Windows NT 4.0 brought the Win95 UI to servers 30 years ago today — milestone unifying modern Windows OS hit RTM in the Pentium era

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It was also the last NT release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC CPU architectures.

Windows NT 4.0
(Image credit: Future)

Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 to manufacturing partners on July 31, 1996. Codename Cairo marked an important milestone in the history of Microsoft’s original server OS and would far outlive Microsoft’s original plans as enthusiasts and administrators clung to it, as older readers will be aware. Headlining features of NT 4.0, which made it a winner, include the melding of the intuitive new Windows 95 UI into the fully 32-bit enterprise OS. It was also notable for being the last version of NT to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC CPU architectures.

Historical Windows NT timeline:

  • Windows NT Server 3.1 – in 1993, the first version of Windows NT also introduced NTFS
  • Windows NT Server 3.5 – in 1994, this update provided integrated support for Winsock and TCP/IP
  • Windows NT Server 3.51 - client/server support added in 1995
  • Windows NT 4.0 – in 1996, NT got the Windows 95 UI and the familiar My Computer, My Documents, and so on
  • Windows 2000 Server – the 5th NT release started a new naming scheme, introduced Active Directory, plus NTFS 3.0 with file system encryption
  • Followed by the more modern Server releases…

(Image credit: Microsoft)

After the initial Windows NT 4.0 release, Microsoft followed up with a version for embedded systems and its Terminal Server edition.

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The Windows NT line was critical to Microsoft as it led the charge against dominant Unix server software ecosystems. Its first public release was in 1993, with version 3.1, but NT 4.0 coupled the underlying data server and personal workstation tooling with Win95 UI elements such as the Start Menu, Taskbar, Task Manager, and so on. It would also support new components like the cryptography API, DCOM, TAPI 2.0, and some DirectX (v2) features.

Despite all the new technology under the hood and the frills of the latest UI, Microsoft’s Windows NT 4.0 launched with remarkably low minimum requirements. Would-be users were recommended to install it on a PC with a CPU that ran at 33 MHz or better, had 32MB of RAM, SVGA graphics, and a hard disk with 256 MB capacity. This was in the Pentium / Pentium Pro era. NT 4.0 would become “the server for the masses,” boasted Microsoft on the OS’s 20th anniversary.

Another reason that NT 4.0 was so important is that it formed the foundation for the Windows XP release (2001), leaving the DOS-based 95, 98/SE, and Me versions of the consumer OS behind as archaic hybrids. In the half-decade between the release of NT 4.0 and XP, Microsoft had a lot of work to do, such as implementing Plug and Play, building out gaming tech, adding WDM drivers, and so on. Thankfully, PCs also grew in muscle, specs, and multimedia capabilities to make the larger and more demanding XP a big hit.

Windows XP landed with a core marketing line that it was “Built on NT technology,” which felt uncomfortable to read if you were from the camp that believed ‘NT’ was short for ‘New Technology.’

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

It is pretty easy to find an old Cairo release online for retro machine tinkering. Those interested in a more casual poke around in NT 4.0 out of interest, curiosity, or nostalgia will find there are some online installs you can play with via a web browser.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • abufrejoval
    NT 4 was both a declaration of war and a disaster.

    It was a declaration of war against Citrix, who had established NT as a multi-user OS on NT 3.5 and from whom M$ decided to withhold the NT4 source code, which it needed to upgrade its customers. Instead M$ wanted to grab that entire market away from Citrix and pushed their less capable RDP protocol over ICA or vendors like Tektronix (and NFuse?) who had built X11 support into NT 3.51. M$ brought Citrix to the brink of failure and poisoned the multi-user market for years.

    It was also a disaster because it compromised security over speed. Running the graphics UI at ring 3 in proper user mode turned out to be so slow, that M$ decided to let it rip at ring 0 or kernel mode, where a buggy graphics driver killed an otherwise pretty bullet proof VMS clone OS.

