[ChikkaChiChi]

I always considered Windows 2000 to have that honor. Had the licensing been there, it could have gone mainstream. Much better alternative than Windows ME.

[rantingdemon]

I agree with you. I actually tried to run Win 2000 as an OS on my personal machine for a while (from a license I 'borrowed' from my work).

The stability was amazing, but there were still some compatibility issues with games and so on.

[AshamedCaptain]

I remember very much how XP was universally panned versus Win2k when it arrived, but XP just boots significantly faster even on the same hardware. I think it's the first one who really had any chance to replace 9x/ME.

[Clubber]

When was NT able to play Windows 95/DOS games? Was it 2000 or XP? I remember 2000 being able to do it.

[sillywalk]

I remember playing Half Life on 2K, and it had Direct-X support.

I don't think 2K could do DOS games, as they usually talked to the hardware.

[BirAdam]

Shortly after the release of ‘95. Microsoft’s DirectX was made available for both NT and CE. NT was able to run anything for DOS or Windows pretty much right away, though some bugs were evident in games.