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Windows NT4 Gripe, Gripe, Gripe

NT4 was Microsoft's best operating system until Windows 2000 arrived

Is Microsoft Abandoning NT4? 

March 29, 2003.  Microsoft will not offer a version of a security patch for NT 4 has called into question the company's earlier promise to continue supporting the operating system through the end of 2004, and has raised concern among its customers. An analyst from Gartner is quoted as saying "Part of [Microsoft's] logic is, 'We don't want to encourage people to stay on Win NT 4..." 
Failure to Patch NT Flaw Causes Concern IDG News Service. March 28, 2003. Users question Microsoft's promise to support the aging version of Windows.

Bugs with Security Fixes

The following is a quote from the w2knews.com newsletter of August 2, 2001. 

Microsoft just released what they promised a while ago. Instead of a Service Pack 7, they shipped a Post-SP6a Security Rollup Package (SRP). This relatively small (just 14.3MB) bundle gets you all the security updates released for NT 4.0 since the release of NT 4.0 SP6a. So far, so good. But there are several people on the NTSYSADMIN newsgroup that already reported problems with this roll-up. One system admin had a test server blow up with BSOD STOP 0x0000000a in NTOSKRNL.EXE after installing the roll-up and the machine is not booting anymore. After checking, more admins are fighting this same problem. It looks like machines (both WS and SV) with older firmware are potentially causing the problem, that affects both single and multi-CPU boxes. So, I'm not saying this thing is full of bugs, but I'm simply repeating what I have said over and over these last 5 years. Test it out first, do NOT run this on a production machine without knowing it will work OK. Here is where you can get the rollup: http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=080201-MSRollUp 

Assorted Gripes in no particular order 

Windows NT4 logo

In the prior version of Windows NT (3.51) it was very easy to tell the currently logged on userid. This was lost in version 4, where this information is buried. You can find it however, in the NT diagnostics (in Administrator tools), or you could right click on START button, select Open (not Open All Users), go up one level and check out the name of the directory where you are.


There is no way to tell what bug fixes have been applied to the system. Yes, winver does tell you the service pack, but how many people know about it and its not much of a help as each service pack has hundreds of bug fixes and new features. Also, it knows nothing of individual fixes that have been applied since the last service pack.

The whole process of applying bug fixes ("service packs" in Microsoft lingo) is disgraceful. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and the poor user or system administrator is left to figure it out. Anytime you make modifications to the operating system, the service pack should be re-applied. Just what constitutes a modification that requires the re-applying of the service pack? Its not clear. The bigger gripe is that this is needed at all. Why have a registry if the system can't keep track of its own bug fixes? When re-applying a service pack the user is always presented with oodles of questions about file so and so having a newer version and whether it should be clobbered with the older version from the service pack. Asking a user/administrator such a question is disgraceful. It shows NT to be an operating system built by children rather than adults. (February 2, 2000)

There is no roadmap (cheat sheet) for creating a system. In January 2000, I had to install NT. After the initial install the machine was at Service Pack 1. Next comes:

In what sequence? Beats me. On the Microsoft web site for NT they promise a roadmap, but there is none now.

There is no file integrity, which is surprising for such a highly touted operating system. For example, open a TXT file in Notepad by double-clicking on it in Windows Explorer. Then open another copy the same way. Update the first copy and save it. Update the second copy and save it. The changes made to the first copy of the file are lost. An operating system should protect files from concurrent updates. 

The NTFS file system offers the option to compress files and/or directories. When you right click on a compressed directory and get its properties, you are told the total size of all files in the directory. Compressed or uncompressed? Beats me. Why couldn't it report both? It does report both if you compress an already existing directory. (as of Service Pack 6a. December 2000).  

On more than one computer with NT4 and service pack 6a, the Internet can't multi-process. That is, if two browser windows are open at the same time and both downloading web pages, one will always fail. This is not limited to web browsers, but is true of all Internet applications. One at a time. I am pretty sure this was not the case with SP3 and is certainly not the case with Windows 98. (December 2000) 

Speaking of service pack 6, it changed the shutdown behavior. Prior to SP6, when NT4 was shutting down it would say that it was writing unsaved data to the disk. Then it would say that the shut was complete. After applying SP6 (to SP3 machines) you no longer get the informational message that NT4 is saving data. Instead you get the NT4 logo. What's going on? I guess it's no longer my business. At least it still tells you when the shutdown is complete. (January 2001) 


January 8, 2000.  I added a network card to an NT workstation machine at SP3 so that it could participate on the LAN in my living room. I also added the definition of a network printer that is owned by a Netgear PS104 print server.

The printer addition called for the original NT CD-ROM. Everything was working fine at first. Then I followed the correct procedure and re-installed SP3 telling it never to clobber any newer files. That was it for the day.

The next day, as I brag and show off my handiwork to my wife, who wants to print to the network printer, NT could not see the network at all!. Network neighborhood did not even see the shares on the local system. The NIC card was fine, it has its own diagnostic software that showed no problems.

After a lot of debugging (don't ask) it turns out that the problem has nothing to do with SP3, but instead relates to another machine on my LAN! This other machine is also running NT and was on when the problem machine was first configured. If the other machine is on, networking works well on problem machine. Then turn off the other machine and all of a sudden, the problem machine can no longer see anything on the LAN. It cant even see its own shared directories, let alone the print server that owns my printer. The problem NT machine loses its network neighborhood mind as soon as the other NT machine on the LAN is turned off. This happens, pretty much immediately.
The problem occurred when both NT machines were logging on as Administrator, but when the problem NT machine logged on as a different userid, it had no effect. 

At the same time however, Word can print to the network printer just fine! Even after a cold start of the problem NT machine, when it and the print server are the only things on the LAN and network neighborhood from the problem machine sees nothing at all, printing to the network printer works just fine. The printer applet in Control Panel can see the network printer and its print queue and properties just fine. Also a >net view \\printservername command works just fine. Although Network Neighborhood sees nothing at all, a net view \\mylocalpc runs fine and sees its own shared directories.

In the registry of the problem NT workstation machine HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters
has  False  for IsDomainMaster and has   Auto  for MaintainServerList.

With the problem machine up and running, I connect a Windows 98 machine to the lan. The Win98 network neighborhood does not see the problem NT machine. A net view command to the problem machine returns a security problem (error 5) , not a connectivity problem (error 53). Specifically the error is:

Error 5: You do not currently have access to this file. The file may be marked read-only, or it may be part of a shared resource such as a folder, a named pipe, a queue, or a semaphore. You can use the ATTRIB command to change the read-only attribute, or try again later when the file may be available.

A few minutes later, the problem NT workstation machine shows up in Network Neighborhood on the Windows 98 machine! Go figure. Double clicking on it resulted in Win98 asking for a password for the IPC$ share. Not knowing what userid was being used, I wasn't sure password to give it. However, this seems to have a wake-up effect on the problem NT machine. Now its Network Neighborhood sees everything on the LAN - itself, the print server and the Windows 98 machine! I logged off the current userid on Windows 98 and logged onto Windows98 with a userid that the problem NT machine has in its local security database. Then, when prompted for a password trying to get at the shares on the problem NT machine, I knew what password to use and it worked. Sort of. The problem NT machine has two shared directories. From the Win98 machine, I could see only one. A net view \\localpcname on the problem NT machine confirmed that there were two shared directories.

Seems that the problem NT workstation machine is lonely. It does not like being the only PC on the LAN.

I zapped the registry. Under this key,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters
I changed  MaintainBrowseList  from   Auto to Yes. No effect.

At this point, I gave up and had dinner, having wasted a good part of the day. Over Chicken Bun Xao, the answer occurred to me. If you want a puzzle, stop here and think. To read the answer to the problem, and my gripe click here.

   Page last updated:  March 29, 2003