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Windows NT 4.0
 
 
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Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive
Preemption (computing)

Preemption in computing is the act of temporarily interrupting a task being carried out by a computer, without requiring its cooperation, and with the intention of resuming the task at a later time....
, graphical
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....
 and business-oriented 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....
 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 Symmetric multiprocessing and Massively parallel processing, the term is used to refer to systems that still have only one central processing unit....
 or symmetric multi-processor
Symmetric multiprocessing

In computing, symmetric multiprocessing or SMP involves a multiprocessor computer-architecture where two or more identical processors can connect to a single shared main memory....
 computers. It is a 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 and was released to manufacturing on 29 July 1996 (public release on 24 Aug 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 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding....
 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 ....
 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 Microsoft Windows products....
. The "NT" designation in the product's title initially stood for "New Technology" according to Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates
Bill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an United States business magnate, philanthropist, author, the List of the 100 wealthiest people , and chairman of the board of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen....
, but now no longer has any specific meaning.






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Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive
Preemption (computing)

Preemption in computing is the act of temporarily interrupting a task being carried out by a computer, without requiring its cooperation, and with the intention of resuming the task at a later time....
, graphical
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....
 and business-oriented 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....
 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 Symmetric multiprocessing and Massively parallel processing, the term is used to refer to systems that still have only one central processing unit....
 or symmetric multi-processor
Symmetric multiprocessing

In computing, symmetric multiprocessing or SMP involves a multiprocessor computer-architecture where two or more identical processors can connect to a single shared main memory....
 computers. It is a 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 and was released to manufacturing on 29 July 1996 (public release on 24 Aug 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 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding....
 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 ....
 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 Microsoft Windows products....
. The "NT" designation in the product's title initially stood for "New Technology" according to Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates
Bill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an United States business magnate, philanthropist, author, the List of the 100 wealthiest people , and chairman of the board of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen....
, but now no longer has any specific meaning. Windows NT 4.0 was succeeded by Windows 2000
Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation....
 in February 2000. Windows NT 4.0 is classified as a hybrid kernel
Hybrid kernel

A hybrid kernel is a Kernel architecture based on combining aspects of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in computer operating systems....
 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....
.

Overview

While providing much greater stability than Windows 95, it was also less flexible from a desktop perspective. Much of the stability is 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.

While nearly all programs written for Windows 95 will run on Windows NT, the majority of 3D games will not, due in part to 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....
. Third party device drivers were in fact allowed to access the hardware directly and poorly written drivers were a frequent source of “stop errors”. Such failures became 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 rare 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; there is, for instance, no support by default for “Plug-and-play
Plug-and-play

In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts....
” (although limited support could be installed later) which greatly simplifies installation of hardware devices or support for USB devices. Many basic DOS applications would run however graphical DOS applications would not run due to the way they accessed graphics hardware.

The dichotomy between the NT and "9x" lines of Windows ended with the arrival of Windows XP
Windows XP

Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers....
, by which time the gaming APIs—such as OpenGL
OpenGL

OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language cross-platform Application programming interface for writing applications that produce 2D computer graphics and 3D computer graphics....
 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....
—had matured sufficiently to be more efficient to write for than common PC hardware and the hardware itself had become powerful enough to handle the API
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
 processing overhead acceptably.

Windows NT 4.0 is the last major release of of Microsoft Windows to support the 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....
, 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....
 or 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 architectures. It remained in use by businesses for a number of years, despite Microsoft's many efforts to persuade customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 and newer versions. It was also the last release in the Windows NT line to use the "Windows NT" name.

Features

The most noticeable difference from Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 3.51

Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems. It was released on May 30 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5....
 is that Windows NT 4.0 has the 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 Microsoft Windows products....
, including the Windows Shell
Windows Shell

The Microsoft Windows Shell is the main GUI in Windows. The Windows shell includes well-known Windows components such as the Taskbar and the Start menu....
, 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....
 (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 Microsoft Windows products....
.

The server editions of Windows NT 4.0 include a built-in web server
Web server

The term web server can mean one of two things:# A computer program that is responsible for accepting Hypertext Transfer Protocol requests from clients , and Server them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as Hypertext Markup Language documents and linked objects ....
, Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services

Internet Information Services - formerly called Internet Information Server - is a set of Internet-based services for servers created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows....
 version 2.0. It also natively supported plugins and extensions of Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems....
, a web site
Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
 creation and management application.

Other important features included with this release were Microsoft Transaction Server
Microsoft Transaction Server

Microsoft Transaction Server was software that provided services to Component Object Model Component-based software engineering, to make it easier to create large distributed applications....
 for network applications, and Microsoft Message Queuing
Microsoft Message Queuing

Microsoft Message Queuing or MSMQ is a Message Queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Microsoft Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95....
 (MSMQ), which improved communication.

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 that is responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as computer display and computer printer....
 (GDI) is incorporated into the kernel to speed up the 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....
 (GUI), resulting in a significant performance improvement over Windows NT 3.51 and also creating the requirement to have graphics drivers located in the kernel, resulting in potential stability issues.

