> 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.
EvanAnderson · 32d ago
Total agreement.
I ran a lot of Exchange 4.0 thru 5.5 on NT 4.0 and Exchange 2000 on Windows 2000 and 2003 back in the day. I can't say I miss any of that software (except, maybe, some faint happy remembrance of Windows Server 2003). Windows 2000 and newer are infinitely more useful and less quirky the prior NT versions (coherent OS servicing strategy, fewer reboots after settings changes, plug 'n play support).
I suppose there's an argument to be made for trying that stuff out to see why the newer stuff is better. In a homelab, though, you're never going to get to the scale to see why NT 4.0 domains were a pain point. Likewise, you probably won't be max'ing out an Exchange EDB size, or feeling the I/O pain that came w/ trying to sling content from a 50GB Exchange Information Store thru a 32-bit OS.
There definitely is an "ah, ha!" moment to be had looking first at the NT 4.0 Domain system, then at an Exchange Directory Service, and thinking "What if my Windows Domain could be like this?" (This was the genesis of Active Directory.)
anthk · 32d ago
This. It woudn't be too difficult to even port Supermium to Windows 2000 given it has an XP release.
LeFantome · 32d ago
You would have to backport a few APIs. From memory, GetAddrInfoW is one of them.
thepipetogrep · 32d ago
Ah, good to know. Thank guess it would be better to say “Learn how NT domain controllers work.” Thanks for the correction.
CursedSilicon · 33d 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 · 33d 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?
If anyone can find the archive link to the original, I believe there was discussion in the comments about "why not exclude it for specific hardware only" and the risk of false negatives was deemed too high
Lammy · 32d ago
> If anyone can find the archive link to the original
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.
dspillett · 32d ago
> migrating NT 4 workloads to VMware, … patch the NT4 SMP HAL to [issue HTL]. But in my own testing that doesn't seem to work and results in a blue screen of death on boot.
IIRC some drivers were very unhappy with this, IIRC something about interrupts waking a processor that then started a transfer, while something running on the other was already waiting for a transfer to complete. For some (virtual) hardware combinations it worked smoothly but others were very unreliable.
We just switched to the single professor HAL as that still performed as well as the older CPUs when virtualizing on newer kit and was much more reliably stable.
HeckFeck · 32d ago
I wonder whether this has been patched in that OpenNT 'fork' of the leaked NT4 source.
simonjgreen · 32d ago
Wow that NT era weave logo triggered a lot of memories. In particular Windows Back Office (which later became SBS). Many evenings spent fixing SMS, Mail, and ISA.
There is a lot to be said for on prem that the cloud era marketing departments have erased. I seriously miss the on prem first mindset. It’s not clear at all to me if there is a universal best/winner now.For example: I regularly hit issues with Entra where there are feature gaps vs AD such as MemberOf. But as a counter, I have no love lost for roaming profiles. You could probably debate it for weeks.
watersb · 32d ago
FWIW, I wrote a book about Windows NT Server 4. Internet Archive has a copy you can read online:
I'm not sure how it holds up. This was the very last generation of big tech books about Windows Server that were not aligned with a test curriculum. I honestly don't know if that's a good thing; the standardized tests at least made sure (I hope) that the information was accurate and that the important topics were covered. Whereas I started with a blank sheet of paper. Wrote whatever I could figure out and get working.
Very much pre-Active Directory; in my day job at the time we ran a Banyan Vines network, because the directory is the primary service.
I'm proud of the chapter on Macintosh clients, as it was a good piece of tech at the time and no one else talked about it much.
InsideOutSanta · 33d 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 · 33d 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 · 33d ago
What are you, some kind of hacker wizard
Scharkenberg · 33d ago
This is Wizard News after all.
stavros · 32d ago
I want to subscribe to your comments but your RSS feed is currently broken.
Hey, thanks for letting me know. I have not tried the RSS functionality of BSDG yet but I will try to get it fixed.
InsideOutSanta · 31d ago
I think the main issue is that ampersands aren't escaped correctly.
thepipetogrep · 31d ago
RSS feed is fixed. Thanks again!
LeoPanthera · 33d 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 · 33d 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 · 33d 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.
hypercube33 · 32d ago
NT wasn't exactly made for games. If I'm not mistaken video drivers were always rough around the edges especially for opengl or directx. Half Life and Quake 2 always worked pretty flawless on it though.
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 · 33d 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 · 33d 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 · 33d 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.
simondotau · 32d ago
I was only referring to choosing between NT4, 2000, XP, etc. I've personally never come across any reason to avoid a service pack.
AdrianB1 · 32d ago
Not really. I started using both around the time 2000 Server appeared and I preferred 2000 because it was easier to use on the hardware that I had, which was some Intel multiprocessor servers (made by Intel, not just the CPUs). The Active Directory of Windows 2000 was a pain point to support, but otherwise 2000 was "a better NT" for me. I don't remember the details, but I think the software compatibility was also better with 2000, I mean the software written for Win 98 and Win ME.
jacob019 · 33d ago
Just got to say that I love the BBS style blog and retro fonts.
Same. Reminds me of following tutorials on oldos.org back in the day.
reconnecting · 33d 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 · 33d 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 · 33d 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.
> easily saturate a T-1 connection (1.55M bps) to the Internet -- after which the performance differences become meaningless.
reading this part reminded me of all the plans I'd hear for "the day everyone will have a T1 on their homes"... sigh. and all we got was Facebook.
mdaniel · 32d ago
I don't believe the lack of high speed connectivity is strictly technical, as community fiber initiatives have shown, but rather monopolies seek to outlaw self-sufficiency
1oooqooq · 32d ago
everyone have 10x T1 in their pockets and none of the good ideas survived, was my point.
next they will sell us a chip in the brain and all we will get is still Facebook.
mc32 · 32d ago
Workstation had a limit[1] of 10 where server had a limit of 5000.
