The SAM Lock Tool , better known as Syskey (the name of its executable file ), is a discontinued component of Windows NT that encrypts the Security Account Manager (SAM) database using a 128-bit RC4 encryption key .
58-498: Introduced in the Q143475 hotfix for Windows NT 4.0 SP3, the tool was removed in Windows 10 's Fall Creators Update in 2017 because its method of cryptography is considered insecure by modern standards and the fact that the tool has been widely employed in scams as a form of ransomware . Microsoft officially recommended use of BitLocker disk encryption as an alternative. Introduced in
116-565: A PPTP server for VPN functionality) and Multi-Protocol Routing service. There are new administrative wizards and a lite version of the Network Monitor utility shipped with System Management Server . The Enterprise edition introduced Microsoft Cluster Server . One significant difference from previous versions of Windows NT is that the Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is moved into kernel mode rather than being in user mode in
174-507: A context menu . This menu in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 is called the Quick Link menu and grants access to several frequently used features of Windows, such as accessing desktop or File Explorer . Users may add Start menu entries by creating folders and shortcuts in the associated "Start Menu" folder, located on the operating system operating media. These appear in a separated section at
232-506: A floppy disk or USB flash drive ). In mid-2017, Microsoft removed syskey.exe from future versions of Windows. Microsoft recommends using " BitLocker or similar technologies instead of the syskey.exe utility." In December 1999, a security team from BindView found a security hole in Syskey that indicated that a certain form of offline cryptanalytic attack is possible, making a brute force attack appear to be possible. Microsoft later issued
290-497: A fix for the problem (dubbed the "Syskey Bug"). The bug affected both Windows NT 4.0 and pre-RC3 versions of Windows 2000 . Syskey is commonly abused by technical support scammers to lock victims out of their own computers in order to coerce them into paying a ransom. Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It
348-533: A grid (similar to many application launchers in Android and iOS), accompanied by a section for "Recommended" applications and files (often equivalent with the user's most recently used files). An "All apps" button is displayed next to the heading for pinned applications. Windows 11 does not support live tiles, with their functionality being moved to the separate "Widgets" area on the taskbar. The Start menu may be launched either by pressing ⊞ Win (the Windows key ) on
406-448: A keyboard or its equivalent on a tablet device , pressing Ctrl + Esc on a keyboard, or by clicking on the visual Start button . With the exception of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 , the Start button can be found on the taskbar . The Start button on Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 is initially moved from the traditional taskbar to "charms", a hidden secondary taskbar located to
464-631: A means of opening programs and performing other functions in the Windows shell . The Start menu, and the Taskbar on which it appears, were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner at Harvard . The Start menu was renamed Start screen in Windows 8 , before returning to its original name with Windows 10 . It has been co-opted by some operating systems (like ReactOS ) and Linux desktop environments for providing
522-623: A more Windows-like experience, and as such is, for example, present in KDE , with the name of Kickoff Application Launcher, and on Xfce with the name of Whisker Menu . Traditionally, the Start menu provided a customizable nested list of programs for the user to launch, as well as a list of most recently opened documents, a way to find files and obtain assistance, and access to the system settings. Later enhancements via Windows Desktop Update included access to special folders such as "My Documents" and "Favorites" (browser bookmarks). Windows XP 's Start menu
580-537: A vertical list, containing frequently-used applications, and links to the "All apps" menu, File Explorer , Settings , and power options. Some of these links, and additional links to folders such as Downloads, Pictures, and Music, can be added through Settings' "Choose which folders appear on Start" page. The Start menu can be resized, or be placed in a full-screen display resembling the Windows 8/8.1 Start screen (although scrolling vertically instead of horizontally). The Start menu also enters this state when "Tablet mode"
638-721: Is Internet Explorer 6 with SP1 , which was released on September 9, 2002. Windows NT 4.0 was succeeded by Windows 2000 , which also included the Windows Desktop Update and Internet Explorer 5 by default. It also could be directly upgraded to Windows XP Professional on IA-32 -based systems only. An independent project named Windows Update Restored aims to restore the Windows Update websites for older versions of Windows, including Windows NT 4.0. Windows NT 4.0 received six service packs during its lifecycle, as well as numerous service rollup packages and option packs. Only
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#1732917649437696-468: Is 4 GB, which is the maximum possible for a 32-bit operating system that does not support PAE. By comparison, Windows 95 fails to boot on computers with more than approximately 480 MB of memory. Like previous versions of NT, version 4.0 can run on multiple processor architectures. Windows 95, however, can only run on x86. Windows NT 4.0 Server was included in versions 4.0 and 4.5 of BackOffice Small Business Server suite. An Option Pack
754-425: Is enabled. As of version 1511 , the left panel of the Start menu advertises "suggested" Windows Store apps; users can opt out of these suggestions. Version 1607 and later remove the recent apps view, always showing all apps. Version 20H2 replaced the colorful tiles in previous versions with transparent "theme-aware" tiles. Windows RT 8.1 update KB3033055 adds a variant of the Windows 10 Start menu that
812-660: Is not officially supported by Windows NT 4.0. The difference between the NT family and 9x family would remain until the release of Windows XP in 2001. At that time, the APIs — such as OpenGL and DirectX — had matured sufficiently to be more efficient to write for common PC hardware, and the hardware itself had become powerful enough to handle the API processing overhead. The maximum amount of supported physical random-access memory (RAM) in Windows NT 4.0
870-591: Is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51 , and was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail in August 24, 1996, with the Server versions released to retail in September 1996. Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptively multitasked , 32-bit operating system that is designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until
928-467: Is visually closer to the design used in early preview builds of Windows 10. It allows applications to be pinned to the top of the left column, with recently used apps listed below (much like 7), and as with 10, allows tiles to be pinned to the right column. Windows 11 introduces another major redesign to the Start menu. A search box was reinstated at the top of the menu, and tiles have been replaced by an area for pinned application shortcuts displayed in
986-535: The Space Cadet pinball table , font smoothing , showing window contents while dragging, high-color icons and stretching the wallpaper to fit the screen. Windows Desktop Update could also be installed on Windows NT 4.0 to update the shell version and install Task Scheduler . Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit included the Desktop Themes utility. Windows NT 4.0 is the last major release of Microsoft Windows to support
1044-461: The Alpha , MIPS or PowerPC CPU architectures as Windows 2000 runs solely on IA-32 only. It remained in use by businesses for a number of years, despite Microsoft's many efforts to get customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 and newer versions. It was also the last release in the Windows NT family to be branded as Windows NT although Windows 2000 carried the designation "Built on NT Technology". Although
1102-463: The Windows Desktop Update . Windows NT 4.0 upgraded NTVDM 's x86 emulation in the RISC versions from 286 to 486 . Sysprep was introduced as a deployment tool with Windows NT 4.0. Windows NT 4.0, like previous versions of Windows NT before it and versions after it, is a fully 32-bit OS, while Windows 95 is a 16/32-bit hybrid OS. While providing much greater stability than Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0
1160-429: The Windows NT family, as well as Windows CE , Windows Mobile and Windows Phone . The Start menu first appeared in Windows 95 . It was made to overcome the shortcomings of Program Manager in previous operating systems. Program Manager consisted of a simple multiple document interface (MDI) which allowed users to open separate "program groups" and then execute the shortcuts to programs contained within. It lacked
1218-521: The All Programs view. Drag and drop support for adding new items to the menu as well as reorganizing the contents of the All Programs view is no longer available. In addition, for the first time in the history of Windows, the Start menu in a stock installation of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 does not provide any facility for shutting down , restarting or activating sleep mode or hibernation , forcing users to use
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#17329176494371276-519: The CSRSS process. This eliminated a process-to-process context switch in calling GDI functions, resulting in a significant performance improvement over Windows NT 3.51, particularly in the graphical user interface. This, however, also mandated that graphics and printer drivers had to run in kernel mode as well, resulting in potential stability issues. Windows NT 4.0 was the first release of Microsoft Windows to include DirectX as standard—version 2 shipped with
1334-455: The Q143475 hotfix included in Windows NT 4.0 SP3, Syskey was intended to protect against offline password cracking attacks by preventing the possessor of an unauthorized copy of the SAM file from extracting useful information from it. Syskey can optionally be configured to require the user to enter the key during boot (as a startup password) or to load the key onto removable storage media (e.g.,
1392-418: The Start menu and to access and expand Internet Explorer Favorites, My Documents and Administrative Tools ( Windows 2000 and later) from the Start menu. Items could also be simply added to the Start menu by dragging and dropping them . Although Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 introduced a new version of Start menu, they offered the ability to switch back to this version of Start menu. This version of
1450-565: The Start menu is also available in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 . However, it is absent in Windows 7 , Windows Server 2008 R2 and other later Windows releases. The first major overhaul to the Start menu was introduced in Windows XP and was later included in Windows Server 2003 . The Start menu was expanded to two columns: the left-hand column focuses on installed programs, while
1508-403: The Start menu produces a separate screen of icons. Windows Phone was the original host of the design principles of the third generation Start menu. The Start screen no longer supports several previously available features. A list of recently launched programs or shortcuts to special folders no longer appears on the Start screen. It no longer supports more than one level of nesting for groups in
1566-457: The Start menu so that they are always accessible. A sub-menu item at the bottom of this column grants access to all items of Start menu. When this menu item is selected, a scrolling list of Start menu programs replaces the user/recent list. Windows Vista and its successors added minor changes to the menu. Prior to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 , the Start menu consisted of a group of menus and sub-menus that cascaded and expanded, obscuring
1624-469: The Start menu support Jump lists through cascade buttons on their right. Unlike prior versions, the ability to revert to the "Classic" Start menu design is no longer available. On Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 , an update to the Start menu known as the "Start screen" was introduced. It covers the entire screen and no longer features the right column. It shows much larger tiles for programs and, whenever possible, displays dynamic content supplied by
1682-575: The Task List utility, but it only shows applications currently on the desktop. To monitor CPU and memory usage, users were forced to use Performance Monitor . The task manager offers a more convenient way of getting a snapshot of all the processes running on the system at any given time. Internet Explorer 2 was bundled with Windows NT 4. The installation of Internet Explorer 4 on Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3 or later) gave Windows NT 4.0 Active Desktop and browser integration into Windows Explorer, known as
1740-453: The Windows 2000 Server Family and Windows XP Embedded , respectively. The successor to Windows NT 3.51 , Windows NT 4.0 introduced the user interface of Windows 95 to the Windows NT family, including the Windows shell , File Explorer (known as Windows NT Explorer at the time), and the use of "My" nomenclature for shell folders (e.g. My Computer ). It also includes most components introduced with Windows 95 . Internally, Windows NT 4.0
1798-652: The Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server Resource Kit (original release plus four supplements) which contained a large number of tools and utilities, such as desktops.exe which allowed the user to have multiple desktops, as well as third-party software. Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on June 30, 2004, Windows NT 4.0 Server on December 31, 2004, and Windows NT 4.0 Embedded on July 11, 2006, due to major security flaws including Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-010 , which according to Microsoft could not be patched without significant changes to
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1856-775: The ability to nest groups within other groups. Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 replaced the Program Manager with the desktop and Start menu. The latter was comparable in some respects with the Apple menu in Mac OS and did not have the mentioned limitations of Program Manager: Being a menu , it allowed nested grouping while keeping only one group open at the time. The menu also offered the ability to shut down and log off from their computer. Later developments in Internet Explorer and subsequent Windows releases make it possible to customize
1914-479: The bottom, with a vertical scrollbar whenever needed. Also added in Windows Vista is a Search box that allows users to search for the Start menu shortcuts or other files and folders. The search box features incremental search : If indexing is not turned off, the search box returns results on-the-fly as users type into it. Since the found items can be immediately opened, the Start menu search box partially replaces
1972-422: The charms. On most versions of Windows, the Start button is located on the lower left corner of the screen, while the start button on Windows 11 is located in the center (but can be moved back to the lower left corner). On a Mac keyboard or on a Mac running Windows through Boot Camp , the ⌘ Command key is used as the Windows logo key to activate the Start menu. Right-clicking on the Start button invokes
2030-575: The chief enhancement has been the addition of the Windows 95 shell, there are several major performance, scalability and feature improvements to the core architecture , kernel , USER32 , COM and MSRPC . Windows NT 4.0 also introduced the concept of system policies and the System Policy Editor . Other important features were: The server editions of Windows NT 4.0 include Internet Information Services 2.0, Microsoft FrontPage 1.1, NetShow Services , Remote Access Service (which includes
2088-468: The core operating system. According to the security bulletin, "Due to the fundamental differences between Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 and its successors, it is infeasible to rebuild the software for Windows NT 4.0 to eliminate the vulnerability. To do so would require re-architecting a very significant amount of the Windows NT 4.0 operating system, and there would be no assurance that applications designed to run on Windows NT 4.0 would continue to operate on
2146-674: The first service pack was made available for the MIPS architecture, Service Pack 2 was the final release for the PowerPC architecture, and Service Pack 6 was the final release for the Alpha architecture. Service Pack 6a (SP6a) is the last released service pack for Windows NT 4.0. Service Pack 7 was planned at one stage in early 2001, but this became the Post SP6a Security Rollup and not a full service pack, released on July 26, 2001, 16 months following
2204-489: The function of the Run command from previous versions of Windows. The Run command can also be added separately to the right column in the Start menu. In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 , the search results pane covers both columns of the Start menu. The search box is extended to support searching Control Panel items. The right column in Windows 7 links to Libraries instead of ordinary folders. Most importantly, however, items on
2262-593: The hardware directly, but poorly written drivers became a frequent source of the infamous error known as the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) that would require the system to be restarted. In spite of shipping a year later than Windows 95, by default there is no Legacy Plug and Play support and no Device Manager on Windows NT 4.0, which greatly simplifies installation of hardware devices (although limited support could be installed later). Many basic DOS programs would run; however, graphical DOS programs would not run because of
2320-535: The initial release of Windows NT 4.0, and version 3 was included with the release of Service Pack 3 in mid-1997. However advanced hardware accelerated Direct3D and DirectSound multimedia features were never available on Windows NT 4.0. Later versions of DirectX were not released for Windows NT 4.0. However, OpenGL was supported; it was used by Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament . In early releases of 4.0, numerous stability issues did occur as graphics and printer vendors had to change their drivers to be compatible with
2378-434: The initially visible portions of the screen beneath them. In Windows Vista, however, cascading menus were replaced by a sliding window in the left pane of the Start menu. Whenever the All Programs item is clicked, the contents of the left pane slide off the left edge of the Start menu, and the All Programs menu slides in from the right edge of the left column. This menu presents a tree view of its hierarchy that expands towards
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2436-708: The introduction of Windows 2000 . Workstation , server and embedded editions were sold, and all editions feature a graphical user interface similar to that of Windows 95 . Windows NT 4.0 was the last public release of Windows for the Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC architectures. Mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation ended on June 30, 2002, following by extended support ending on June 30, 2004. Windows NT 4.0 Server mainstream support ended on December 31, 2002, with extended support ending on December 31, 2004. Windows NT 4.0 Embedded mainstream support ended on June 30, 2003, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006. These editions were succeeded by Windows 2000 Professional,
2494-459: The kernel mode interfaces exported by GDI. The change to move the GDI to run in the same process context as its caller was prompted by complaints from NT Workstation users about real-time graphics performance, but this change put a considerable onus on hardware manufacturers to update device drivers. Windows NT 4.0 also included a new Windows Task Manager utility. Previous versions of Windows NT included
2552-476: The patched system." Between June 2003 and June 2007, 127 security flaws were identified and patched in Windows 2000 Server, many of which may also affect Windows NT 4.0 Server; however, Microsoft does not test security bulletins against unsupported software. Start menu The Start menu (called Start screen in Windows 8 , 8.1 and Server 2012 ) is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 , providing
2610-404: The program directly on the tile itself (known as a "live tile"), behaving similarly to a widget . For instance, the live tile for an email client may display the number of unread emails. The Start screen allows users to uninstall their programs by right-clicking on them and selecting "Uninstall". Pinned apps can be placed in groups. The search box is initially hidden but can be viewed by clicking
2668-556: The real names and locations of the Start menu and Desktop folders. Since Windows Vista , all folders used by the system use the same name as in the English version and only display different names in Windows Explorer. TweakUI , an unsupported utility program from Microsoft, offers additional customizations, including speeding up the response time of the Start menu, window animation, and other hacks . On Windows XP and Windows Vista, it
2726-841: The release of Windows 2000 and nearly three months prior to the release of Windows XP. In addition to bug fixes, the service packs also added a multitude of new features such as Ultra DMA mode for disk drives along with bus mastering, newer versions of Internet Information Services , user accounts and user profile improvements, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, MMX / 3DNow! / SSE / SSE2 support, AGP support, COM support improvements, Event Log service, MS-CHAPv2 and NTLMv2 , SMB packet signing, Syskey , boot improvements, WINS improvements, Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS), PPTP , DCOM/HTTP tunneling improvements, IGMPv2, WMI , Active Accessibility and NTFS 3.0 support among others. Microsoft released five revisions of
2784-404: The right of the screen (accessed by swiping in from the right on multitouch devices, or positioning the mouse in one of the right corners of the screen and sliding up or down). The Start screen is accessed either by that button or by clicking the lower left corner of the screen. Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 restore the button back to its original place without removing the new button in
2842-503: The right-hand column provides access to My Documents , My Pictures, My Music and other special folders . This column also includes shortcuts for Computer and Network ( Network Neighborhood in Windows 95 and 98), which were placed on the Desktop in prior versions of Windows. The contents of this column can be customized. Commonly used programs are automatically displayed in the left-hand menu. Users may opt to "pin" programs to this side of
2900-550: The search button on the charms bar and can also be brought up as it receives keyboard input. True to its name, the Start screen is the first screen that a user sees upon login . The idea of a full-screen Start can be traced back to Windows Neptune , when Microsoft originally considered a "Start page" that integrated with Windows desktop through Active Desktop . This menu has its roots in Windows Mobile and Windows Phone : In Windows Mobile Standard, which runs on smartphones ,
2958-518: The settings button in the charms bar to perform these actions. An April 2014 update for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 restores the latter. Windows 10 re-introduced the Start menu in a revised form. It uses a two column design similar to Windows 7's version, except that the right side is populated by tiles, similarly to Windows 8's Start screen. Applications can be pinned to the right half, and their respective tiles can be resized and grouped into user-specified categories. The left column displays
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#17329176494373016-514: The top of the Start menu, or, if placed in the Programs sub-folder, in the Programs menu. The location of this folder however, depends on the operating system installed: In Windows Server 2003 and earlier, the folder name "Start Menu" changes depending on the localization; for example, on German versions of Windows XP it is " Startmenü ". Windows installers generally use the Windows API to find out
3074-503: The way they accessed graphics hardware. Although Windows NT 4.0 introduced an application programming interface (API) for defragmentation, there was no built-in defragmentation utility, unlike Windows 95. Also, Windows NT 4.0 lacked USB support, a preliminary version of which would be added to OEM editions of Windows 95 in OSR 2.1. AGP support can be added with SP3 or later. Large disk (> 8 GB) support can be added with SP4 or later. FAT32
3132-863: Was also a downloadable feature which replaced Windows NT 4.0's separate RAS and Multi-Protocol Routing services. The last version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with Windows NT 4.0 is Office XP . Similarly, Windows Media Player 7.0 (which was released in June 2000) and DirectX 3.0a (which was released in December 1996) are the last versions of Windows Media Player and DirectX available for Windows NT 4.0, respectively. The last versions of .NET Framework and Windows Installer available for Windows NT 4.0 are .NET Framework 1.1 (released in April 2003) and Windows Installer 2.0 (released in September 2001), respectively. The last version of Internet Explorer supported on Windows NT 4.0
3190-654: Was available as a free-bundled CD starting around 1998, which included IIS 4.0 with Active Server Pages , FrontPage Server Extensions , Certificate Server, MTS , MSMQ , CDONTS , Internet Authentication Service (IAS), Indexing Service , Microsoft Management Console 1.0, Microsoft Site Server , SMTP and NNTP services and other new software. It is the only Option Pack to be released, as most of its features have been integrated into Windows 2000 . Several features such as Distributed File System and Windows NT Load Balancing Service (WLBS) were delivered as addons for Windows NT Server 4.0. The Routing and Remote Access Service
3248-460: Was expanded to encompass various My Documents folders (including My Music and My Pictures ), and transplanted other items like My Computer and My Network Places from the Windows desktop. Until Windows Vista , the Start menu was constantly expanded across the screen as the user navigated through its cascading sub-menus. In Microsoft Windows , the Start menu in some form appears in Windows 9x , Windows NT 4.0 and all subsequent versions in
3306-612: Was known as the Shell Update Release (SUR). While many administrative tools, notably User Manager for Domains , Server Manager and Domain Name Service Manager still used the old graphical user interfaces, the Start menu in Windows NT 4.0 separated the per-user shortcuts and folders from the shared shortcuts and folders by a separator line. Windows NT 4.0 includes some enhancements from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as
3364-683: Was less flexible from a desktop perspective. Much of the stability was gained through the use of protected memory and the hardware abstraction layer . Direct hardware access was disallowed and "misbehaving" programs were terminated without needing the computer to be restarted. The trade-off was that NT required much more memory (32 MB for normal desktop use, 128 MB or more for heavy 3D applications) in comparison to consumer targeted products such as Windows 95. While nearly all programs written for Windows 95 run on Windows NT, many 3D games would not, partly because of limited DirectX support for Windows NT 4.0. Third-party device drivers were an alternative to access
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