Windows 2000 Professional

Description

Microsoft's Windows 2000 is a significant update to the Windows NT operating system. It was designed with the commercial sector in mind and was released in 2000. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0 and was made available to manufacturers on December 15, 1999. The general public was able to purchase it for the first time on February 17, 2000. Up to the release of Windows XP Professional in 2001, it was the operating system that Microsoft used for its business customers.

Windows 2000 was the first version of Microsoft's operating system to include the Encrypting File System (NTFS 3.0), in addition to basic and dynamic disk storage. In comparison to Windows NT 4.0, support for users with disabilities has been significantly enhanced with the addition of a number of new assistive technologies. Additionally, Microsoft has expanded its support for a variety of languages and boosted its support for location information. Additional capabilities were added to the Windows 2000 Server family, the most notable of which was the introduction of Active Directory. In the years that followed, Active Directory evolved into a directory service that is extensively utilized in corporate settings.

Windows 2000 was made available in a total of four different editions: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server. The Datacenter Server edition was the last to be manufactured and was launched many months after the other variants. Even though each version of Windows 2000 was developed with a specific market in mind, they all shared a fundamental collection of functionality. These features included a wide variety of system tools, such as the Microsoft Management Console and other basic system administration programs.