Even though Windows 2000 is intended mainly for use in businesses and the consumer market was targeted by Windows Me, many home users installed Windows 2000 Professional at the time due to the highly significant issues that plagued Windows Me. It is the fifth operating system in the Windows NT operating system line. It reached general availability on 17 February 2000 after releasing to manufacturing two months prior on 15 December 1999. Windows 2000 (known as Windows NT 5.0 during development) is an NT-based version of Windows released by Microsoft that succeeded Windows NT 4.0.
