Windows 2000 - History

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. Beta 1 of NT 5.0 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 January 1999. NT 5.0 Beta 1 was similar to NT 4.0, including a very similar 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 for 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 1976. The Windows 2000 boot screen in the final version first appeared in Beta 3 build 1994. Windows 2000's codenames are NT 5.0 and MemphisNT.

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, 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 first planned to replace both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. However, that changed later. Instead, an updated version of Windows 98 called Windows 98 Second Edition was released in 1999 and Windows Me was released in late 2000. Close to the release of Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, Microsoft released Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, targeted at large-scale computing systems with support for 32 processors, on September 29, 2000.

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" for certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer was reported.