Windows 2000 is an operating system that was produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and launched to retail on February 17, 2000. Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server, Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever at the time; however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda. For ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching the end of its lifecycle on July 13, 2010. The original name for the operating system was Windows NT 5.0 and the first beta was released in September 1997. Windows 2000 included version 7.0 of the DirectX API, commonly used by game developers on Windows 98. The last version of DirectX that was released for Windows 2000 was DirectX 9.0c (Shader Model 3.0). Download Windows 2000 ISO
