The IT Support Handbook by 2024

Author:2024
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 8 how It SyStemS are StruCtured

Windows NT

The first versions of Microsoft Windows were built in top of Microsoft DOS (Disk

Operating System), and this remained the case until long after Windows 95 and the

introduction of what we now consider the modern Windows UI (User Interface), which

was still a graphical user interface (GUI) that sat on top of the DOS core. Microsoft were very clearly falling behind with companies such as IBM and Apple nipping at their heels, and developing full GUI operating systems such as MacOS (1984) and OS/2 Warp (1987)

on which Microsoft itself worked and contributed. Microsoft was falling badly behind and needed a secure, stable, and reliable version of Windows on which to build its

business customer base. The end result was Windows NT (New Technology) which was

released in 1993, shortly after Microsoft severed its partnership with IBM, taking it’s copy of the OS/2 codebase with it.

Windows NT remained a resolutely business-only operating system until 2001, when

the DOS-based consumer operating systems, the last of which was the horribly maligned Windows Me (Millennium Edition) were finally decommissioned. The advantages that

NT had, however, were that it was designed from the ground up to be a full GUI OS,

and while DOS remained for compatibility and scripting purposes, it was no longer the operating system itself.

This allowed for Windows NT to be more secure, more stable, and more fully

featured, especially considering that MS DOS was first launched in 1981 and therefore wasn’t equipped to support many technologies that came along afterwards, such as USB

(Universal Serial Bus), Plug and Play, or UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface).

However… it can be argued, and I would certainly make this case, that Microsoft

made one pretty huge mistake with NT. This being that they allowed, and still allow to this day, compatibility with software and hardware that ran on DOS. This means that

all of the underlying code, features, and security in Windows 10 (the latest version of the OS) have to be compatible with everything going back to Windows 95; Windows 1

through 3.11 had a very different core architecture that was dumped when Windows

95 was released. To help achieve this, Windows includes compatibility options for all installed win32 desktop applications, see Figure 8-1.

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