Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a business-oriented operating system that was produced by Microsoft and was released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was succeeded by Windows XP in 2001, releasing to manufacturing on December 15, 1999 and being officially released to retail on February 17, 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0.

Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server; the latter was both released to manufacturing and launched months after the other editions. While each edition of Windows 2000 was targeted at a different market, they shared a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications.

Windows 2000 introduces NTFS 3.0, Encrypting File System, as well as basic and dynamic disk storage. Support for people with disabilities was improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new assistive technologies, and Microsoft increased support for different languages and locale information. The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features, most notably the introduction of Active Directory, which in the years following became a widely used directory service in business environments.

Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever at the time; however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda. For ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching the end of its lifecycle on July 13, 2010.

Windows 2000 is the last version of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation, and the last version where the desktop and server versions of Windows shared the same name. It is succeeded by Windows XP (released in October 2001) for workstations and Windows Server 2003 (released in April 2003) for servers.

History

Windows 2000 is a continuation of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems, replacing Windows NT 4.0. The original name for the operating system was Windows NT 5.0 and the first beta was released in September 1997, followed by Beta 2 in August 1998. On October 27, 1998, Microsoft announced that the name of the final version of the operating system would be Windows 2000, a name which referred to its projected release date. Windows 2000 Beta 3 was released in May 1999. NT 5.0 Beta 1 was similar to NT 4.0, including a very similarly themed logo. NT 5.0 Beta 2 introduced a new 'mini' boot screen, and removed the 'dark space' theme in the logo. The NT 5.0 betas had very long startup and shutdown sounds, though these were changed in the early Windows 2000 beta, but during Beta 3, a new piano-made startup and shutdown sounds were made, featured in the final version as well as in Windows Me. The new login prompt from the final version made its first appearance in Beta 3 build 1946 (the first build of Beta 3). The new, updated icons (for My Computer, Recycle Bin etc.) first appeared in Beta 3 build 1964. The Windows 2000 boot screen in the final version first appeared in Beta 3 build 1983. Windows 2000 did not have a codename because, according to Dave Thompson of Windows NT team, "Jim Allchin didn't like codenames".

Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 was codenamed "Asteroid" and Windows 2000 64-bit was codenamed "Janus". During development, there was a build for the Alpha which was abandoned some time after RC1 after Compaq announced they had dropped support for Windows NT on Alpha. From here, Microsoft issued three release candidates between July and November 1999, and finally released the operating system to partners on December 12, 1999. The public could buy the full version of Windows 2000 on February 17, 2000. Three days before this event, which Microsoft advertised as "a standard in reliability," a leaked memo from Microsoft reported on by Mary Jo Foley revealed that Windows 2000 had "over 63,000 potential known defects". After Foley's article was published, she claimed that Microsoft blacklisted her for a considerable time. However, Abraham Silberschatz et al. claim in their computer science textbook that "Windows 2000 was the most reliable, stable operating system Microsoft had ever shipped to that point. Much of this reliability came from maturity in the source code, extensive stress testing of the system, and automatic detection of many serious errors in drivers". InformationWeek summarized the release "our tests show the successor to NT 4.0 is everything we hoped it would be. Of course, it isn't perfect either. "Wired News later described the results of the February launch as lackluster". Novell criticized Microsoft's Active Directory, the new directory service architecture, as less scalable or reliable than its own Novell Directory Services (NDS) alternative.

Windows 2000 was initially planned to replace both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. However, this changed later, as an updated version of Windows 98 called Windows 98 Second Edition was released in 1999.

On or shortly before February 12, 2004, "portions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 source code were illegally made available on the Internet"The source of the leak remains unannounced. Microsoft issued the following statement:

"Microsoft source code is both copyrighted and protected as a trade secret. As such, it is illegal to post it, make it available to others, download it or use it."

Despite the warnings, the archive containing the leaked code spread widely on the file-sharing networks. On February 16, 2004, an exploit "allegedly discovered by an individual studying the leaked source code"[32] for certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer was reported.

Microsoft planned to release a 64-bit version of Windows 2000, which would run on 64-bit Intel Itanium microprocessors, in 2000.[33][34] However, the first officially released 64-bit version of Windows was Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, released alongside the 32-bit editions of Windows XP on October 25, 2001,[35] followed by the server versions Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition and later Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition, which were based on the pre-release Windows Server 2003 (then known as Windows .NET Server) codebase.[36][37] These editions were released in 2002, were shortly available through the OEM channel and then were superseded by the final versions of Server 2003.[37]

New and updated features

Windows 2000 is a business-oriented operating system that was produced by Microsoft and was released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was succeeded by Windows XP in 2001, releasing to manufacturing on December 15, 1999 and being officially released to retail on February 17, 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0.

Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server; the latter was both released to manufacturing and launched months after the other editions. While each edition of Windows 2000 was targeted at a different market, they shared a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications.

Windows 2000 introduces NTFS 3.0, Encrypting File System, as well as basic and dynamic disk storage. Support for people with disabilities was improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new assistive technologies, and Microsoft increased support for different languages and locale information. The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features, most notably the introduction of Active Directory, which in the years following became a widely used directory service in business environments.

Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever at the time; however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda. For ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching the end of its lifecycle on July 13, 2010.

Windows 2000 is the last version of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation, and the last version where the desktop and server versions of Windows shared the same name. It is succeeded by Windows XP (released in October 2001) for workstations and Windows Server 2003 (released in April 2003) for servers.