Realistically, there is no way NT could have used UTF-8 in-memory. UTF-8 was scribbled on a placemat on September 2, 1992 and officially presented in January 1993 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UTF-8#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UTF-8#History</a>)<p>Windows NT was released in July 1993, but development started in 1989 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_NT#Development" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_NT#Development</a>)<p>Also, even after UTF-8 was accepted to be a good idea, it wasn&#x27;t considered a good idea for in-memory usage; indexing UCS-2 encoded strings is way easier, and UTF-16 didn&#x27;t exist yet. It arrived with Unicde 2 in July 1996 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UTF-16#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UTF-16#History</a>)