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Web Developer's Journal Archive SectionThis article is out of date, but may still be useful to some readers.Windows NT 3.5by Bob Muenchen |
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The new release of Windows NT version 3.5 and the coming release of Windows 95 (formerly known as Chicago or Windows 4) has caused quite a stir in the computing community. In this article I will discuss my experience with NT 3.1 and the new release 3.5; and compare NT with what Microsoft says will be in Windows 95. With so many versions of Windows discussed I'll try to simplify things by referring to the combination of DOS and Windows 3.1 as simply "Windows", Windows NT as "NT" and Windows 95 as "95".
Windows NT 3.1I first became interested in NT around two years ago. I had installed the latest version of the QEMM memory manager and had become quite ecstatic at the fact that it had enabled me to gain an extra 40 kilobytes of memory. The irony of it was that I would have really liked to have solved problems that required 32 megabytes of memory, and I had the hardware capable of solving such problems. The limitation was MS-DOS. I ordered a copy of the October '92 beta for NT, and installed it on my machine in such a way that I could run either Windows or NT at startup. I kept Windows around because "beta" software has not been debugged enough to be released in final form and so is likely to cause trouble. I expected frequent crashes and incompatibilities with my software, none of which was compiled for NT. To my surprise, the beta of NT two years ago was much more stable than the production release of Windows. I had been experiencing around one crash a day with Windows. I have experienced only 5 crashes in two years under NT, the first year of which was using the beta copy! Mine is probably an extreme case, due to the fact that I have to work with a wide range of software for 4-8 hours a day.The first production release of NT came out in August of '93. It's features included: the ability to run existing MS-DOS and Windows programs, the ability to do things 32 bits at a time instead of 16 (which makes a well designed program run much faster) the ability to capably run multiple processes (programs) and multiple threads within each process (for example, continuing to edit while a separate thread does your printing), the ability to access up to 2 gigabytes of memory per process, crash protection that keeps one malfunctioning program from killing other programs or the whole system, symmetric multiprocessing to execute the processes or threads across multiple processors, a high-speed file system, security to protect your machine from viruses, other people and even yourself, the ability to share files and printers on a network, networking utilities such as ftp, telnet, ping, etc., the ability to run on fast RISC-based computers such as MIPS, DEC's Alpha. How did all these features affect performance? The few applications I had that were compiled for NT were much faster than on the same machine running Windows. CPU-intensive applications ran twice as fast (this makes sense since it was doing things 32 bits at a time instead of 16) and disk-intensive applications ran four times as fast due to the advanced capabilities of the NT file system. With all that, there was an important downside. It took a minimum of 16 megabytes of memory and 70 megabytes of disk space to run NT, it ran existing Windows programs 10-15% slower, and although a crashing Windows program could not bring down the system, it would crash other Windows programs (only NT programs had full protection). There is also a class of software that NT will not run without new drivers: software which tries to manipulate hardware directly. The security system stops such attempts to get around the operating system. This is good when it's a virus trying to do it, but not so good when it's your fax software attempting to write to an internal fax card. Fax software is a category which many popular software vendors, such as Delrina, have yet to address for NT. Network support was also lacking; it took Microsoft months to come out with support for Novell's Netware. Windows NT version 3.5 Installation In September of '94, Microsoft unveiled version 3.5 of NT. I have installed it on two machines, one that was an upgrade from NT 3.1 and another on an unformatted drive. It is available on either 3.5" diskettes or on CD-ROM. These come as separate packages now, while the 3.1 version included both in one box. Both versions start out with diskettes and if you have the CD-ROM version, you switch over to CD after the third diskette. It attempts to autodetect the brand of CD-ROM drive, which it was successful at for a Future Domain SCSI drive, but not for the CD-ROM drive in an IBM ValuePoint computer. If it doesn't find a drive, it offers a list of drives to choose from, and after you make the correct choice, it acknowledges finding the drive. This is easy unless you don't know the manufacturer of the drive. I called IBM to find out what type of CD-ROM their ValuePoints use, and they referred me to the people who they buy them from at Sound Blaster. I called them and they told me to use a Panasonic driver, which worked fine. NT continued with the installation, correctly detecting an SMC ISA ethernet card and a new model SMC PCI card in the two machines. After the 45 minute installation, you're ready to begin work. If you already know Windows, then you can begin working exactly as you have in the past; NT looks and works just the same. Even software installations are the same as under MS-DOS. NT doesn't need files like config.sys and autoexec.bat, but it does look for them just to maintain compatibility with MS-DOS and Windows software. How can a system with built-in security work so similarly to Windows? Toward the end of the installation process, NT prompts you for an initial account name and password. When you start the system, it has that name filled in, and you must supply the password. However, by default you are given "administrator" privileges, so that you can do anything you like with your system, including erase a crucial system file or infect your system with a virus! When you have time to learn about security, you can create another account on your system that has fewer privileges. You can also create other accounts to share your computer with others secure in the knowledge that they can't change your files or system configuration.
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