[1] I don’t remember the details but often workstation had soft limits compared to server. There were hexedit ways around them.
AdrianB1 · 32d ago
The server edition had DHCP, WINS and DNS servers included and also could create Windows Domains (act as domain controller). All optional, but useful at that time as there were not many options.
thepipetogrep · 32d ago
I was under the impression that the Server version allowed for acting as a domain controller which I have never tried with NT4 before.
ComputerGuru · 32d ago
> Windows NT 4 doesn't virtualise well
Citation needed? I remember running into no issues with VMware Workstation when I was preserving historical content from legacy OSes well over a decade ago.
Those are all issues actively virtualizing (i.e. taking a physical machine installation virtual), not installing NT 4 clean in a virtual env.
jetbalsa · 33d 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
minhoryang · 32d ago
I am looking for a provider who can offer yearly reports on installing legacy operating systems on modern or widely adopted hypervisors. For example, just last week I requested the installation of Windows 2000 on Proxmox. I am fully aware of the differences and challenges involved in working with Windows NT4 versus Windows 2000.
Lammy · 33d 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.
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 )
- 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
I learned this last Thur. A pharma client had an NT4 box with a fried PS2 port. I got onboard USB operational using the above resource and they can mouse again.
MS chose to omit USB from NT4 and the OS EOL'd that way. A 3rd party corp wrote a USB driver stack for NT, 20+yr ago. A civic minded someone put up the above linked site to make it usable.
mr_tox · 33d ago
I love the BBS style blog and all the other retro stuff :)
racingmars · 33d 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!
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.
I ran a lot of Exchange 4.0 thru 5.5 on NT 4.0 and Exchange 2000 on Windows 2000 and 2003 back in the day. I can't say I miss any of that software (except, maybe, some faint happy remembrance of Windows Server 2003). Windows 2000 and newer are infinitely more useful and less quirky the prior NT versions (coherent OS servicing strategy, fewer reboots after settings changes, plug 'n play support).
I suppose there's an argument to be made for trying that stuff out to see why the newer stuff is better. In a homelab, though, you're never going to get to the scale to see why NT 4.0 domains were a pain point. Likewise, you probably won't be max'ing out an Exchange EDB size, or feeling the I/O pain that came w/ trying to sling content from a 50GB Exchange Information Store thru a 32-bit OS.
There definitely is an "ah, ha!" moment to be had looking first at the NT 4.0 Domain system, then at an Exchange Directory Service, and thinking "What if my Windows Domain could be like this?" (This was the genesis of Active Directory.)
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
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...
If anyone can find the archive link to the original, I believe there was discussion in the comments about "why not exclude it for specific hardware only" and the risk of false negatives was deemed too high
Here's the full list: https://web.archive.org/web/20220712161524/https://bytepoint...
Here's this particular entry: https://web.archive.org/web/20220712161524/https://bytepoint... (11 comments)
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.
IIRC some drivers were very unhappy with this, IIRC something about interrupts waking a processor that then started a transfer, while something running on the other was already waiting for a transfer to complete. For some (virtual) hardware combinations it worked smoothly but others were very unreliable.
We just switched to the single professor HAL as that still performed as well as the older CPUs when virtualizing on newer kit and was much more reliably stable.
There is a lot to be said for on prem that the cloud era marketing departments have erased. I seriously miss the on prem first mindset. It’s not clear at all to me if there is a universal best/winner now.For example: I regularly hit issues with Entra where there are feature gaps vs AD such as MemberOf. But as a counter, I have no love lost for roaming profiles. You could probably debate it for weeks.
https://archive.org/details/windowsntserver400cowa/page/n9/m...
I'm not sure how it holds up. This was the very last generation of big tech books about Windows Server that were not aligned with a test curriculum. I honestly don't know if that's a good thing; the standardized tests at least made sure (I hope) that the information was accurate and that the important topics were covered. Whereas I started with a blank sheet of paper. Wrote whatever I could figure out and get working.
Very much pre-Active Directory; in my day job at the time we ran a Banyan Vines network, because the directory is the primary service.
I'm proud of the chapter on Macintosh clients, as it was a good piece of tech at the time and no one else talked about it much.
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.
Despite my own experience with Windows ends with XP, NT 4 was always my favourite version.
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.
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.
Actually, if I ever decide to dive into old Windows, NT 4.0 will be the only version I have personal sentiments for.
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.
Almost surely the whole article applies identically to Workstation
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.
reading this part reminded me of all the plans I'd hear for "the day everyone will have a T1 on their homes"... sigh. and all we got was Facebook.
next they will sell us a chip in the brain and all we will get is still Facebook.
[1] I don’t remember the details but often workstation had soft limits compared to server. There were hexedit ways around them.
Citation needed? I remember running into no issues with VMware Workstation when I was preserving historical content from legacy OSes well over a decade ago.
> Citation needed?
https://kagi.com/search?q=Windows+NT+4+doesn%27t+virtualise+...
> 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
Do I have to donate to get the driver?
https://archive.org/details/VBEMPNT
I learned this last Thur. A pharma client had an NT4 box with a fried PS2 port. I got onboard USB operational using the above resource and they can mouse again.
MS chose to omit USB from NT4 and the OS EOL'd that way. A 3rd party corp wrote a USB driver stack for NT, 20+yr ago. A civic minded someone put up the above linked site to make it usable.
The QEMU image discussed in this article will probably boot fine on JSLinux