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2026-07-31 : Windows NT 4.0 turns 30! 🥳

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First post, by digger

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Happy Birthday, Windows NT 4.0!

https://dfarq.homeip.net/windows-nt-4-0-relea … ng-july-31-1996

I remember really liking Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and trying to use it as my daily OS back in the day.

It had the interface of Windows 95, but without its instabilities. It was rock solid. Win9x always felt like hacky graphical shell on top of DOS rather than an OS in its own right, whereas NT was built from the ground up as an actual solid 32-bit OS.

Back then I was often frustrated by the number of games that required Windows 9x and would refuse to run on NT, knowing that those games would have run fine, if only the programmers had programmed the games decently, without cutting corners with ugly direct access hacks and such. I knew NT4 could run well-written 2D and OpenGL games just fine. Diablo 1 was a prominent example of that. It ran on NT4 flawlessly.

As a workaround for not being able to run some problematic games, I tried setting up a dual boot system, but this led me to another problem: Windows 9x didn't support NTFS (which I of course wanted to use in NT4) and NT4 for its part did not support FAT32. Add to that that NT4 didn't support USB, and it made for some frustrations.

Granted, Windows 2000 did a good job on tackling all these shortcomings, but before that came out it felt so frustrating that NT4 was so close to being the perfect OS for me, if it wasn't for those few snags.

Of course, I switched to Linux a long time ago, but these old Windows versions, for all their shortcomings and frustrations, have a special place in my nostalgic heart.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, and a colleague showed me how it was possible to install DIrectX 5 in Windows NT 4, unlocking support for more games. I had moved on by that point, but I remember thinking then "Wow, this would have been good to know when I still ran NT4 at home".

This makes the recent work to make even Direct3D 9 working with NT4, including 3D acceleration, all the more awesome to see.

What were your experiences with NT4 back in the day? And what workarounds did you come up with to deal with these and other issues and limitations?

Reply 1 of 5, by ElectroSoldier

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I wanted to like NT4 so much. It was the only version of Windows I could afford to buy once I bought the hardware I wanted. But it was so difficult to use.
It looked like Win95 but it didnt work like Win95 at all, it was fundimentally useless for most of what I wanted to do and remained that was for years, even as the SPs stacked up it didnt get much better.
Its no wonder its a forgotten OS in the retro community much like Windows Powered on the Win2k OS.
Great memories of it but it was hard work!

Reply 2 of 5, by Grzyb

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I only casually used it.
It wasn't bad - and compared with the DOS-and-Win3-bundle-in-disguise slop that Win9x was, the NT was even a true revelation.

But the cost was heavy...
It didn't really make sense with less than 64 MB RAM.
And there was plenty of hardware that never got NT support - eg. the original GUS series.

Overall, I preferred OS/2 - about the same features as NT, and lighter.

In 2003, I voted in favour of joining the European Union. However, due to later developments - especially the restrictions on cash usage - I have withdrawn my support. DOWN WITH THE EU!

Reply 3 of 5, by wierd_w

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NT4 was quite lightweight from my dim recollections.

The main issues were 'No DirectX better than kindasorta 5', 'absolutely no plug and play', and 'USB support? Ha!'

Win2k fixed all those, and was my daily driver for a very long time.

Reply 4 of 5, by leileilol

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windowsn't

apsosig.png
long live PCem
FUCK "AI". It is a tool of fascism. We do not need it. We do not use it.

Reply 5 of 5, by UCyborg

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NT 4.0 is only slightly younger than me and I'm not sure when I became aware of it. Some aspects are unusual, eg. there's no Device Manager, but it already has Task Manager.

Sometime in last couple of years, I played through Interstate '76 on it, GDI windowed mode (not like much else would work on VMware...) - after fixing it to not quit due to one GDI function return value difference and the most critical heap corruption bug.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

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