Windows NT 4.0

**Windows NT 4.0** is a preemptively multitasked graphical operating system, designed to work with either a single processor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was part of Microsoft's Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996. 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 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, showing window contents while dragging, 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. 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 family to be branded as *Windows NT* although Windows 2000 carried the designation "Built on NT Technology".

## 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 Windows 2000). 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 /3GB boot flag, which changed the default virtual address space mapping from 2 GB kernel and 2 GB userland to 1 GB kernel and 3 GB userland. It also introduced a PSE36 driver for mapping up to 64 GB memory (although chipsets then supported only up to 8 GB.) This version also saw 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* in Windows 2000 and later server releases, and also powers the *Remote Desktop* feature that first appeared in Windows XP.

### Embedded
* **Windows NT 4.0 Embedded** (abbreviated **NTe**) is an edition of Windows NT 4.0 that was aimed at computer-powered major appliances, vending machines, ATMs and other devices that cannot be considered general-purpose computers. It is the same system as the standard Windows NT 4.0, but it comes packaged in a database of components and dependencies, from which a developer can choose individual components to build customized setup CDs and hard disk boot images. Windows NT 4.0 Embedded includes Service Pack 5. It was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded.

## References