first moment and successfully used by many video games and 3D applications (i. e. Quake I, II and III, Unreal, 3D Studio MAX, SoftImage, Maya...).
In early releases of 4.0, numerous stability issues did occur as graphics and printer vendors had to change their drivers to be compatible with the kernel mode interfaces exported to them by GDI. The change to move the GDI to run in the same process context as its caller was prompted by complaints from NT Workstation users about realtime graphics performance, but this change put a considerable onus on hardware manufacturers to update device drivers. Even when manufacturers, primarily graphics hardware manufacturers, wrote 4.0-specific drivers, the BSOD
BSoD
BSoD is an initialism. It may stand for:* Blue Screen of Death* Black Screen of Death...
was much more prevalent in Windows NT 4.0 until these driver issues were resolved.
Windows NT 4.0 also included a new Windows Task Manager
Windows Task Manager
Windows Task Manager is a task manager application included with the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems that provides detailed information about computer performance and running applications, processes and CPU usage, commit charge and memory information, network activity and...
application. Previous versions of Windows NT included the Task List application, but it only shows applications currently on the desktop. To monitor how much CPU and memory resources are being used, users were forced to use Performance Monitor. The task manager offers a more convenient way of getting a snapshot of all the applications running on the system at any given time.
With Windows NT 4.0, users could finally run a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer on an NT-based OS. Earlier versions of Windows NT supported running only 16-bit versions of Internet Explorer. Microsoft offered up to Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems...
for Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6. Sysprep
Sysprep
Sysprep is the name of Microsoft's System Preparation Utility for Microsoft Windows operating system deployment.- History :Sysprep was originally introduced for use with Windows NT 4.0. Later versions introduced for Windows 2000 and Windows XP are available for download from Microsoft and included...
was introduced as a deployment tool with Windows NT 4.0.
As the Microsoft Management Console
Microsoft Management Console
Microsoft Management Console is a component of Windows 2000 and its successors that provides system administrators and advanced users an interface for configuring and monitoring the system.- Snap-ins and consoles :...
was not developed yet (it debuted in Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
), Windows NT 4.0 administrative tools are standalone executables and not MMC snap-ins.
Windows NT 4.0 upgraded NTVDM's x86 emulation in the RISC versions from 286
Intel 80286
The Intel 80286 , introduced on 1 February 1982, was a 16-bit x86 microprocessor with 134,000 transistors. Like its contemporary simpler cousin, the 80186, it could correctly execute most software written for the earlier Intel 8086 and 8088...
to 486
Intel 80486
The Intel 80486 microprocessor was a higher performance follow up on the Intel 80386. Introduced in 1989, it was the first tightly pipelined x86 design as well as the first x86 chip to use more than a million transistors, due to a large on-chip cache and an integrated floating point unit...
.
Comparison with Windows 95
While providing much greater stability than Windows 95, it was also less flexible from a desktop perspective. Much of the stability was gained by the use of protected memory and the hardware abstraction layer. Direct hardware access was disallowed and "misbehaving" applications were terminated without needing the computer to be restarted. The trade-off was that NT required an excessive amount of memory in comparison to consumer targeted products such as Windows 95 (32 Mb for normal desktop use, 128 Mb or more for heavy 3D applications) .While nearly all programs written for Windows 95 will run on Windows NT, many 3D games would not, due in part to Windows NT 4.0 having limited support for DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
(however, it was possible to play many of them in Open GL). Third-party device drivers were an alternative to access the hardware directly, but poorly written drivers became a frequent source of "stop errors". Such failures began to be referred to as the "blue screen of death" or BSOD
BSoD
BSoD is an initialism. It may stand for:* Blue Screen of Death* Black Screen of Death...
and would require the system to be restarted in such cases. These errors were very rare if using the appropiate drivers and it was not uncommon for NT servers or workstations to run for months at a time without failure. By comparison, Windows consumer versions at the time were much less stable and popularized the belief that all Windows versions were unreliable..
Windows NT 4.0 is also less user-friendly than Windows 95 when it comes to certain maintenance and management tasks; for instance, in spite of shipping a year later than Windows 95, by default there is no Plug and Play support and no Device Manager
Device Manager
The Device Manager is a Control Panel applet in Microsoft Windows operating systems. It allows users to view and control the hardware attached to the computer. When a piece of hardware is not working, the offending hardware is highlighted for the user to deal with...
(although limited support could be installed later) which greatly simplifies installation of hardware devices. Many basic DOS applications would run, however graphical DOS applications would not run due to the way they accessed graphics hardware. Although Windows NT 4.0 introduced APIs for defragmentation , there was no built-in defrag utility, unlike Windows 95.
The difference between the NT/2000 and 95/98 lines of Windows ended with the arrival of the different versions of Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
. At that time, the APIs —such as OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
and DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
— had matured sufficiently to be more efficient to write for common PC hardware. On the other hand, the hardware itself had become powerful enough to handle the API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
processing overhead acceptably.
