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Windows 2000 - Wikipedia

Windows 2000

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Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999,[^2] and then to retail on February 17, 2000, with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server being released on September 26, 2000.

Windows 2000 introduces NTFS 3.0,1 Encrypting File System,2 and basic and dynamic disk storage.3 Support for people with disabilities is improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new assistive technologies,4 and Microsoft increased support for different languages5 and locale information.6 The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features, most notably the introduction of Active Directory,7 which in the years following became a widely used directory service in business environments. Although not present in the final release, support for Alpha was present in its alpha, beta, and release candidate versions. Its successor, Windows XP, only supports x86, x86-64 and Itanium processors. Windows 2000 was also the first NT release to drop the “NT” name from its product line,8 however the “NT” moniker would be used for one final time in the “Built on NT Technology” tagline used on the product’s packaging as well as a few other places in the operating system (such as the boot and logon screens).

Four editions of Windows 2000 have been released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server;9 the latter of which was launched months after the other editions.10 While each edition of Windows 2000 is targeted at a different market, they share a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications.

Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever at the time;11 however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red12 and Nimda.13 Windows 2000 was succeeded by Windows XP in October 2001, while Windows 2000 Server was succeeded by Windows Server 2003 in April 2003. For ten years since its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching end of support on July 13, 2010.[

Both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 use a modified version of the Windows 2000 kernel as their system software;1415 the former’s source code (as well as the source code for Windows NT 3.5) was leaked in 2020.15

Printed 2026-10-13.

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Footnotes

  1. “New Capabilities and Features of the NTFS 3.0 File System”. Microsoft Support. Microsoft. Archived from the original on October 24, 2007. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  2. “Implementing the Encrypting File System in Windows 2000”. TechNet. Microsoft. March 24, 2009. Archived from the original on August 26, 2017. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  3. “Disk Management”. TechNet. Microsoft. July 18, 2012. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  4. “Windows 2000 Professional Accessibility Features”. Microsoft. Archived from the original on December 17, 2003. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  5. “Frequently Asked Questions: Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 MUI”. MSDN. Microsoft. Archived from the original on February 18, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2017. ↩

  6. “Windows 2000 - List of Locale IDs and Language Groups”. Global Development and Computing Portal. Microsoft. Archived from the original on February 3, 2003. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  7. “Windows 2000 Server Family”. TechNet. Microsoft. July 18, 2012. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved February 17, 2017. ↩

  8. “Microsoft Renames Windows NT 5.0 Product Line to Windows 2000; Signals Evolution of Windows NT Technology Into Mainstream”. Microsoft. October 27, 1998. Archived from the original on January 12, 2009. Retrieved June 27, 2026. ↩

  9. “Microsoft Renames Windows NT 5.0 Product Line to Windows 2000; Signals Evolution of Windows NT Technology Into Mainstream”. News Center. Microsoft. October 27, 1998. Archived from the original on January 12, 2009. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  10. “Microsoft Announces Final Packaging for Windows 2000”. News Center. Microsoft. August 17, 1999. Archived from the original on May 8, 2014. Retrieved February 14, 2017. ↩

  11. “Microsoft and CyberSafe Extend Windows 2000 Security Across the Enterprise”. News Center. Microsoft. January 17, 2000. Archived from the original on February 18, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2017. ↩

  12. “‘Code Red’ Worm Exploiting Buffer Overflow in IIS Indexing Service DLL”. CERT Coordination Center. Software Engineering Institute. July 19, 2001. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016. Retrieved May 17, 2019. ↩

  13. Swartz, Jon (September 25, 2001). “Nimba called most serious Net attack on business”. USA Today. Gannett Company. Archived from the original on February 17, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2017. ↩

  14. Trinder, Garry (February 17, 2006). “The Xbox Operating System”. Xbox Engineering. MSDN. Archived from the original on November 2, 2018. Retrieved October 31, 2018. ↩

  15. Warren, Tom (May 21, 2020). “Xbox and Windows NT 3.5 source code leaks online”. ↩ ↩2