How to Install Windows NT 4 Server on Proxmox

92 thepipetogrep 31 5/25/2025, 1:34:54 AM blog.pipetogrep.org ↗

Comments (31)

Kwpolska · 2h ago

> Add a bigger disk. Share some files to your old Windows machines. Learn how old Active Directory worked. Set up Exchange and get some mail going.

Active Directory was in Windows 2000, NT4 has a different domain technology. If you want to play with old Windows Server stuff, Windows 2000 would be a better, more coherent option, compatible with more modern software.

CursedSilicon · 5h ago

My only "critique" of the article is the lack of SMP (multi-core) enablement

NT 4 did support rudimentary multi-processor (Symmetric Multi-Processor) systems back in the day. But it seems to lack the `HLT` instruction in the SMP enabled HAL

This means an NT 4 VM will always operate at 100% CPU usage even if it's simply idling.

Back in the 2000's when folks were slowly migrating NT 4 workloads to VMware, enterprising users took it upon themselves to patch the NT4 SMP HAL to fix this. But in my own testing that doesn't seem to work and results in a blue screen of death on boot.

There's probably a way to do it under QEMU/Proxmox. But I haven't dug deep enough to figure it out myself

Lammy · 4h ago

> There's probably a way to do it under QEMU/Proxmox. But I haven't dug deep enough to figure it out myself

Maybe one of the same utilities commonly used to work around this same issue on Windows 95?

Amn Refrigerator (formerly AmnHLT) — not relevant for NT because it uses a VxD driver, but it's my favorite for Windows 95 so I'm linking it here for completeness: https://web.archive.org/web/20010331184312/http://www.amn.ru...

KCPUCooler: https://web.archive.org/web/20010607173439/http://www.kt2k.c...

CpuIdle: https://web.archive.org/web/20030925110541/http://www.cpuidl...

Waterfall and/or Rain from Leading Wintech (can't find the original URL): https://vetusware.com/manufacturer/Leading%20Wintech/?author...

VCool or CPUCooL might be the ones to try because they're the only ones that seem to explicitly mention supporting NT:

“VCool now utilizes its own driver on NT, W2K, XP: vcool.sys” https://web.archive.org/web/20041205132318/http://vcool.occl...

“CPU Cooling under Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 (Watch Wintop !)” https://web.archive.org/web/20041211214000/http://www.cpufsb...

pjmlp · 1h ago

In the proxy server that I wrote back in 2000's, relying on the Windows NT/2000 scheduler for multiple CPUs was a big performance hit.

Threads would jump around cores, killing most performance gains by using multiple threads.

The workaround was the typical getting the amount of CPUs and park each thread on their own one, this alone made quite an observable improvement.

I think by Windows Server 2003, this scheduler issue was already sorted out.

InsideOutSanta · 3h ago

I couldn't find a way to contact the author, but in case he's reading this or anyone knows his contact information: I'd like to subscribe to your blog, but your RSS feed is currently broken.

st_goliath · 1h ago

> I couldn't find a way to contact the author

If you remove the "blog." subdomain and go to https://pipetogrep.org/ you are greeted by a typical "about me" page. It includes a link back to the blog, as well as a mailto link, and links to GitHub and LinkedIn profiles.

genewitch · 21m ago

What are you, some kind of hacker wizard

Scharkenberg · 2m ago

This is Wizard News after all.

reconnecting · 7h ago

Was the choice of Windows NT 4 Server over the Workstation version intentional? I can't recall the specifics, but I remember the Workstation version being way more lightweight and easier to setup.

chungy · 6h ago

They're basically the same, with a different performance profile default and server software.

Almost surely the whole article applies identically to Workstation

reconnecting · 6h ago

Quoted in PC WeekOnline ("Microsoft: 'significant differences' between NTS, NTW", Norvin Leach, September 10):

Roberts acknowledged that NTS and NTW are included in the same binary file. It was easier to build and test them that way, he said. The setting in the Registry, he said, triggers 48 changes to the kernel. These changes cascade down to 700 additional settings in software outside the kernel.

Kwpolska · 2h ago

Would be nice to link to the source, which contains more details: https://landley.net/history/mirror/ms/differences_nt.html

jacob019 · 8h ago

Just got to say that I love the BBS style blog and retro fonts.

LeoPanthera · 7h ago

The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/

bitwize · 7h ago

The font shown on this site is VT323, a TrueType/OpenType version of the DEC VT320 terminal font. It doesn't come from the PC font pack.

LeoPanthera · 7h ago

Is there anything you can do with NT4 Server that you can't do with 2000 Server? (Other than run it on Alpha, MIPS or PowerPC.)

reconnecting · 6h ago

NT 4 feels way stable comparing with 2000.

Despite my own experience with Windows ends with XP, NT 4 was always my favourite version.

accrual · 4h ago

I really like NT 4.0 as well. In my experience the stability varied based on hardware and driver support, though. I tried running NT 4.0 on a "relatively fast" K6-3+ system with GeForce 2 and AWE64 but had weird issues, like sound stuttering in games that the same hardware runs fine under Win98 and 2K. I had endless trouble getting it installed too, I ended up installing in 86Box then imaging onto the host. I could fairly easily get it to BSOD by doing multimedia type work on it. Really though, not a fault of NT 4.0 so much as I probably didn't have the ideal drivers or hardware combo.

