The Executive interfaces, with all the user mode subsystems, deal with I/O, object management, security and process management. The kernel mode stops user mode services and applications from accessing critical areas of the operating system that they should not have access to. The user mode layer of Windows NT is made up of the "Environment subsystems", which run applications written for many different types of operating systems, and the "Integral subsystem", which operates system-specific functions on behalf of environment subsystems.
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User mode in Windows NT is made of subsystems capable of passing I/O requests to the appropriate kernel mode device drivers by using the I/O manager. The Windows NT kernel is a hybrid kernel the architecture comprises a simple kernel, hardware abstraction layer (HAL), drivers, and a range of services (collectively named Executive), which all exist in kernel mode. Kernel mode in Windows NT has full access to the hardware and system resources of the computer. Programs and subsystems in user mode are limited in terms of what system resources they have access to, while the kernel mode has unrestricted access to the system memory and external devices. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft began making 64-bit versions of Windows available before this, there were only 32-bit versions of these operating systems. To process input/output (I/O) requests, they use packet-driven I/O, which utilizes I/O request packets (IRPs) and asynchronous I/O. It is a preemptive, reentrant multitasking operating system, which has been designed to work with uniprocessor and symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP)-based computers. The architecture of Windows NT, a line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft, is a layered design that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode. The Windows NT operating system family's architecture consists of two layers ( user mode and kernel mode), with many different modules within both of these layers.