Windows NT 4.0 was the fourth release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in 1996. It is a 32-bit Windows system available in workstation and server versions with a graphical environment similar to Windows 95.

While more stable than Windows 95, it is also less flexible from a desktop perspective. Much of the stability is gained by virtualising the hardware and having software applications access the system APIs rather than the hardware directly as was done in DOS and continued with Windows 95 and on. The trade-off is that writing to the APIs rather than to the hardware directly requires much more work be done by the computer and so hardware intensive applications such as games run much more slowly. Whilst many programs written for the Win32 API will run on both Windows 95 and Windows NT, the majority of 3D games will not.

The dichotomy between the NT and "9x" lines of Windows arguably only ended with the arrival of Windows XP, by which time the gaming APIs—such as OpenGL and DirectX—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 processing overhead acceptably.

Windows NT 4.0 was rendered "obsolete" with the advent of Windows 2000 but is still (as of 2005) in widespread use despite Microsoft's many efforts to persuade customers to upgrade to more recent versions.

Specific packages

• Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server is an NT OS that allows the user to log on to a remote machine, and operate it normally. This same functionality has been implemented as Terminal Services (in Windows 2000), and Remote Desktop (Windows XP and Server 2003).
• Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Server is the precursor to the Datacenter line of the Windows server family. Enterprise Server was designed for high-demand, high-traffic networks.
• Windows NT 4.0 Server was designed for small-scale Business Server systems.
• Windows NT Workstation was designed for use as the general business desktop OS. Boasting a pure 32-Bit environment, with unparalleled stability, it quickly became a success.

External links

• Screen shots of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation