The DOS-based PC ecosystem was a house of cards built on an ancient patchwork of code that ran on endless variations of hardware.Īs DOS-based Windows became more complex and feature-laden, more people began to rely on their PCs for serious work, and the instability issues came to a head.

If you used a PC in the late ’90s, you were quite familiar with the frequent crashes, lockups, and reboots that were common on MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x. It Was Rock-Solid Stable, Unlike Windows Me Microsoft This made many who used Windows 2000 feel that much cooler for getting a taste of a stable Windows operating system ahead of time. However, Microsoft decided to hold off until Windows XP in 2001. Some at Microsoft hoped Windows 2000 would be the transition point for consumer Windows to become NT. Microsoft was eager to transition to NT for all, but the system requirements for a reasonably useful Windows NT machine far exceeded what most consumers had at home.īy the late ’90s, many consumer PCs were finally powerful enough to run Windows NT, so they became ripe targets for potential Windows 2000 installations.

Throughout the ’90s, Microsoft maintained DOS-based Windows along with NT to serve those who were still dependent on legacy MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows software. Microsoft created Windows NT from scratch in the early 1990s as part of a fundamental shift away from MS-DOS-based versions like Windows 3.x. Released worldwide on February 17, 2000, Windows 2000 started as Windows NT 5.0, the latest in the Windows NT line of professional Microsoft operating systems.

Windows 2000 product key