Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was

released to manufacturing A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

on July 31, 1996, and then to retail on August 24, 1996. It was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until the introduction of

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

Workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

and embedded editions were sold, and all editions feature a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

similar to that of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

, which was superseded by

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

and could still be directly upgraded by either

Professional or

Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...

. Mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation ended on June 30, 2002, following by extended support ending on June 30, 2004. Windows NT 4.0 Server mainstream support ended on December 31, 2002, with extended support ending on December 31, 2004. Windows NT 4.0 Embedded mainstream support ended on June 30, 2003, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006, with Windows 98 and Windows Me ending support on that date as well. These editions were succeeded by Windows 2000 Professional, the Windows 2000 Server Family and

Windows XP Embedded Windows XP, which is the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000 and the successor to the consumer-oriented Windows Me, has been released in several editions since its original release in 2001. Windows XP is available in many languages. In ...

, respectively. Windows NT 4.0 is the last public release of Windows for the Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC architectures.

Overview

The successor to Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0 introduced the user interface of

to the Windows NT family, including the

Windows shell The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of W ...

File Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows 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 for accessing the file ...

(known as Windows NT Explorer at the time), and the use of "My" nomenclature for shell folders (e.g. My Computer). It also includes most components introduced with

. Internally, Windows NT 4.0 was known as the Shell Update Release (SUR). While many administrative tools, notably ''User Manager for Domains'', ''Server Manager'' and ''Domain Name Service Manager'' still used the old graphical user interfaces, the

Start menu The Start menu is a graphical user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in other operating systems. It provides a central launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks in the Windows shell. It is name ...

in Windows NT 4.0 separated the per-user shortcuts and folders from the shared shortcuts and folders by a separator line. Windows NT 4.0 includes some enhancements from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as the ''Space Cadet'' pinball table,

font smoothing Font rasterization is the process of converting text from a vector graphics, vector description (as found in scalable fonts such as TrueType fonts) to a raster graphics, raster or bitmap description. This often involves some spatial anti-aliasi ...

, showing window contents while dragging, high-color icons and stretching the wallpaper to fit the screen.

Windows Desktop Update Windows Desktop Update was an optional feature by Microsoft that was included with Internet Explorer 4 (IE4, released in September 1997), which introduced several updated shell features to the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. These ...

could also be installed on Windows NT 4.0 to update the shell version and install

Task Scheduler Task Scheduler (formerly Scheduled Tasks) is a job scheduler in Microsoft Windows that launches computer programs or scripts at pre-defined times or after specified time intervals. Microsoft introduced this component in the Microsoft Plus! for ...

. Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit included the Desktop Themes utility. Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptively multitasked, 32-bit operating system that is designed to work with either

uniprocessor A uniprocessor system is defined as a computer system that has a single central processing unit that is used to execute computer tasks. As more and more modern software is able to make use of multiprocessing architectures, such as SMP and MPP, t ...

or symmetric multi-processor computers. Windows NT 4.0 is the last major release of Microsoft Windows to support the

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...

, MIPS or

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

CPU architectures as Windows 2000 runs solely on IA-32 only. 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 family to be branded as ''Windows NT'' although Windows 2000 carried the designation "Built on NT Technology".

Features

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 Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

, USER32, COM and

MSRPC Microsoft RPC (Microsoft Remote Procedure Call) is a modified version of DCE/RPC. Additions include partial support for UCS-2 (but not Unicode) strings, implicit handles, and complex calculations in the variable-length string and structure paradig ...

. Windows NT 4.0 also introduced the concept of ''system policies'' and the System Policy Editor. Other important features were: * 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 *

Microsoft Transaction Server Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) was software that provided services to Component Object Model (COM) software components, to make it easier to create large distributed applications. The major services provided by MTS were automated transaction ...

for network applications *

Microsoft Message Queuing Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) is a message queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95. Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 also includes this component. In a ...

(MSMQ), which improved

interprocess communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categori ...

* Winsock 2 and the

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

stack improvements * File system

defragmentation In the maintenance of file systems, defragmentation is a process that reduces the degree of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contigu ...

support The server editions of Windows NT 4.0 include

Internet Information Services Internet Information Services (IIS-pronounced 2S, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NN ...

