Nt's Personality On Microsoft's Current Windows System example essay topic

The history of Windows NT The features of Windows NT The history of Windows NT: The history of Windows NT goes back to the early 80's, when Microsoft was working on the original Windows system to run on top of DOS. They joined forces with IBM in order to create a more powerful DOS replacement that would run on the Intel x 86 platform. The resulting operating system was to be known as OS/2. At the same time OS/2 was being developed, Microsoft was busy working on a new OS, more powerful than the Windows system they already had. This 'New Technology' operating system would run on different processor platforms. They planned to accomplish this by writing most of the operating system in the C programming language, which is a language that is portable across platforms.

In late October of 1988, Microsoft hired a man named David Cutler who was a respected operating systems guru from Digital Equipment Corporation, to help them design their new operating system. The original planned name was OS/2 NT because at the time, Microsoft was helping to develop OS/2 and was integrating parts of it into its new operating system (NT). After almost two years of work, the first bits of OS/2 NT ran on an Intel i 860 processor. Around the same time, David Cutler projected to Bill Gates that NT would ship around March 1991, which turned out be more than two years off the mark.

In early 1990, as teams dedicated to NT were formed within Microsoft, Bill Gates criticized NT for being 'too big, and too slow " during a review. The decision was eventually made in early 1991 to base NT's 'personality' on Microsoft's current Windows system, version 3.0, and not OS/2. In other words, the personality (the API and user interface in addition to other things) of the new operating system was to be 'modeled' after Windows 3.0. The OS/2 NT name was dropped; the new name was to be Windows NT.

When version 3.0 of Microsoft's regular Windows (the one based on MS-DOS) was released by Microsoft in the early 90's, it gained a large user base rather quickly. In early 1991, IBM became aware that Microsoft was planning to use Windows and not OS/2 as the user interface and API for its new OS. As IBM became less of a player and Microsoft applied its Windows environment to NT, Bill Gates and his Windows NT team, lead by David Cutler, pushed forward with the development of NT. Microsoft effectively cut all ties with IBM as far as their development of OS/2. Coding and testing of NT continued in the following months, and Windows NT version 3.1 was released on July 17, 1993. Even though this was the first version of Windows NT, Microsoft made the decision to name it version 3.1 instead of 1.0 in order to, in a way, integrate it with its current Windows OS which was already on the market.

They thought that naming it version 1.0 may make people skeptical of its reliability. Version 3.5 of Windows NT followed short time later. Even since version 3.1, the operating system has been totally 32-bit. Microsoft has continued to refine their operating system over the years with a series of service packs and hot fixes, designed to patch shortcomings and security issues. A major revision, version 4.0, was released in August 1996 with the user interface of Windows 95. It is built from a staggering sixteen million lines of C and C++code.

The next version of Windows NT, Windows 2000, is currently in beta and promises support for many new emerging technologies. As previously noted, Windows NT 4.0 comes in two flavors, Server and Workstation. NT Server is powerful and versatile. It can be used for everything from a Local Area Network file server to a full-fledged Internet server, providing mail, web, ftp or any combination of TCP based services.

Both NT Server and Workstation can act as TCP / IP routers, should you ever need them to do so. NT Workstation is a powerful 32-bit desktop operating system that acts as the perfect client companion to NT Server. It is also an excellent stand-alone OS. Windows NTis backwards compatible with the vast majority of PC software, 16 and 32 bit.

It does not allow software to make direct calls to system hardware (often using assembly lan gauge), which is the reason why some games will refuse to run on it. The major features of Windows NT: Portability Windows NT was written almost entirely in C, which is a language that is easily moved from platform to platform. Microsoft isolated the part of the operating system that had to be written for specific hardware in something called the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). When Microsoft wanted to move NT to different platforms, all they had to do was recompile the source code for the new hardware and create a new Hardware Abstraction Layer.

Windows NT will run on the Intel x 86 architecture, the MIPS RISC architecture, Digital Alpha, and Motorola PowerPC RISC. As an interesting note, Windows 2000 will only run on the x 86 and Digital Alpha platforms. Pre-Emptive Multitasking Multitasking allows a computer to seemingly be performing more than one task at any given time. Processors cannot work on many things at once, but operating systems can be designed in such a way that they handle many tasks at one time, and share the processor. Windows NT queues up tasks, giving each one a priority level. NT has 32 different priority levels (0 - 31).

Then, based on that information (in addition to other information), the operating system does some of task 1, some of task 2, some of task 3, and some of task 1 again. It swaps each task in and out of the processor, giving the illusion that the computer is doing many things at the same time. Windows NT also does a very good job at isolating tasks in memory, so that if a task hangs or otherwise becomes inoperable, you can kill it easily and quickly, somewhat like UNIX. Program sare not allowed to use memory areas which the OS is using, and are also not allowed to use memory areas which other programs are using. This reduces the chance that a crashed application will affect the integrity of the operating system or other programs. Symmetric Multiprocessing Support Using a technique called Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP), Windows NT is capable of utilizing more than one processor on the same system.

Unlike Asymmetrical Multiprocessing, which assigns different types of tasks to different processors, Symmetrical Multiprocessing is capable of assigning any task to any processor on the system. This has the end result of using each processor to its fullest extent. Out of the box, Windows NT will support two processors in Workstation form, and four processors in Server form (eight for NT Server Enterprise Edition). Some special versions of Windows NT have the capability to support up to 32 processors. This was originally the upper limit that Windows NT was architecturally designed to support. Microsoft does not officially support NT Server with more than 8 processors.

System vendors who wish to use more than 8 processors must remaster the Windows NT CD-ROM with a registry value set accordingly. The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) may also need to be rewritten. Security The U.S. Government has given Windows NT a C 2 certification for security. Class C 2 provides " discretionary (need-to-know) protection and, through the inclusion of audit capabilities, for accountability of subjects and the actions they initiate'. What does this mean for you? Well, simply put, Windows NT can be set up to maintain an extremely high level of security.

NT Server has security that allows administrators to control security down to the file level. Windows NT solves many classic security problems with some rather innovative solutions. One interesting thing to note about NT is how you log on. You type the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence.

This is a clever safeguard against programs that may attempt to steal passwords by impersonating the login screen. The Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence, given any other time during a Windows NT session, brings up the six-button 'Windows NT Security' box. RAID Support Windows NT has support for a very sophisticated hardware feature called RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). RAID allows for large storage capacity, improved performance, and increased reliability. It does this in different ways depending on the RAID level you are speaking of. RAID is capable, for example, of disk mirroring, which simply keeps a mirror copy of what is on one disk, on another.

Higher RAID levels will actually keep two bits of every bite (there are 8 bits in a byte) on different disks, spreading the data out and speeding up retrieval. Windows NT utilizes SCSI disk drives to implement RAID. Increased Stability / Robustness over Windows 95/98 More attention was paid to the stability of Windows NT 4.0 when Microsoft was designing and coding it. It was essential that NT be very stable in order to be a viable alternative to UNIX as a desktop and server operating system. Windows 95 and 98 are notoriously unstable and not acceptable for very high performance hardware (multiple processors, Gigs of RAM), and high demand TCP / IP applications, such as that seen in high volume Internet servers. Blue screens of death are also few and far between compared to Windows 9 x.

So in summary, NT 4.0 is much more stable and reliable than Win 9 x due to how it was designed and due to its heritage, which is entirely different from Windows 9 x..