Microsoft’s Windows NT turned 20 years old on 27 July 2013. Microsoft Windows NT was the first powerful high level language based processor-independent, multiprocessing and multiuser 32-bit operating system.
All other operating systems such as, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT and Windows Server 2012 were members of the Windows NT family.
The main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability. Various versions of NT family operating systems were released based on this notion.
NT supported rich set of security permissions that can be applied to systems and services. NT supported Windows network protocols, inheriting the previous OS/2 LAN Manager networking, as well as TCP/IP networking (for which Microsoft would implement a TCP/IP stack derived at first from a STREAMS-based stack from Spider Systems.
The first version launched by Windows NT was 3.1. Windows NT 3.1 utilized 32-bit “flat” virtual memory addressing on 32-bit processors. It featured a core kernel that provide a system API, running in supervisor mode (ring 0 in x86; referred to in Windows NT as “kernel mode” on all platforms), and a set of user-space environments.
In Windows NT 3.x, several I/O driver subsystems, were user-mode subsystems. However, in Windows NT 4, these I/O driver subsystems were moved into kernel mode. Windows NT’s first GUI was strongly influenced by (and programmatically compatible with) that from Windows 3.1. Windows NT 4’s interface was redesigned to match the brand new Windows 95 design.
Windows NT had introduced its own driver model. Windows NT driver model was the first model introduced with Windows 98, an enhanced version of this model called Windows Driver Model comes with Windows 2000.
All these years Microsoft has put forward an great experience and competitiveness in the field of computing, it will stay for long. Here we salute the Microsoft team for their great efforts.
Releases till now
| Version | Name | Editions | Release date |
| NT 3.1 | Windows NT 3.1 | Workstation, Advanced Server | 27 July 1993 |
| NT 3.5 | Windows NT 3.5 | Workstation, Server | 21 September 1994 |
| NT 3.51 | Windows NT 3.51 | Workstation, Server | 30 May 1995 |
| NT 4.0 | Windows NT 4.0 | Workstation, Server, Embedded, Server Enterprise Edition, Terminal Server | 29 July 1996 |
| NT 5.0 | Windows 2000 | Professional, Server, Advanced Server | 17 February 2000 |
| Datacenter Server | 26 September 2000 | ||
| NT 5.1 | Windows XP | Home, Professional , Tablet PC (original and 2005), Home N, Professional N | 25 October 2001 |
| NT 5.2 | Windows XP | 64-bit Edition Version 2003 | 28 March 2003 |
| Windows Sever 2003 | Standard, Web, Enterprise, Datacenter, Small Business Server, Compute Cluster, Storage | 24 April 2003 | |
| Windows XP | Professional x64 Edition | 25 April 2005 | |
| Windows Server 2003 R2 | Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, Storage, Small Business Server, Compute Cluster | 6 December 2005 | |
| NT 6.0 | Windows Vista | Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate, Home Basic N, Business N | 30 November 2006 (Business) 30 January 2007 (Consumer) |
| Windows Server 2008 | Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web Server, HPC Server, Itanium-Based Systems | 27 February 2008 | |
| NT 6.1 | Windows 7 | Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate | 22 October 2009 |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 | Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web Server, HPC Server, Itanium-Based Systems | 22 October 2009 | |
| NT 6.2 | Windows 8 | Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise | 26 October 2012 |
| Windows Server 2012 | Foundation, Essentials, Standard, Datacenter | 4 September 2012 | |
| NT 6.3 | Windows 8.1 | Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 8.1 Enterprise |