2.0,

Microsoft FrontPage Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a discontinued WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office sui ...

1.1, NetShow Services,

Remote Access Service A remote access service (RAS) is any combination of hardware and software to enable the remote access tools or information that typically reside on a network of IT devices. A remote access service connects a client to a host computer, known as a ...

(which includes a

PPTP The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is an obsolete method for implementing virtual private networks. PPTP has many well known security issues. PPTP uses a TCP control channel and a Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnel to encapsulate PP ...

server for VPN functionality) and Multi-Protocol Routing service. There are new administrative wizards and a lite version of the

Network Monitor Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitorin ...

utility shipped with System Management Server. The Enterprise edition introduced

Microsoft Cluster Server Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) is a computer program that allows server computers to work together as a computer cluster, to provide failover and increased availability of applications, or parallel calculating power in case of high-performan ...

. One significant difference from previous versions of Windows NT is that the

Graphics Device Interface The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is a legacy component of Microsoft Windows responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. Windows apps use Windows API to interact with GD ...

(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 Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

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. However advanced ''hardware accelerated'' Direct3D and DirectSound multimedia features were never available on Windows NT 4.0. Later versions of DirectX were not released for Windows NT 4.0. However,

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

was supported; it was used by ''Quake 3'' and ''

Unreal Tournament ''Unreal Tournament'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. The second installment in the '' Unreal'' series, it was first published by GT Interactive in 1999 for Microsoft Windows, and late ...

''. 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 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 real-time graphics performance, but this change put a considerable onus on hardware manufacturers to update device drivers. Windows NT 4.0 also included a new

Windows Task Manager Task Manager, previously known as Windows Task Manager, is a task manager, system monitor, and startup manager included with Microsoft Windows systems. It provides information about computer performance and running software, including name of r ...

utility. Previous versions of Windows NT included the Task List utility, but it only shows ''applications'' currently on the desktop. To monitor CPU and memory usage, users were forced to use

Performance Monitor Performance Monitor (known as System Monitor in Windows 9x, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) is a system monitoring program introduced in Windows NT 3.1. It monitors various activities on a computer such as CPU or memory usage. This type of applic ...

. The task manager offers a more convenient way of getting a snapshot of all the processes running on the system at any given time. Internet Explorer 2 was bundled with Windows NT 4. The installation of

Internet Explorer 4 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris, and H ...

on Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3 or later) gave Windows NT 4.0 Active Desktop and browser integration into Windows Explorer, known as the

. Windows NT 4.0 upgraded

NTVDM Virtual DOS machines (VDM) refer to a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware. Overview Virtual DOS machines can operate eit ...

's x86 emulation in the RISC versions from 286 to 486. Sysprep was introduced as a deployment tool with Windows NT 4.0.

Comparison with Windows 95

Windows NT 4.0, like previous versions of Windows NT before it and versions after it, is a fully 32-bit OS, while Windows 95 is a 16/32-bit hybrid OS. While providing much greater stability than Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 was less flexible from a desktop perspective. Much of the stability was gained through the use of protected memory and the

hardware abstraction layer Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that provide programs with access to hardware resources through programming interfaces. The programming interface allows all devices in a particular class ''C'' of hardware devices to be acce ...

. Direct hardware access was disallowed and "misbehaving" programs were terminated without needing the computer to be restarted. The trade-off was that NT required much more memory (32 MB for normal desktop use, 128 MB or more for heavy 3D applications) in comparison to consumer targeted products such as Windows 95. While nearly all programs written for Windows 95 run on Windows NT, many 3D games would not, partly because of limited DirectX support for Windows NT 4.0. Third-party device drivers were an alternative to access the hardware directly, but poorly written drivers became a frequent source of the infamous error known as the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) that would require the system to be restarted. In spite of shipping a year later than Windows 95, by default there is no

Legacy Plug and Play The term Legacy Plug and Play, also shortened to Legacy PnP, describes a series of specifications and Microsoft Windows features geared towards operating system configuration of devices, and some device IDs are assigned by UEFI Forum. The stan ...

