| Combined layered and modular structure - extensibility |
| Flat 32 bit paged memory model |
| Multithreaded system with preemptive scheduling |
| Environment subsystems emulate other operating systems (Windows, Windows'95, MSDOS, OS/2, POSIX) |
| Environment subsystems separated form the NT kernel by NT Executive |
| Executive provides scheduling, synchronization, interrupt processing and thread and memory management |
| Hardware dependencies isolated by the hardware abstraction layer - easy porting process |
| Priviledged mode extension (device drivers, file systems) coordinated by Executuve but talk directly to hardware |
| Supports SMP architectures |