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.

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.įour 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. 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.

Windows 2000 introduced NTFS 3.0, Encrypting File System, as well as basic and dynamic disk storage. It was Microsoft's business operating system until the introduction of Windows XP Professional in 2001. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officially released to retail on Februand Septemfor Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and designed for businesses. Mainstream support ended on June 30, 2005 windows2000/ at the Wayback Machine (archived December 3, 2000) IA-32 (including PC-98) ( Alpha in alpha, beta, and release candidate versions) Service Pack 4 with Update Rollup () / September 13, 2005 17 years ago ( ) Source-available (through Shared Source Initiative).

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