support and no

Device Manager Device Manager is a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system. 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 d ...

on Windows NT 4.0, which greatly simplifies installation of hardware devices (although limited support could be installed later). Many basic DOS programs would run; however, graphical DOS programs would not run because of the way they accessed graphics hardware. Although Windows NT 4.0 introduced an

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

(API) for defragmentation, there was no built-in defragmentation utility, unlike Windows 95. Also, Windows NT 4.0 lacked

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

support, a preliminary version of which would be added to OEM editions of Windows 95 in OSR 2.1. The difference between the NT family and 9x family would remain until the release of

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

in 2001. At that time, the APIs — such as OpenGL and DirectX — had matured sufficiently to be more efficient to write for common PC hardware, and the hardware itself had become powerful enough to handle the API processing overhead. The maximum amount of supported physical

random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...

(RAM) in Windows NT 4.0 is 4 GB, which is the maximum possible for a 32-bit operating system that does not support PAE. By comparison, Windows 95 fails to boot on computers with more than approximately 480 MB of memory. Like previous versions of NT, version 4.0 can run on multiple processor architectures. Windows 95, however, can only run on x86.

Editions

Windows NT 4.0 Server was included in versions 4.0 and 4.5 of BackOffice Small Business Server 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 (''Advanced Server'' in

). Enterprise Server was designed for high-demand, high-traffic networks. Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition includes Service Pack 3. The Enterprise Edition saw the introduction of the boot flag, which changed the default virtual address space mapping from 2 GB kernel and 2 GB

user space A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

to 1 GB kernel and 3 GB userland. This version also sees the first introduction of cluster service. * Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, released in 1998, allows the users to log on remotely. The same functionality was called ''

Terminal Services Remote Desktop Services (RDS), known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and earlier, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allow a user to initiate and control an interactive session on a remote computer or virtual machine ...

'' in Windows 2000 and later server releases, and also powers the ''

Remote Desktop In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...

'' feature that first appeared in

and later versions of Windows. Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, like Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition, includes Service Pack 3.

Embedded

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

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

-powered

major appliance A major appliance, also known as a large domestic appliance or large electric appliance or simply a large appliance, large domestic, or large electric, is a non-portable or semi-portable machine used for routine housekeeping tasks such as cookin ...

vending machine A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or otherwise made. The fir ...

s, ATMs and other devices that cannot be considered general-purpose computers ''per se''. It is the same system as the standard Windows NT 4.0, but it comes packaged in a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

of components and dependencies, from which a developer can choose individual components to build customized setup CDs and

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

boot

image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

s. Windows NT 4.0 Embedded includes Service Pack 5. It was succeeded by

. Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Embedded on June 30, 2003, and received three years of extended support, which means that support for Windows NT 4.0 Embedded ended on the same day support for

and

ended on July 11, 2006.

Upgradeability

An ''Option Pack'' was available as a free-bundled CD starting around 1998, which included IIS 4.0 with

Active Server Pages Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET. History Initially released as an add ...

FrontPage Server Extensions Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a discontinued WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office sui ...

, Certificate Server, MTS,

MSMQ Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) is a message queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Microsoft Windows, Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95. Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 also includes t ...

, CDONTS,

Internet Authentication Service Internet Authentication Service (IAS) is a component of Windows Server operating systems that provides centralized user authentication, authorization and accounting. Overview While Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) security is sufficien ...

(IAS),

Indexing Service Indexing Service (originally called Index Server) 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 indexes without user interven ...

Microsoft Management Console Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is a component of Microsoft Windows that provides system administrators and advanced users an interface for configuring and monitoring the system. It was first introduced in 1998 with the Option Pack for Window ...

1.0,

Microsoft Site Server Microsoft Site Server, first released in 1996, is Microsoft's discontinued solution to the growing difficulty of managing complex websites which included multiple technologies, such as user management and authentication/authorization, content manag ...

, SMTP and NNTP services and other new software. Several features such as

Distributed File System A clustered file system is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers. There are several approaches to clustering, most of which do not employ a clustered file system (only direct attached storage for ...

and Windows NT Load Balancing Service (WLBS) were delivered as addons for Windows NT Server 4.0. The

Routing and Remote Access Service Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) is a Microsoft API and server software that makes it possible to create applications to administer the routing and remote access service capabilities of the operating system, to function as a network router ...

