There is a writeup on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Virtual_Apps#History - essentially the underlying technology was made by Citrix. That article doesn't get into the details but I recall that MS sold source code licenses to NT 3.51 for companies to make products like this (Diskeeper had one too for adding defragmentation to NTFS, I think). Then, the OS-level modifications got upstreamed back into NT 4 and then 2000. MS and Citrix had an arrangement where MS has the core Terminal Services, while Citrix (still to this day) makes fancier, more enterprisey products on top of the core remote desktop support for remote access to WIndows applications.

I have not installed NT 4 TSE myself, but did work at a company previously that used it and still had some test environments running it to support legacy customers. They had an industrial product where NT 4 TSE was a prerequisite to migrate from OpenVMS, where they were making use of X11 forwarding as a core feature underlying the user interface.

I only have the retail CD, not the full box and other bits. But I don't know that NT 4.0 TSE is or was particularly rare - its certainly easier to get than some Microsoft products from that timeframe, and someday I'll probably buy a second more complete copy if it turns up for a reasonable price.

Overall it feels a bit like a beta product to use - its a bit quirky, and some later software doesn't like it much or is incompatible. Perhaps Citrix WinFrame was like that too. Neozeed has some hints for how to set up TSE without breaking things:
https://virtuallyfun.com/2009/07/18/making-do … erminal-server/

Personally, I just use it for quick access to some 90s development tools/documentation. It runs virtualised on my home server alongside all the various linux VMs that are normally running, and I can just RDP into it when I need to look something up in the MSDN library or whatever. Compared to running NT4 Workstation in virtualbox, interacting with NT4 TSE via RDP feels a bit snappier too.

I've a boxed copy including 21 CAL's I saved from a server room about 10 years ago.
Server itself had long gone as even the Windows 2000 Citrix server was been replaced with a standard 2003 Terminal Server not long after I joined.

I began working in I.T. in 2006 and even then I can only remember working for 2 customers that still had a NT4 server so my exposure to NT in the "real world" was very little.
But I've almost always had an NT4 Server box either as a fileserver or more recent times just to play with.
If I'm going to install NT4 I'll typically install TSE these days, It mostly behaves as a normal NT4 install but with the ability to RDP into it is really nice.
I think it was XP SP3 where the RDP client no longer supports NT4, Easy work around is to use the separate TSClient that came with Windows 2000 leaving mstsc alone

You can still promote it as a PDC (or maybe a BDC as you already have one) install Backoffice 4.5 on it, and mostly treat it like a normal server.
Installing software you need to run the "change user /install" command but this was true for later versions as well.
It has its own version of SP6 but all other updates are the same.

Thing I found most annoying/funny was even as admin they have removed the shutdown option from the start menu, So I just created a shortcut on the desktop

chinny22 wrote on 2025-10-04, 04:19:

Thing I found most annoying/funny was even as admin they have removed the shutdown option from the start menu, So I just created a shortcut on the desktop

That sounds like a GPO thing, except it didn't exist in NT4. 😁

Nice reading and collection you have there, both of you.

PD2JK wrote on 2025-10-04, 04:54:

chinny22 wrote on 2025-10-04, 04:19:

Thing I found most annoying/funny was even as admin they have removed the shutdown option from the start menu, So I just created a shortcut on the desktop

That sounds like a GPO thing, except it didn't exist in NT4. 😁

Should be a bit more clear.
If you log in on the console you have shutdown, but a remote session it treats you like a non admin in later versions only giving you lock, log off, disconnect.
as davidrg said, its just a bit quirky, but then so was NT4 in general!