Editions
Microsoft Small Business Server
Windows Small Business Server is an integrated server suite from Microsoft designed for running network infrastructure of small and medium enterprises having no more than 75 workstations or users...
suite.
Client
- Windows NT 4.0 Workstation was designed for use as the general business desktop operating system.
Servers
- Windows NT 4.0 Server, released in 1996, was designed for small-scale business server systems.
- Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition, released in 1997, is the precursor to the Enterprise line of the Windows server family. Enterprise Server was designed for high-demand, high-traffic networks. Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition includes Service Pack 3.
- Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, released in 1998, allows the users to log on remotely. The same functionality was called Terminal ServicesTerminal ServicesRemote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, formerly known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and previous versions, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allows a user to access applications and data on a remote computer over a network, using the Remote Desktop...
in Windows 2000Windows 2000Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
and later server releases, and also powers the Remote Desktop feature that first appeared in Windows XPWindows XPWindows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
.
Embedded
- Windows NT 4.0 Embedded (abbreviated NTe) is an edition of Windows NT 4.0 that was aimed at computerComputerA computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
-powered major applianceMajor applianceA major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task, which includes purposes such as cooking, or food preservation, whether in a household, institutional, commercial or industrial setting...
s, vending machineVending machineA vending machine is a machine which dispenses items such as snacks, beverages, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, consumer products and even gold and gems to customers automatically, after the customer inserts currency or credit into the machine....
s, ATMs and other devices that cannot be considered computers per se. It is the same system as the standard Windows NT 4.0, but it comes packaged in a databaseDatabaseA database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
of components and dependencies, from which a developer can choose individual components to build customized setup CDs and hard diskHard diskA hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
bootBootingIn computing, booting is a process that begins when a user turns on a computer system and prepares the computer to perform its normal operations. On modern computers, this typically involves loading and starting an operating system. The boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the...
imageImageAn image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s. Windows NT 4.0 Embedded includes Service Pack 5. It was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded.
Upgradeability
An "Option Pack" is available as a free-bundled CD around 1998, which includes IISInternet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
4.0 with Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages , also known as Classic ASP or ASP Classic, was Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated Web pages. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack Active Server Pages (ASP), also known as Classic...
, FrontPage Server Extensions
FrontPage Server Extensions
FrontPage Server Extensions are a software technology that allows Microsoft FrontPage clients to communicate with web servers, and provide additional functionality intended for websites. Frequent security problems have marred the history of this Microsoft proprietary technology...
, Certificate Server, MTS
Microsoft Transaction Server
Microsoft Transaction Server was software that provided services to Component Object Model software components, to make it easier to create large distributed applications. The major services provided by MTS were automated transaction management, instance management and role-based security...
, MSMQ, CDONTS
Collaboration Data Objects for Windows NT Server
Collaboration Data Objects for Windows NT Server is a component included with Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000 server products. It facilitates creating and sending e-mail messages from within web application scripts, typically ASP pages...
, Internet Authentication Service
Internet Authentication Service
Internet Authentication Service is a component of Windows Server operating systems that provides centralized user authentication, authorization and accounting.- Overview :...
(IAS), Indexing Service
Windows indexing service
Indexing Service was a Windows service that maintained an index of most of the files on a computer to improve searching performance on PCs and corporate computer networks. It updated indexed without user intervention...
, Microsoft Management Console
Microsoft Management Console
Microsoft Management Console is a component of Windows 2000 and its successors that provides system administrators and advanced users an interface for configuring and monitoring the system.- Snap-ins and consoles :...
1.0, Microsoft Site Server
Microsoft Site Server
Microsoft Site Server, first released in 1996, was Microsoft's solution to the growing difficulty of managing complex websites which included multiple technologies, such as user management and authentication/authorization, content management, analysis, and indexing and search...
, SMTP and NNTP services and other new software.
Several features such as Distributed File System
Distributed File System (Microsoft)
Distributed File System is a set of client and server services that allow an organization using Microsoft Windows servers to organize many distributed SMB file shares into a distributed file system...
and Windows NT Load Balancing Service
Network Load Balancing Services
Network Load Balancing Services is a Microsoft implementation of clustering and load balancing that is intended to provide high availability and high reliability, as well as high scalability. NLBS is intended for applications with relatively small data sets that rarely change , and do not have...
(WLBS) were delivered as addons for Windows NT Server 4.0. The Routing and Remote Access Service
Routing and Remote Access Service
Routing and Remote Access Service is a Microsoft API and server software make it possible to create applications to administer the routing and remote access service capabilities of the operating system, to function as a network router, and developers can also use RRAS to implement routing protocols...
was also a downloadable feature which replaced Windows NT 4.0's separate RAS and Multi-Protocol Routing services.
The last version of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
to run on Windows NT 4.0 is Office XP.