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, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

to be compatible with Windows NT 4.0 is

Office XP Microsoft Office XP (codenamed Office 10) is an office suite which was officially revealed in July 2000 by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. Office XP was released to manufacturing on March 5, 2001, and was later made available to ret ...

. Similarly,

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...

6.4 (which was released in April 1999) and DirectX 3.0a (which was released in December 1996) are the last versions of Windows Media Player and DirectX available for Windows NT 4.0, respectively. The last versions of

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

and

Windows Installer Windows Installer (msiexec.exe, previously known as Microsoft Installer, codename Darwin) is a software component and application programming interface (API) of Microsoft Windows used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software. ...

available for Windows NT 4.0 are

.NET Framework 1.1 Microsoft started development on the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2001 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released. The first version of .NET Framework was r ...

(released in April 2003) and Windows Installer 2.0 (released in September 2001), respectively. The last version of

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

supported on Windows NT 4.0 is Internet Explorer 6 with SP1, which was released in September 2002 (Service Pack 6a is required). Windows NT 4.0 was succeeded by

, which also included the

and

Internet Explorer 5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integrat ...

by default. It also could be directly upgraded to

Windows XP Professional Windows XP, which is the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000 and the successor to the consumer-oriented Windows Me, has been released in several editions since its original release in 2001. Windows XP is available in many languages. In ...

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation o ...

-based systems only.

Service packs

Windows NT 4.0 received seven service packs during its lifecycle, as well as numerous service rollup packages and option packs. Only the first service pack was made available for the MIPS architecture, Service Pack 2 was the final release for the PowerPC architecture, and Service Pack 6 was the final release for the Alpha architecture. Service Pack 6a (SP6a) is the last released service pack for Windows NT 4.0. Service Pack 7 was planned at one stage in early 2001, but this became the ''Post SP6a Security Rollup'' and not a full service pack, released on July 26, 2001, 16 months following the release of Windows 2000 and nearly three months prior to the release of Windows XP. In addition to bug fixes, the service packs also added a multitude of new features such as Ultra DMA mode for disk drives along with bus mastering, newer versions of

, user accounts and user profile improvements, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, COM support improvements, Event Log service,

MS-CHAPv2 MS-CHAP is the Microsoft version of the Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol, CHAP. The protocol exists in two versions, MS-CHAPv1 (defined in RFC 2433) and MS-CHAPv2 (defined in RFC 2759). MS-CHAPv2 was introduced with pptp3-fix that was in ...

and

NTLMv2 In a Windows network, NT (New Technology) LAN Manager (NTLM) is a suite of Microsoft security protocols intended to provide authentication, integrity, and confidentiality to users. NTLM is the successor to the authentication protocol in Microsoft L ...

, SMB packet signing,

Syskey The SAM Lock Tool, better known as Syskey (the name of its executable file), is a discontinued component of Windows NT that encrypts the Security Account Manager (SAM) database using a 128-bit RC4 encryption key. First introduced in the Q143475 ...

, boot improvements, WINS improvements,

(RRAS),

, DCOM/HTTP tunneling improvements, IGMPv2, WMI, Active Accessibility and

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

3.0 support among others.

Resource Kits

Microsoft released five revisions of the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server

Resource 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. Resource kits offer supplementary resources such as technical guidance, compatibi ...

(original release plus four supplements) which contained a large number of tools and utilities, such as desktops.exe which allowed the user to have multiple desktops, as well as third-party software.

Security

Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on June 30, 2004, Windows NT 4.0 Server on December 31, 2004 and Windows NT 4.0 Embedded on July 11, 2006, due to major security flaws includin
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.

References

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 GuideHPC:Factor Windows NT 4.0 Server Patches & Updates GuideJosephn.net: Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition Tips & Updates

{{Microsoft Windows family 1996 software Products and services discontinued in 2006 4.0 IA-32 operating systems MIPS operating systems PowerPC operating systems