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Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 launched 20 years ago this week


Sunday July 31 marks 20 years since Microsoft launched Windows NT 4.0.

On July 31, 1996, Microsoft released NT 4.0 to manufacturing. It was generally available as of August 24 that year.

NT 4.0 wasn't the first version of Microsoft's NT operating system; that honor went to NT 3.1, which Microsoft launched in July 1993. There are a few different stories as to why Microsoft named the operating system "NT,"but over time, the most common story was that NT stood for "New Technology." Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Dave Cutlerwrote the NT core.

But NT 4.0 was the last major release of Windows to support the Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC architectures. It also was the last release in the NT line to include the "NT" branding

There were a number of NT variants, including a Windows NT 4.0 Workstation client OS. (Interestingly, there are rumors circulating that Microsoft might possibly be introducing a Workstation version of Windows Server 2016, though I haven't been able to get any kind of believable confirmation of that -- so far.)

NT 4.0 also came in Server, Terminal Server and Embedded editions. In the time since its initial release, Windows NT morphed to become Windows Server.

As an anniversary page for the operating systemthat Microsoft made available today notes, the server team added Active Directory, Group Policy, .NET support and more to what debuted as the NT core. The 2003 R2 Server release, released in 2005, provided the foundation for Microsoft to build Azure, Microsoft's cloud operating system...


Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 launched 20 years ago this week | ZDNet

Windows Server: 20th Year Anniversary

Yeah, I had just gotten a copy of WinNT 3.51 when 4.0 was announced so I went with the new, good experience as I was in a computer shop and everything was networked.

As a systems admin, I loved NT. Most of the users hated it!

I still have mine (NT4 SP1).

I did have it running in a VR, but I lost it in a crash.

Will set it up again one of these days.


Wenda.
 

As a systems admin, I loved NT. Most of the users hated it!
I don't know what you're talking about. I like Windows NT 10.

Hi there

over the years I've installed every version of windows --even as far back to windows/286 --that's probably a long time before some members of this Forum were even thought of --much less actually born.

I have to say that Windows NT ranks as THE WORST O/S I've ever used --everything - even simple networking was a major exercise to get it working - you needed a Doctorate in Computer Science even to understand the documentation.

We referred to Windows NT as WINDOWS NEANDERTHAL or WINDOWS NO THANKS,

The best Windows versions were : (IMO)

Windows 3.11 for workgroups
Windows 95
Windows 2000
Windows 2003 Server - still doing sterling service - it's now on the final chapter but it really was a great networking OS. Windows XP (probably one of the most popular OS'es ever was based on it).
Windows XP
Windows 7
Windows 10

Windows Vista would have been OK but came out too early before hardware was up to it --if you run it in modern hardware on say a VM you can see that it was actually OK.

Dogs were Windows NT
Windows Millenium
Windows 8
Windows before 3.0

And I'm being unkind to Dogs here --especially with Windows NT --a Guiness book of records entry should be submitted for the world's "Most User AGGRESSIVE" system ever to hit the planet.

I remember with horror with horror trying to get simple networking connections and RAS to work. RIP Windows NT and GOOD RIDDANCE -- nobody will miss you --unlike Win XP etc.

Cheers
jimbo

You only think you're old, Jimbo. I started on an old IBM mainframe with Fortran back in the early '70s. On the PC side, I first loaded MSDOS 2.11 in 1983. Then upgraded to Windows 1.0 and on up the ladder. NT, was a work in progress. Many core objects carried over into subsequent Windows, most notably the disk file system, NTFS, which is pretty much the standard disk file system for XP on. The biggest complaint that I ever heard about NT was that it attempted to make a clean break from what came before. It simply didn't work like what was familiar to users.

Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 launched 20 years ago this week