I don't know precisely how long Windows was without a command line boot, but Windows Server Core came out with Server 2008, and has been improved on with Nano i

I don't know precisely how long Windows was without a command line boot, but Windows Server Core came out with Server 2008, and has been improved on with Nano in recent versions of Server. These both boot to the command line. IIRC Core's "command line" was still using a lightweight window manager just to provide a box around the shell, but Nano doesn't even have that.