But on a fast 486 system, a bit older than NT 4.0 was really designed for, it ran flawlessly and made the dusty hardware feel very competent and modern - lots of common software runs fine on NT 4.0 including Winamp and specially compiled versions of modern PuTTY. It's probably my favorite OS for a DX4-100.

simondotau · 6h ago

The main reason for preferring a newer version of Windows has generally been hardware compatibility. But when virtualising (or emulating), this is far less important as compatibility is usually scaffolded by emulated hardware and/or backported drivers.

When your requirements call for an old version of Windows, generally you have a specific piece of software you want to run, so start by choosing the version most widely used at the time, which sometimes isn't the latest version. And you should always experiment, because there are thousands of things which contribute to stability. Newer (or older) version of Windows could be better or worse, depending on your specific case.

Regardless which version you pick, treat them as a security risk and (if you're in a serious production environment) avoid giving them unrestricted access to your local network or unrestricted access to the wider internet.

reconnecting · 5h ago

NT 4.0 was way different from XP or 2000, and it wasn't just a matter of hardware support. It wasn't as "Plug and Play" as XP, but somehow it worked much more stably. I think back to the days when we had an NT server that ran for years without a reboot, and that's not something you could expect from XP or 2000.

Actually, if I ever decide to dive into old Windows, NT 4.0 will be the only version I have personal sentiments for.

com2kid · 3h ago

2000 was rock solid stable once it was up and running. It took a lot of one off patches to get my k7 system to that point, but iirc I never had the os crash.

hulitu · 1h ago

> Newer (or older) version of Windows could be better or worse, depending on your specific case.

This only applies since Windows 8 when Microsoft started bundling new features with patches. For older Windows versions, you usually want the latest service pack. Except, of course, when your programs depends on a specific bug being present.

jetbalsa · 7h ago

Nice, I've had to do this to get NT4 for Open Stack, QEMU has better support for some of the older hardware required. I've also gotten DOS 6.22 and Networking turned on

Lammy · 4h ago

> Disk size: 4GB. I could not get it to format a boot drive larger than this.

> Bus/Device: SCSI. IMPORTANT: Do NOT use IDE. It will be slow noticeably slower and for some reason leads to file system corruption on NT4 guests despite changing the caching options.

IMO what you really want is Alter's Universal ATA Driver (UniATA): http://alter.org.ua/soft/win/uni_ata/

Here's some relevant Knowledge Base for you:

Q98080: 1024 Cylinder Limit, How Windows NT Gets Drive Geometry https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/45884

Q100525: Definition of System and Boot Partition https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/47139

Q114841: Windows NT Boot Process and Hard Disk Constraints https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/52494

Q119497: Boot Partition Created During Setup Limited to 4 Gigabytes https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/46361

Q127851: Problems Accessing FAT16 Drives Larger Than 2 GB https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/106328

Q138364: Windows NT Partitioning Rules During Setup https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/52635

Q154052: Explanation of X86 Boot Drive Limitations https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/48096

Q161563: How Windows NT Handles Drive Translation https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/48808

Q197295: WinNT Does Not Boot to Partition That Starts More Than 4 GB Into Disk https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/69226

Q197667: Installing Windows NT on a Large IDE Hard Disk https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/69256

Q224526: Windows NT 4.0 Supports Maximum of 7.8-GB System Partition https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/70367

racingmars · 5h ago

Now all we need is for Apache Guacamole to add support into its RDP client for whatever old version of RDP NT 4 Terminal Server uses. Access all those old NT 4 applications through my web browser!

orionblastar · 8h ago

The link for your ISO of the VGA driver https://blog.pipetogrep.org/downloads/win_nt_proxmox/vbempk.... doesn't work. Did you delete it or move it?

out-of-ideas · 7h ago

im guessing its an iso made of the contents from the zip linked as the source of that, at https://navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbemp.htm#2 ; you want the 2nd column down ( ensure the url file name matches the filename, except iso is a zip => vbempk.zip )

orionblastar · 6h ago

The download link for that website goes to here: https://navozhdeniye.narod.ru/donate.htm

Do I have to donate to get the driver?

Lammy · 6h ago

That's the first table row, the 2019 version. Click the link in the second table row to get the 2015 version without donation.

binarycrusader · 6h ago

archive.org to the rescue

https://archive.org/details/VBEMPNT

out-of-ideas · 2h ago

can confirm the iso has the vbempk folder

  - i can also confirm that the two are not the same (aka the source vbempk.zip and the archive-org's iso's vbempk folder)
  - i can easily see why text files might have improved wording, cannot know why the sys files are different

it'll be in a vm, but i'd still be careful with either choices

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How to Install Windows NT 4 Server on Proxmox

Comments (31)