    Printer drivers were even worse, because your average dot matrix or inkjet printer driver often wasn't thread-safe: I remember terminal servers with 50 users going down, just because someone dared to print a document on a dual CPU machine!

    I often wonder how Dave Cutler, the DEC VMS architect lured to M$ to design an OS/2 and Unix killer survived those days where greed for market share and power killed his design.
    Reply
  • Zaranthos
    I remember those days fondly. I wasn't particularly fond of Windows at the time having spent a good deal of time using OS/2 and then BeOS extensively. Shedding the old Windows 3.x UI on server was a welcome change at the time and Microsoft Proxy server on NT 4 when we were stuck with dial-up internet at the time was pretty useful for a small business that needed multiple user internet simultaneously without extra phone line bills. The server did nearly nothing other than share an internet connection throughout the building from a top of the line US Robotics modem to provide lightning fast (haha) internet to everyone. Some server file sharing and backup folders were about the only other thing it did.

    It did help usher in a new era in Windows as Windows XP was much better than Windows 98. I still wish Windows 10/11 hadn't deviated so far from many of the things those older versions of Windows had by default like the quick launch bar and the more file system like start menu.
    Reply
  • EzzyB
    abufrejoval said:
    NT 4 was both a declaration of war and a disaster.

    It was a declaration of war against Citrix, who had established NT as a multi-user OS on NT 3.5 and from whom M$ decided to withhold the NT4 source code, which it needed to upgrade its customers. Instead M$ wanted to grab that entire market away from Citrix and pushed their less capable RDP protocol over ICA or vendors like Tektronix (and NFuse?) who had built X11 support into NT 3.51. M$ brought Citrix to the brink of failure and poisoned the multi-user market for years.

    It was also a disaster because it compromised security over speed. Running the graphics UI at ring 3 in proper user mode turned out to be so slow, that M$ decided to let it rip at ring 0 or kernel mode, where a buggy graphics driver killed an otherwise pretty bullet proof VMS clone OS.

    Printer drivers were even worse, because your average dot matrix or inkjet printer driver often wasn't thread-safe: I remember terminal servers with 50 users going down, just because someone dared to print a document on a dual CPU machine!

    I often wonder how Dave Cutler, the DEC VMS architect lured to M$ to design an OS/2 and Unix killer survived those days where greed for market share and power killed his design.
    I saw it more as an assault on Novell. I recall at the time the Novell drivers for a Windows desktop had ballooned to 60mb (HUGE for the day when a HDD might be 300mb) and all of a sudden we could just eliminate that on desktops. Anyway, our first victim at the Corps of Engineers was Novell.

    As for the server version. Uggggh! Internet Information Server was a disaster of biblical proportions. (Actually, now that I think of it, it was on the workstation version as well.)
    Reply
  • JeffreyP55
    Admin said:
    Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 to manufacturing partners on this day in 1996.

    Windows NT 4.0 brought the Win95 UI to servers 30 years ago today — milestone unifying modern Windows OS hit RTM in the Pentium era : Read more
    NT with a Windows '95 face. I used it in the day.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    EzzyB said:
    I saw it more as an assault on Novell. I recall at the time the Novell drivers for a Windows desktop had ballooned to 60mb (HUGE for the day when a HDD might be 300mb) and all of a sudden we could just eliminate that on desktops. Anyway, our first victim at the Corps of Engineers was Novell.

    As for the server version. Uggggh! Internet Information Server was a disaster of biblical proportions. (Actually, now that I think of it, it was on the workstation version as well.)
    I only ever dealt with Novell as a user, can't say that I cared for it in any which way. And their treatment of DOS and Unix didn't exactly endear them to me.

    But yeah, M$ still had plenty of enemies and was giving all similarly hostile treatment.

    I don't know when AD entered the picture, that was the real nail into Novell's coffin: UID management is one of those things where M$ was relentless when it came to licensing.

    These days I just rejoice in how easy this is with Samba, especially in Univention: no M$ licenses required at all, except for the client OS, if you need that.
    Reply