Windows NT 4.0 also included a new Windows Task Manager
Windows Task Manager

Windows Task Manager is a task manager application included with 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 statistics, logged-in users, and Windows service....
 application. Previous versions of Windows NT included the Task List application, but it only shows applications currently in memory. 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.

Unlike Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 does not support Direct3D
Direct3D

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface. Direct3D is only available for Microsoft's various Microsoft Windows operating systems and is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems....
 and USB. Windows 2000
Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation....
 introduced native USB and Direct3D support to Windows NT. Third party utilities also exist that provide DirectX support in Windows NT 4.0.

Microsoft offered up to Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
Internet Explorer 6

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 , is a graphical user interface web browser developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 lines of operating systems....
 for NT 4.0, provided it was updated to handle it.

Editions

Windows NT 4.0 Server was included in versions 4.0 and 4.5 of BackOffice Small Business Server
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.

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 Terminal Server, released in 1998, allows the users to log on remotely. The same functionality was called Terminal Services
    Terminal Services

    Terminal Services, renamed as Remote Desktop Services from Windows Server 2008 R2 onwards, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allows a user to access applications and data on a remote computer over a network....
     in Windows 2000
    Windows 2000

    Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation....
     and later server releases, and also powers the Remote Desktop feature that first appeared in Windows XP
    Windows XP

    Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers....
    .


Client

  • Windows NT 4.0 Workstation was designed for use as the general business desktop operating system.


Embedded

Windows NT 4.0 Embedded (abbreviated NTe) is an edition of 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....
 that was aimed at computer
Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
-powered appliance
Appliance

Appliance may refer to a device with a narrow Function :* Home appliance, household machines, using electricity or some other energy input.** Small appliances...
s, vending machine
Vending machine

A vending machine provides various snacks, beverages, and other products to consumers. The idea is to vend products without a cashier. Items sold via vending machines vary by country and region....
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 database
Database

A database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data according to a database model....
 of components and dependencies, from which a developer can choose individual components to build customized setup CDs and hard disk
Hard disk

A hard disk drive , commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating hard disk platters with magnetic surfaces....
 boot
Booting

In computing, booting is a Bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. A boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the computer performs when it is switched on....
 image
Image

An image is an artifact, usually two-dimensional , that has a similar appearance to some subject —usually a physical object or a person....
s. It was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded
Windows XP editions

Windows XP has been released in several editions since its original release in 2001.Windows XP is available in many languages. In addition, add-ons translating the user interface are also available for certain languages....
.

Option Pack

An 'Option Pack' is available as a free-bundled CD around 1998, which includes IIS 4.0, MTS
Microsoft Transaction Server

Microsoft Transaction Server was software that provided services to Component Object Model Component-based software engineering, to make it easier to create large distributed applications....
, MSMQ and a pack of new software.

Service Packs

























SoftwareDate
Release To Manufacture (RTM)29 July 1996
General release24 August 1996
Service Pack 116 October 1996
Service Pack 214 December 1996
Service Pack 315 May 1997
Service Pack 425 October 1998
Service Pack 54 May 1999
Service Pack 622 November 1999
Service Pack 6a30 November 1999
Post Service Pack 6a Security Rollup26 July 2001
Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 service pack
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....
s primarily to fix bugs
Software bug

A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended . Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its software architecture, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code....
. 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 16 months after Windows 2000 and nearly three months prior to Windows XP.

The service packs and an option pack were also released to add features. These included newer versions of Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services

Internet Information Services - formerly called Internet Information Server - is a set of Internet-based services for servers created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows....
, versions 3.0, and 4.0, support for Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages

Active Server Pages , also known as Classic ASP, was Microsoft's first server-side scripting Active Scripting for dynamic web page. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services via the Windows_NT_4.0#Option_Pack, it was subsequently included as a free component of Windows Server ....
, public-key and certificate authority functionality, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, and component object model (COM) support, among others.

Security

On 31 December 2004, Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows NT 4.0, due to major security flaws including , 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 rearchitecting 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; however, Microsoft doesn't test security bulletins against unsupported software. Because of this, Microsoft is recommending current Windows NT customers to upgrade to a supported operating system such as Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008.

Legacy

Windows NT 4.0 was a revolutionary product at its release and was eventually deployed in many large businesses. The stability offered greatly reduced support costs over 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....
 or Windows 98
Windows 98

Windows 98 is a graphical operating system released on 25 June 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit application/32-bit application monolithic product based on MS-DOS....
. It was later supplanted by Windows 2000
Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation....
 which was based on NT and largely bridged the gap between NT and consumer Windows versions. Windows XP
Windows XP

Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers....
, Windows Vista
Windows Vista

Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business Desktop computer, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs....
 and subsequent server versions were later released which completed the unification of the core architecture of all Windows versions which evolved directly from Windows NT.

External links

  • – A website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces