Despite my own experience with Windows ends with XP, NT 4 was always my favourite version.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> 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
orionblastar•4h ago
out-of-ideas•3h ago
orionblastar•3h ago
Do I have to donate to get the driver?
Lammy•2h ago
binarycrusader•2h ago
https://archive.org/details/VBEMPNT