Windows NT 3.51
Encyclopedia
Windows NT 3.51 is the third release of Microsoft
's Windows NT
line of operating system
s. It was released on 30 May 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5
. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows
on the PowerPC
architecture. The second most significant enhancement offered through the release was that it provides client/server support for interoperating with Windows 95
, which was released three months after NT 3.51. Windows NT 4.0
became its successor a year later; Microsoft continued to support 3.51 until 31 December 2001.
, MIPS
, and Alpha
architectures.
New features introduced in Windows NT 3.51 include PCMCIA support, NTFS
file compression, replaceable WinLogon
(GINA
), 3D support in OpenGL
, persistent IP routes when using TCP/IP, automatic display of textual descriptions when the mouse pointer was placed on toolbar buttons ("tooltips") and support for Windows 95 common controls.
Despite the significant difference in the kernel base, Windows NT 3.51 is readily able to run a large number of Win32 applications designed for Windows 95
. Most recent 32-bit applications will not work as the developers have prevented their application from working with any Windows version earlier than Windows 98, also because some applications do not work properly with the older Windows NT 3.51 interface. Despite this, Microsoft in their application releases muddied the issue, releasing 32-bit
versions of Microsoft Office
right up to Office 97 SR2b, but relying upon 16-bit
versions of Internet Explorer
technology. This is probably because 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer 4.0
and later integrated with the Windows 95 desktop, and NT 3.51 still used the Windows 3.1 desktop. Later on, up to IE 5.0
, but not later 5.x versions, were offered.
-based graphical user interface
. The release provided capabilities quite similar to that of the Windows "Chicago" (codename for Windows 95) shell during its late beta phases; however, it was intended to be nothing more than a test release. There was a second public release of the Shell Technology Preview, called Shell Technology Preview Update made available to MSDN and CompuServe
users on 8 August 1995. Both releases held Windows Explorer builds of 3.51.1053.1. The Shell Technology Preview program never saw a final release under NT 3.51. The entire program was moved across to the Cairo
development group who finally integrated the new shell design into the NT code with the release of NT 4.0 in July 1996.
Five Service Packs
were released for NT 3.51, which introduced both bug fixes and new features. Service Pack 5, for example, fixed issues related to the Year 2000 problem
.
NT 3.51 was the last of the series to run on an Intel 80386
processor. This, its ability to use HPFS partitions (which Windows 2000 and later could not), and its ability to run at least some of the common control API, means that it still finds a place for occasional use on older machines. Windows NT 3.51, like other versions of Windows NT.3x, has some compatibility with OS/2 1.x Applications; however, the applications were to be in text mode.
Windows NT 3.51 supports IDE, EIDE, SCSI
and ESDI
hard drives. The only EIDE addressing schemes supported are Logical block addressing
, ONTrack Disk Manager, EZDrive, and Extended cylinder-head-sector.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
line of operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s. It was released on 30 May 1995, nine months after Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on 21 September 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in...
. The release provided two notable feature improvements; firstly NT 3.51 was the first of a short-lived outing of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
on the PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
architecture. The second most significant enhancement offered through the release was that it provides client/server support for interoperating with Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, which was released three months after NT 3.51. Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
became its successor a year later; Microsoft continued to support 3.51 until 31 December 2001.
Overview
The release of Windows NT 3.51 was dubbed "the PowerPC release" at Microsoft. The original intention was to release a PowerPC edition of NT 3.5, but according to Microsoft's David Thompson, "we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware". Editions of NT 3.51 were also released for the x86X86 architecture
The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
, MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
, and Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
architectures.
New features introduced in Windows NT 3.51 include PCMCIA support, NTFS
NTFS
NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7....
file compression, replaceable WinLogon
Winlogon
In computing, Winlogon is the component of Microsoft Windows operating systems that is responsible for handling the secure attention sequence, loading the user profile on logon, and optionally locking the computer when a screensaver is running...
(GINA
Graphical identification and authentication
The graphical identification and authentication library is a component of some Microsoft Windows operating systems that provides secure authentication and interactive logon services....
), 3D support in OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
, persistent IP routes when using TCP/IP, automatic display of textual descriptions when the mouse pointer was placed on toolbar buttons ("tooltips") and support for Windows 95 common controls.
Despite the significant difference in the kernel base, Windows NT 3.51 is readily able to run a large number of Win32 applications designed for Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. Most recent 32-bit applications will not work as the developers have prevented their application from working with any Windows version earlier than Windows 98, also because some applications do not work properly with the older Windows NT 3.51 interface. Despite this, Microsoft in their application releases muddied the issue, releasing 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
versions of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
right up to Office 97 SR2b, but relying upon 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
versions of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
technology. This is probably because 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer 4.0
Internet Explorer 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It".It was one of the main participants of the first...
and later integrated with the Windows 95 desktop, and NT 3.51 still used the Windows 3.1 desktop. Later on, up to IE 5.0
Internet Explorer 5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 was a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Solaris, and HP-UX. It was one of the main participants of the first browser war...
, but not later 5.x versions, were offered.
NewShell
On 26 May 1995, Microsoft released a test version of a shell refresh, named the Shell Technology Preview, and often referred to informally as "NewShell". This was the first incarnation of the modern Windows GUI with the Taskbar and Start menu. It was designed to replace the Windows 3.x Program Manager/File Manager based shell with Windows ExplorerWindows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
-based graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
. The release provided capabilities quite similar to that of the Windows "Chicago" (codename for Windows 95) shell during its late beta phases; however, it was intended to be nothing more than a test release. There was a second public release of the Shell Technology Preview, called Shell Technology Preview Update made available to MSDN and CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
users on 8 August 1995. Both releases held Windows Explorer builds of 3.51.1053.1. The Shell Technology Preview program never saw a final release under NT 3.51. The entire program was moved across to the Cairo
Cairo (operating system)
Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996. Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips." Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since...
development group who finally integrated the new shell design into the NT code with the release of NT 4.0 in July 1996.
Five Service Packs
Service pack
A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain ...
were released for NT 3.51, which introduced both bug fixes and new features. Service Pack 5, for example, fixed issues related to the Year 2000 problem
Year 2000 problem
The Year 2000 problem was a problem for both digital and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits.In computer programs, the practice of representing the year with two...
.
NT 3.51 was the last of the series to run on an Intel 80386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
processor. This, its ability to use HPFS partitions (which Windows 2000 and later could not), and its ability to run at least some of the common control API, means that it still finds a place for occasional use on older machines. Windows NT 3.51, like other versions of Windows NT.3x, has some compatibility with OS/2 1.x Applications; however, the applications were to be in text mode.
Hardware requirements
| "Windows NT Workstation" | "Windows NT Server" | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor Central processing unit The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in... |
386 or 486/25 processor | 386 or 486/25 processor |
| Memory | 12 MB RAM | 16 MB RAM |
| Video | VGA video | VGA video |
| Hard disk drive free space | 90 MB | 90 MB |
Windows NT 3.51 supports IDE, EIDE, SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
and ESDI
Enhanced Small Disk Interface
Enhanced Small Disk Interface was a disk interface designed by Maxtor Corporation in the early 1980s to be a follow-on to the ST-506 interface...
hard drives. The only EIDE addressing schemes supported are Logical block addressing
Logical block addressing
Logical block addressing is a common scheme used for specifying the location of blocks of data stored on computer storage devices, generally secondary storage systems such as hard disks....
, ONTrack Disk Manager, EZDrive, and Extended cylinder-head-sector.