BetaWiki:Featured article/2021-01

Windows NT 3.1 build 196 is the earliest publicly released build of Windows NT 3.1, which was compiled and sent out to a limited number of developers in mid-September 1991 as a trial before the Fall COMDEX 1991 build. Compared to the COMDEX build, this build is noticeably less stable and has the tendency to hang even during common tasks such as opening new windows. Many of the hangs are caused by the system breaking to the debugger following an unsatisfied assertion condition. It is also sensitive to fragmentation of its boot files, with the system freezing on boot if the boot loader is not stored contiguously.

This build has several differences compared to later builds, such as an older bootloader with a primitive dual boot menu which supports either a MS-DOS or OS/2 install on the same disk as NT, an early version of the Portable Executable format, or the lack of a self-hosted installer. According to the documentation included with the build, this is also one of the first builds to implement security.