Service Packs
| Software | Date | Release to manufacturing (RTM) | 31 July 1996 | General release (Retail) | 24 August 1996 | Service Pack 1 (SP1) | 16 October 1996 | Service Pack 2 (SP2) | 14 December 1996 | Service Pack 3 (SP3) | 15 May 1997 | Service Pack 4 (SP4) | 25 October 1998 | Service Pack 5 (SP5) | 4 May 1999 | Service Pack 6 (SP6) | 22 November 1999 | Service Pack 6a (SP6a) | 30 November 1999 | Service Pack 7 (SP7) | Due Q3 2001, cancelled 18 April 2001 |
|---|
Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 service pack
Service pack
A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain ...
s primarily to fix bugs
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
. Windows NT 4.0, during the product's lifecycle, had several service packs, as well as numerous service rollup packages and option packs. The last full service pack was Service Pack 6a (SP6a).
A SP7 was planned at one stage in early 2001, but this became the Post SP6a Security Rollup and not a full Service Pack, released on 26 July 2001, 16 months after Windows 2000 and nearly three months prior to Windows XP.
The service packs also added a multitude of new features such as newer versions of or improvements to Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
, public-key and certificate authority functionality, user accounts and user profile improvements, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...
support improvements, User Profile Disk Quotas, Event Log service, Security Configuration Manager MMC
Microsoft Management Console
Microsoft Management Console is a component of Windows 2000 and its successors that provides system administrators and advanced users an interface for configuring and monitoring the system.- Snap-ins and consoles :...
snap-in, MS-CHAPv2 and NTLMv2, SMB
Server Message Block
In computer networking, Server Message Block , also known as Common Internet File System operates as an application-layer network protocol mainly used to provide shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. It also provides an...
packet signng, SYSKEY
SYSKEY
SYSKEY is a utility that encrypts the hashed password information in a SAM database in a Windows system using a 128-bit encryption key.SYSKEY was an optional feature added in Windows NT 4.0 SP3. It was meant to protect against offline password cracking attacks so that the SAM database would still...
, boot
Windows NT Startup Process
The Windows NT startup process is the process by which Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems initialize...
improvements, WINS
Windows Internet Naming Service
Windows Internet Name Service is Microsoft's implementation of NetBIOS Name Service , a name server and service for NetBIOS computer names. Effectively WINS is to NetBIOS names what DNS is to domain names — a central mapping of host names to network addresses...
improvements, Routing and Remote Access Service
Routing and Remote Access Service
Routing and Remote Access Service is a Microsoft API and server software make it possible to create applications to administer the routing and remote access service capabilities of the operating system, to function as a network router, and developers can also use RRAS to implement routing protocols...
(RRAS), PPTP
Point-to-point tunneling protocol
The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol is a method for implementing virtual private networks. PPTP uses a control channel over TCP and a GRE tunnel operating to encapsulate PPP packets....
, DCOM/HTTP tunneling improvements, IGMPv2, WMI
Windows Management Instrumentation
Windows Management Instrumentation is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification...
, Active Accessibility
Microsoft Active Accessibility
Microsoft Active Accessibility is an Application Programming Interface for user interface accessibility. MSAA was introduced as a platform add-on to Microsoft Windows 95 in 1997...
and NTFS 3.0 support among others.
Resource Kits
Microsoft released five revisions of the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server Resource KitResource Kit
Resource Kit is a term used by Microsoft for a set of software resources and documentation released for their software products, but which is not part of that product...
(original release plus four supplements) which contained a large number of tools and utilities as well as third-party software.
Security
Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on 30 June 2004 and Windows NT 4.0 Server on 31 December 2004, due to major security flaws including Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-010, which according to Microsoft could not be patched without significant changes to the core operating system. According to the security bulletin, "Due to [the] fundamental differences between Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 and its successors, it is infeasible to rebuild the software for Windows NT 4.0 to eliminate the vulnerability. To do so would require re-architecting a very significant amount of the Windows NT 4.0 operating system, and [...] there would be no assurance that applications designed to run on Windows NT 4.0 would continue to operate on the patched system."Between June 2003 and June 2007, 127 security flaws were identified and patched in Windows 2000 Server, many of which may also affect Windows NT 4.0 Server; however, Microsoft does not test security bulletins against unsupported software.
Legacy
The stability of Windows NT offered reduced support costs over Windows 95Windows 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 Windows products...
or Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
. It was later succeeded by Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
which was based on NT and largely bridged the gap between NT and consumer Windows versions. Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
and later versions were released which completed the unification of the core architecture of all currently marketed Windows versions around NT.
Physical RAM limit
The maximum amount of physical RAM in a PC that Windows NT 4.0 supports is 4 GB.External links
- Guidebook: Windows NT 4.0 Gallery – A website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces
- HPC:Factor Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Patches & Updates Guide
- HPC:Factor Windows NT 4.0 Server Patches & Updates Guide
- Windows NT 4.0 Reference Material
- Josephn.net: Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition Tips & Updates